Internet Culture
Memories and Mysteriosos
by Levi Asher on Sunday, July 24, 2005 10:22 pmA year ago today, a weary LitKicks staff headed gratefully off to sleep after completing an exercise in literary collaboration and sleeplessness we called the 24 Hour Poetry Party. We followed this by shutting the site down for about a month and a half, before gradually reinventing it in the shape it wears now.
A year later, I still think that was some good poem we all wrote on that bleary crazy afternoon, night and morning. I also feel like calling attention to some of the contributed works that flashed by during this marathon. The passage of time has made me only fonder of one particular piece, an extended poem by Michael McClure, which made its world debut during our versifying bacchanal.
I think this poem is worth a return visit. It still looks exactly like it looked when we put it up one year ago, with that excellent waterfall photograph by Panta Rhei.
I hope this poem, and this page, will belong to the ages: Mysteriosos by Michael McClure
A year later, I still think that was some good poem we all wrote on that bleary crazy afternoon, night and morning. I also feel like calling attention to some of the contributed works that flashed by during this marathon. The passage of time has made me only fonder of one particular piece, an extended poem by Michael McClure, which made its world debut during our versifying bacchanal.
I think this poem is worth a return visit. It still looks exactly like it looked when we put it up one year ago, with that excellent waterfall photograph by Panta Rhei.
I hope this poem, and this page, will belong to the ages: Mysteriosos by Michael McClure
Vidlits are Fundamental
by Levi Asher on Thursday, July 7, 2005 11:38 amYou may have noticed the ad for M. J. Rose's new erotic thriller "The Halo Effect" in the right column on this page. We're psyched that M. J. Rose has bought a blogad on LitKicks, because this author has been championing the potential of literary online advertising for longer than anybody else, and knows a bit about the subject.
Rose's message to up-and-coming authors is simple: when it comes to marketing your book, hold nothing back. Her litblog is called Buzz Balls Hype -- that's "balls", I think, as in "balls to the wall". Here's an example: Rose has arranged for a consortium of contributors to donate five dollars to the Reading Is Fundamental organization every time a litblog links to the vidlit (an animated online promotion) for "The Halo Effect".
We're game, M. J. These "vidlits" are pretty cool to look at, too, and maybe some other writers around here want to look into creating vidlits for their own works (as well as, yeah, buying blogads on LitKicks).
Send that five bucks over to RIF, somebody ...
Rose's message to up-and-coming authors is simple: when it comes to marketing your book, hold nothing back. Her litblog is called Buzz Balls Hype -- that's "balls", I think, as in "balls to the wall". Here's an example: Rose has arranged for a consortium of contributors to donate five dollars to the Reading Is Fundamental organization every time a litblog links to the vidlit (an animated online promotion) for "The Halo Effect".
We're game, M. J. These "vidlits" are pretty cool to look at, too, and maybe some other writers around here want to look into creating vidlits for their own works (as well as, yeah, buying blogads on LitKicks).
Send that five bucks over to RIF, somebody ...
Neopets as Fiction
by Levi Asher on Thursday, June 23, 2005 10:54 pmA couple of years ago, my kids showed me a website called Neopets.com where they create free membernames, adopt weird little animated virtual alien-pets, and communicate with other owners of weird little animated virtual alien-pets.
It seemed like a pretty dicey concept to me, and I didn't really see what was so great about it. That was a couple of years ago -- now, 25 million members later, Neopets is being bought by MTV and MTV's parent company, Viacom. The two young British entrepeneurs who created Neopets.com will share in the price of $160 million.
I've never really caught "Meerca Fever" myself (that is, I've never felt a strong urge to spend any time at all nurturing a "Meerca" or an "Iasha" or any other type of Neopet pet). But, I am intrigued by the idea that all this money is paying for a venture that offers no commodity other than imagination. Neopets is in the business of creating fabricated realities, and MTV thinks this is worth $160 million.
