. . . one of the heresiarchs of Uqbar had declared that mirrors and copulation are abominable, because they increase the number or men.
Writing
Díre McCain
It was a summer weeknight. Kiki and I were at Carl’s Jr., slurping down milkshakes, when in walked two men who had to be pushing thirty. Both were tall and moderately inked. The brawny bull had his head cleanly shaven, but it was rawboned cat who caught my dexter and sinister.
bart plantenga
A discussion with activist cartoonist and BEER MYSTIC host, Ken Avidor [here posed as Greek God of Mini-Golf, Nkolfus, in Asbury Park, c. 1984]. I knew Ken [aka Weiner] for many years in NYC, during its – or was it just our – heyday, the 1980s. This mad cartoonist worked a day job as art director [...]
Mark McCawley
Fortunately, not everyone has to experience the daily life of madness and insanity of a spouse with a severe mental illness. It’s akin to watching a portrait you adore manifest into something you no longer know or even recognize. It was 1989, Lou Reed had just released ‘New York’ to critical acclaim, and I’d just [...]
Sean Flaherty
They switched the time of day but every day for one year, Monday through Friday we had seventh grade science with Mr. Stern, after school, Neil Brown and I would tear over to Friendly’s or Burger King in his mom’s Camaro and then, hopped up on burgers and milkshakes we’d fly a brakeless Schwinn down [...]
Floco Tausin
For centuries, scholars try to find an explanation for the mobile, scattered and transparent spheres and strings in our visual field. Early on in ophthalmological tradition, the origin was thought to be in the eye. The phenomenon was considered a disorder or degeneration somewhere between cornea and retina.
bart plantenga
An interview with Karen Lillis When I was just beginning high school I was one scared, miffed, gawky, pimply kid, unlike the rest of the kids somehow. But what kid of 13 didn’t feel that way? (photo: Karen in the Minneapolis Public Library) The older, wannabe bullies who needed to prove their cruelty credentials had a 6th [...]
Keshav Das
“Drugs,” an excerpt from Barefoot in the Heart “Muktananda, Shirdi Sai Baba and Hari Das Baba would never take LSD.” A certain pattern had evolved wherein Maharajji frequently called upon myself and a couple of other foreign men whenever he required some enforcers. Sometimes it was to deliver bad news such as a Jao, other [...]
Mark McCawley
The dilemma with writing anything edgy or transgressive in Canada, isn’t that it is all too often written from the margins, or by choice or circumstance — it comes down to the harsh reality that edgy, transgressive writing is an unwelcome commodity at Canadian magazines, journals, and ultimately, publishers. The number of Canadian magazines and [...]
bart plantenga
It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners • Albert Camus You gotta chortle in your beerhead at the maxim “Beer Is Cheaper Than Therapy,” a tongue-in-cheek saying fraught [froth?] with this better-you-than-me ambiguity, pride unraveling by the last syllable as you realize the joke’s on you… [...]
