Everyone else who comments in response to Christopher Newgent’s posts at The Lit Pub through midnight PST, June 30th, with be entered in a LIVE draw tomorrow to receive a $100 gift certificate to spend at The Lit Pub and purchase from the great and growing titles in their library. This gift certificate expires December 31st, 2011.

So comment already! What are you waiting for? Hopefully you’ve checked out the Lit Pub already, but if not you’d better get over there today, before Ethel’s wonderful book stops being featured and they’re on to something else new and exciting. I guess what I’m saying is, the Lit Pub is worth checking out at LEAST once a month. But I’d go more often than that if I were you.

Ai Weiwei has been released!

Mel Bosworth’s highly anticipated novel, Freight, is available for pre-order.

This piece by Christy Crutchfield in The Collagist is well worth your time.  Promise.

Al Gore has a great piece about climate deniers in July’s Rolling Stone.

Having lived in college towns in both Wisconsin and Minnesota, I’m more than familiar with sports-born rioting. And no one riots quite like a hockey fan. And so having witnessed my share of violence-by-rioter, it warms the cockles of my heart to see that at least the crowd in Vancouver could be persuaded to refrain from book-burning, for Christ’s sake.

Sarah Palin continues her quitting streak.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, is as pleasurable to read as Christopher Hitchens tearing some writer a new asshole. And when that writer is David Mamet, smug and self-satisfied after giving birth to a monstrously-formed, cobbled-together-by-orcs-on-speed political philosophy, the pleasure increases ten-fold.

Damn. That is a LOT of money. Go get some, writers!

Photograph by Charlie Crane.

I wrote about Diana Wynne Jones, and what her writing meant to me, over at Big Other. I’ve received several private responses about this post and how much she meant to others as well, which I feel hugely gratified about. You see, Jones recently died, and I had been meaning to write to her to tell her how much I owed her. I procrastinated, not knowing she was terminally ill, and by the time I got around to it, it was too late. So it makes me feel better, knowing that at least a few others who knew and loved her books read the post and found something good to take away from it.

File this one in the more depressing category. As our economy continues to founder and Republicans blame Obama, screaming that he needs to cut taxes on business so they’ll create more jobs, here’s the real culprit: companies looking not to provide jobs, but to cut them in favor of mechanization, in order to facilitate an even more rapid downward spiral. As the Times points out,  “Workers are getting more expensive while equipment is getting cheaper, and the combination is encouraging companies to spend on machines rather than people.”  And dooooooowwwwwwwwnnnnnnnn we go.

Eerie, beautiful photos of North Korea by Charlie Crane. Look.

Anybody else headed to Netroots Nation in Mpls next week? We’ll (UFCW peeps) be there, sitting on panels, talking to old friends, and…hosting an AWESOME bourbon and bacon happy hour, with bourbon and bacon made by UFCW members. If you’re there stop by and say hi!

How can you not love this picture? Taken from the Tumblr blog linked here, Awesome People Hanging Out Together.

Jen Michalski has an amazing new story in the latest issue of Bluestem. In fact, lots of people have amazing stories in the latest issue of Bluestem, so you should definitely read through it.

You probably noticed–since there so many great things posted and written there–but Matt Bell, at his blog, spent the entire month of May writing about short stories for Short Story Month. And I mean WRITING. There was so much good stuff, both from him and his guests, that I’ll be taking stuff away for a long time to come.  And now he’s written a beautiful essay about the experience which makes me so proud to be a part of this writing community, and he’s put his writing into an e-book that you should certainly download, and he’s put up links to all the posts as well. Bookmark this! Get the ebook! It’s free, dummies! Why wouldn’t you? Matt retains his title as the Hardest Working Man in the Indie Lit World and ups the ante for anyone else who’s gunning for that title.  Seriously.

The always excellent Roxane Gay has a really, really good story in The Fiddleback. You should read it here .

The Lit Pub has launched into being! What the hell is the Lit Pub? Well, it’s Molly Gaudry, Chris Newgent, Mike Young’s press Magic Helicopter, and a whole bunch of other hardworking indie writer/publisher/editor/publicist types. It’s great literature. It’s support. It’s a community. It’s a conversation. It’s a bunch of really really good books and people who feel passionately about them. No need to say more–I’ll let Lit Pub explain itself, here.

Finally, perfect for Friday, how great is this Tumblr blog? Awesome People Hanging Out Together? I could look at these for hours. I kind of did. Your turn.