I know I've got a bad habit of going around saying this or that is "metafiction". Well, I'm not going to say Neopets is metafiction. In fact, Neopets is simply fiction. When you sit down at a computer and create a theoretical, computerized life form, you are engaging in a practice diagramatically parallel to that of writing a short story, novel or play. You are encapsulating life. You are stepping into realms unbound from truth. This is what writing is, this is what dreaming is, and this is what virtual reality entertainments are, from SIMS to video games to online community sites.
I'm not sure if I like Neopets or not. As a writer, though, I have to hand it to them. Here in the literary world, we're used to doing a whole lot of imagining, sometimes for little reward. It's nice to see our fictional genes have some kind of market valuation, somewhere.
It seemed like a pretty dicey concept to me, and I didn't really see what was so great about it. That was a couple of years ago -- now, 25 million members later, Neopets is being bought by MTV and MTV's parent company, Viacom. The two young British entrepeneurs who created Neopets.com will share in the price of $160 million.
I've never really caught "Meerca Fever" myself (that is, I've never felt a strong urge to spend any time at all nurturing a "Meerca" or an "Iasha" or any other type of Neopet pet). But, I am intrigued by the idea that all this money is paying for a venture that offers no commodity other than imagination. Neopets is in the business of creating fabricated realities, and MTV thinks this is worth $160 million.
I know I've got a bad habit of going around saying this or that is "metafiction". Well, I'm not going to say Neopets is metafiction. In fact, Neopets is simply fiction. When you sit down at a computer and create a theoretical, computerized life form, you are engaging in a practice diagramatically parallel to that of writing a short story, novel or play. You are encapsulating life. You are stepping into realms unbound from truth. This is what writing is, this is what dreaming is, and this is what virtual reality entertainments are, from SIMS to video games to online community sites.
I'm not sure if I like Neopets or not. As a writer, though, I have to hand it to them. Here in the literary world, we're used to doing a whole lot of imagining, sometimes for little reward. It's nice to see our fictional genes have some kind of market valuation, somewhere.
No Purchase Necessary
by Caryn Thurman on Monday, June 6, 2005 08:40 amMaybe you uncovered a lonely manuscript in your spring cleaning this year, or maybe you'd like to give that novel that no one decided to pick up another try. Or maybe you'd like to fuel up on your stimulant of choice and crank something out by July 1st? Whatever the case, I wanted to throw this out for your enjoyment or consternation (I'll let you decide). Xerox has partnered with Lulu.com and the ColorCentric Corp. to launch its "Aspiring Authors Contest". The winner will receive $5K and 100 copies of their book. Another interesting twist is that all entrants will receive at least one printed copy of their book -- limited to 1,000 entries, I believe.
We're pretty interested in the print-on-demand industry and self-publishing, so this caught our eye. If you're looking to take an alternate route with a manuscript, this might be an interesting choice. As always, please read the fine print and contest rules -- LitKicks doesn't endorse or condemn this contest, we're simply throwing it out there for your information. If you do check it out, be sure to tell us your experience. Of course, if you think it's a great idea or think it's the work of the devil, we'd like to hear that as well.
We're pretty interested in the print-on-demand industry and self-publishing, so this caught our eye. If you're looking to take an alternate route with a manuscript, this might be an interesting choice. As always, please read the fine print and contest rules -- LitKicks doesn't endorse or condemn this contest, we're simply throwing it out there for your information. If you do check it out, be sure to tell us your experience. Of course, if you think it's a great idea or think it's the work of the devil, we'd like to hear that as well.
Milestone
by Levi Asher on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 10:43 pmToday feels like a pretty big milestone here at LitKicks, because we've finally relaunched our advertising program after a nine month rest. The original LitKicks Indie Writer's Marketplace was a big success ... in every way except financially. The ads looked great, but it takes a lot of time and attention to filter through prospective advertisers, edit text blurbs, edit graphics, handle payment, manage rotation schedules, etc. We had to shut the system down and look for a better way to grow this business.
We think we found it at blogads.com. This company was created by Henry Copeland to make it easy for content sites like LitKicks to work with advertisers. The service is personal, high quality and very efficient; if you run a good high-traffic blog on any subject, or if you would like to run ads of your own, you may want to check this company out yourself.
We're psyched to be working with BlogAds.com, and our first blogad from BlogAds features "Break, Blow, Burn", a study of world poetry by in-your-face social critic Camille Paglia. Her selections skew heavily towards the classical rhymers of centuries past, and it's an interesting list, although the only poems in my own top 50 that make her list are "Ozymandias", "Kubla Khan", "Song of Myself", "The Second Coming" and "Daddy". And where the hell is Prufrock?
But Camille Paglia is all about the spirited argument, and this book promises to contain many of them. We're glad to kick the new LitKicks advertising program off with a bang, and we really hope you'll support the return of the LitKicks ad program by checking Camille Paglia's book out, if you're interested in that sort of thing; and if you've got books, chapbooks, CDs or anything of your own you'd like to pitch, please think about buying an ad.
Finally, if you've got anything to say about LitKicks's new skin, new advertising program or new general direction, don't be shy ...
We think we found it at blogads.com. This company was created by Henry Copeland to make it easy for content sites like LitKicks to work with advertisers. The service is personal, high quality and very efficient; if you run a good high-traffic blog on any subject, or if you would like to run ads of your own, you may want to check this company out yourself.
We're psyched to be working with BlogAds.com, and our first blogad from BlogAds features "Break, Blow, Burn", a study of world poetry by in-your-face social critic Camille Paglia. Her selections skew heavily towards the classical rhymers of centuries past, and it's an interesting list, although the only poems in my own top 50 that make her list are "Ozymandias", "Kubla Khan", "Song of Myself", "The Second Coming" and "Daddy". And where the hell is Prufrock?
But Camille Paglia is all about the spirited argument, and this book promises to contain many of them. We're glad to kick the new LitKicks advertising program off with a bang, and we really hope you'll support the return of the LitKicks ad program by checking Camille Paglia's book out, if you're interested in that sort of thing; and if you've got books, chapbooks, CDs or anything of your own you'd like to pitch, please think about buying an ad.
Finally, if you've got anything to say about LitKicks's new skin, new advertising program or new general direction, don't be shy ...
Live, From the LitKicks Laboratory: Storycode.com
by Jamelah Earle on Tuesday, May 24, 2005 09:52 pmEarlier this evening, I disappeared into the LitKicks Laboratory (we have one, seriously) to test the website known as Storycode.com. The purpose of this site, as far as I can tell (I didn't feel like reading the FAQ) is to give readers personalized recommendations based on their ratings of books they've read. Simple enough, yes?
Well, okay. Yes. But also no. Let me explain my reasoning to you by outlining my testing method:
Step 1: Arrival -- When I first got to Storycode.com, I was a little preoccupied, because the American Idol finale was going to be starting in a few minutes (shut up, it's awesome). Even so, I had work to do in the name of science. Or literature. Or literary science. Or something. So, I created an account and looked at the screen which listed some books to review (or, excuse me, code). This leads me to...
Step 2: Coding -- I picked A Clockwork Orange because even though I read it about eight years ago, the title was familiar, and I didn't have time to deliberate because American Idol, people! Seriously.
So I set about coding the story. You'd think coding a story would be something intense that involved charts and graphs and blood tests, or something, but I was pretty disappointed to find that all I had to do was rate the story on a sliding scale according to questions about plot and characters. Whatever.
Step 3: Recommendations -- After I finished coding A Clockwork Orange, I was taken to a page with a lot of books listed on it, such as House of Leaves and American Psycho. Interesting. I decided I would code the one by Bret Easton Ellis, since I hated that book. Then I had to go watch American Idol, after which I came back and clicked around the site some more, trying to figure out why exactly it was in any way necessary to anything ever.