Have a great weekend wherever you are and hope the weather is what you want it to be. Inside and outside.

an “empty” chair in honor of Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese intellectual and dissident awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. A prize that he could not pick up in person because he was in prison serving an eleven year sentence for “inciting subversion of state power.”

The Empty Chair intends to symbolically denounce the increasing repression of writers, journalists, artist, and activists.

You’re welcome.

Seriously. You really need to vote. I know most of you are voting. Yay! I will be right there with you. But I know (because I’ve had the conversations) that there are some of you who are saying, our politicians are total douches. They’re all contaminated with lobbyist cash. They don’t care about us, or public service. They just care about being re-elected. So why should I vote for any of them?

You wouldn’t be wrong on most of that. Trust me. I live in Washington, DC. I’ve worked in politics. I KNOW most politicians are, in fact, total douches. You have to be kind of a total douche, or a saint, to run for office. There are few saints, so there you are. Washington is filled with douches.

However. That does not mean you cannot vote. The douches are not of equal douchey-ness. We know this is true.  Your senator may be a total moneygrubbing douche,  but what if he or she also voted for health care reform? And student loan reform? And financial reform? And other good stuff, too? And the person opposing him or her has a platform that pretty much consists of “Government, bad. Guns, good.”? Then you gotta get out there and hold your nose and vote for the douche who has actually voted on some good things.

Duh, right? And please, don’t tell me you’re withholding your vote because the Democrats haven’t done shit on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Or because the Democrats didn’t keep their promises on immigration reform. Or cap and trade. Or the public option.  Do not try to tell me that they’re “all the same.” Don’t try to tell me you’re tired or busy or just not inspired anymore.

Withholding your vote to “punish” your party is stupid. The Democratic Party or GOP Party officials are not looking at a list and going, oh, man, Dick McSack didn’t vote this year. He must be really pissed at us. Let this be a lesson to us! No. Instead, the parties go, oh, I guess once again the young people didn’t turn out this time, or the lefties didn’t turn out, or the moderate Republicans didn’t turn out, or the Latinos didn’t turn out, so let’s not pay any attention to their issues next time. Let’s keep paying attention to what the tea partiers and old people and people living in rural North Dakota want.

Because guess who isn’t withholding their vote this year? Tea partiers! Because if you do not go out there and vote, crazy people (Sharon Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Carl Paladino, Rand Paul) will win and will take over our government and if you think things are bad NOW…just wait until next year. These people think government is evil, that we should all fend for ourselves, that if we want roads and schools and parks that we should pay for those things ourselves and if we can’t afford to pay (just like those lucky duckies who can’t afford to pay taxes) then we should just eat cat food and die. These people are NUTS. You do not want them in charge. I don’t care if you’re a Republican or Democrat or Green Party or Libertarian…you don’t want these people in charge.

So don’t be dumb. Don’t withhold your vote. Get out there and prove that young people care, that we didn’t just come out for Obama because he was so hip and cool, that we’ll vote to continue to push the issues WE care about, like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and gay marriage, and environmental reform, and meaningful financial reform, and immigration reform, and infrastructure, and jobs, and so on and so on. Make our votes matter. And then after the elections–hold them accountable! Make them keep their word this time. With two elections and a strong turnout under our belt, we’ll have more power to scare our legislators and make them take us seriously. That’s what democracy is all about.  It’s also about me not stabbing you in the head with a fork.

If you genuinely don’t know why your vote matters, shoot me an email at anoellesparks at gmail dot com and tell me where you live and I will be happy to tell you exactly why YOUR SPECIFIC VOTE matters.  Seriously. I will do this.

Also: yes, I am familiar with the South Park episode where the kids have the choice of voting for a douche or a turd for their mascot. And while I thought the episode was funny, the message was stupid. Especially this year. Sometimes, it really is kind of difficult to distinguish the politicians in both parties from each other. This year, though, it is not so difficult at all. This year, if you sit this one out–then you’re the douche. And you’ll be a douche with a plastic fork in your head.

Anyone else going? If you are, stop by the UFCW’s booth in the exhibition hall and say hi, or come to the panel we’ve put together on immigration reform, Immigration Reform’s Strange Bedfellow’s. I’ll be cheeping and twittering tweets as well.

What I will not be doing is enjoying the 106 degree temperatures and icky Vegas-ness of Vegas. Sigh. The things we do for the greater good.