Step 4: Perplexity -- (Is "perplexity" even a word? Of course it is, and I totally knew that.) The thing is, I was beginning to wonder why this site was in any way better than having a friend who reads books and talks about them or, um, going to the library and browsing the shelves (I hear people do that sort of thing). It was at this point that I finally decided to read the FAQ.
Basically, the site stores all this coding information so that users will always have a list of books to read. (Great. My list of books to read is already so long that if all I did was read all the time for the rest of my life, I still wouldn't get through the whole thing before I died.) It's kind of like the way Amazon.com gives you recommendations while you're browsing, except without seeming like it's just blatantly trying to sell you stuff you're not even looking for under the pretense of being nice enough to give you the Super Saver Shipping. I think I may have just digressed a little bit there, but anyway, I came to see that the site could be for some people useful and (dare I say) fun.
Because really, anyplace that recommends a book called A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian to me when I click on a link for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is interesting, to say the least.
Step 5: Verdict -- My personal method for picking reading material has always been haphazard and random, and I very rarely ever read things because someone recommends them to me, choosing instead to read things for reasons that are so illogical and pointless that I couldn't even begin to decipher them. Be that as it may, I think the site has an interesting concept and could very well introduce people to reading material they'd never think of picking up if they were just wandering the aisles of their local bookstores.
I'd say that's a good thing.
But enough about me. How do you pick what you read?
Well, okay. Yes. But also no. Let me explain my reasoning to you by outlining my testing method:
Step 1: Arrival -- When I first got to Storycode.com, I was a little preoccupied, because the American Idol finale was going to be starting in a few minutes (shut up, it's awesome). Even so, I had work to do in the name of science. Or literature. Or literary science. Or something. So, I created an account and looked at the screen which listed some books to review (or, excuse me, code). This leads me to...
Step 2: Coding -- I picked A Clockwork Orange because even though I read it about eight years ago, the title was familiar, and I didn't have time to deliberate because American Idol, people! Seriously.
So I set about coding the story. You'd think coding a story would be something intense that involved charts and graphs and blood tests, or something, but I was pretty disappointed to find that all I had to do was rate the story on a sliding scale according to questions about plot and characters. Whatever.
Step 3: Recommendations -- After I finished coding A Clockwork Orange, I was taken to a page with a lot of books listed on it, such as House of Leaves and American Psycho. Interesting. I decided I would code the one by Bret Easton Ellis, since I hated that book. Then I had to go watch American Idol, after which I came back and clicked around the site some more, trying to figure out why exactly it was in any way necessary to anything ever.
Step 4: Perplexity -- (Is "perplexity" even a word? Of course it is, and I totally knew that.) The thing is, I was beginning to wonder why this site was in any way better than having a friend who reads books and talks about them or, um, going to the library and browsing the shelves (I hear people do that sort of thing). It was at this point that I finally decided to read the FAQ.
Basically, the site stores all this coding information so that users will always have a list of books to read. (Great. My list of books to read is already so long that if all I did was read all the time for the rest of my life, I still wouldn't get through the whole thing before I died.) It's kind of like the way Amazon.com gives you recommendations while you're browsing, except without seeming like it's just blatantly trying to sell you stuff you're not even looking for under the pretense of being nice enough to give you the Super Saver Shipping. I think I may have just digressed a little bit there, but anyway, I came to see that the site could be for some people useful and (dare I say) fun.
Because really, anyplace that recommends a book called A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian to me when I click on a link for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is interesting, to say the least.
Step 5: Verdict -- My personal method for picking reading material has always been haphazard and random, and I very rarely ever read things because someone recommends them to me, choosing instead to read things for reasons that are so illogical and pointless that I couldn't even begin to decipher them. Be that as it may, I think the site has an interesting concept and could very well introduce people to reading material they'd never think of picking up if they were just wandering the aisles of their local bookstores.
I'd say that's a good thing.
But enough about me. How do you pick what you read?
Join the Pale Fire Deathmarch
by Levi Asher on Wednesday, May 18, 2005 11:58 amA group of adventerous postmodernists over at CecilVortex.com, apparently still dizzy and delirious from a group reading of a thick Thomas Pynchon book, are now setting off for a new collective journey, the Pale Fire Deathmarch. This will consist, apparently, of a call-and-response collective experiencing of Vladimir Nabokov's "Pale Fire", a complex novel about a poet undergoing some sort of metaphysical crisis (aren't we all).
Personally, I have never gotten very far with Pynchon (who seems to be the guiding spirit of this collective), but I usually do better with Nabokov. I may even join the march, or at least I may try.
Personally, I have never gotten very far with Pynchon (who seems to be the guiding spirit of this collective), but I usually do better with Nabokov. I may even join the march, or at least I may try.
Count Blogula
by Caryn Thurman on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 06:24 pmOk, so he doesn't come out much during the day and he may want to suck your blood, but Bram Stoker's Dracula is really just like everyone else and now has a blog. Well, the novel has a blog. Much like the diary of Samuel Pepys blog project, the Dracula blog's entries coincide with the dates contained in the story, mostly tracked by the journal entries of the novel's protagonist, Jonathan Harker. We're only about a week into the story at this point, so you can catch up pretty quickly. It's a fun way to get acquainted with the Count, or revisit this story if you've read it before.
Getting Started
by Jamelah Earle on Friday, May 6, 2005 02:06 pmLately I've been working on (though for the majority of this week, I've actually been avoiding) switching over a website from a table-based design to one that only uses cascading stylesheets. This is something I could talk about all day, but I made a vow before I started writing that I would not geek out on you, and I will stick to that. What I will tell you is that, to me, writing a successful stylesheet (and the corresponding markup) is like creating a delicate artwork, where so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens on creating a pixel-perfect balance, where everything exists in a very specific order. See, I haven't really done very much writing in the past year or so, but I have done a pretty fair amount of communing with CSS and XHTML, and I've come to look at hand coding a website's design as a pretty gratifying creative outlet. Yes, CSS is poetic, and all of its elements, from faux columns to negative margins, are its building blocks. It may not do the same thing for you, but something like this is poetry to me:
As it is with creating anything, it can be a very frustrating process, but getting everything right is incredibly satisfying. Like winning something, only better. Because taking a mental image and making it into something real, using only letters, words, and occasional bits of punctuation is a good thing to be able to do. Any writer (whether the medium is pixels or poems) knows this.
But sometimes, no matter how much I may even want to, getting started is difficult. Especially if I know that the work is going to be really hard or beyond my comfortable range of knowledge. I've found that lately, I've had to trick myself into getting into a creative mindset, because I've mostly felt like ignoring this aforementioned website (since I keep breaking it instead of fixing it). And this usually works -- if I fire up the ol' iPod and stare at an HTML file long enough, eventually I start typing, moving blocks of information around, celebrating what I fix and cursing what I break. It doesn't take too much of this before I'm completely absorbed. Lost in the process. Totally in the zone. Forgetful of the fact that I had to trick myself to get there. Wondering if there's a better feeling than abandoning myself to the act of creation.
But enough about me. It's time to talk about you. What does it take to get you into a creative frame of mind? Do you wake up that way, or do you sometimes have to work at it? How do you get yourself started? And once you have, what are you like once you're in the zone? Do you have to follow a specific process every time, or do you vary it?
.header {
font-family: trebuchet ms, arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 15px;
color: black;
background: #e3ffc1;
border: 1px solid black;
text-align: center;
font-weight: bold;
letter-spacing: 3px;
padding: 5px;
}Whatever. You say Coleridge, I say Zeldman.As it is with creating anything, it can be a very frustrating process, but getting everything right is incredibly satisfying. Like winning something, only better. Because taking a mental image and making it into something real, using only letters, words, and occasional bits of punctuation is a good thing to be able to do. Any writer (whether the medium is pixels or poems) knows this.
But sometimes, no matter how much I may even want to, getting started is difficult. Especially if I know that the work is going to be really hard or beyond my comfortable range of knowledge. I've found that lately, I've had to trick myself into getting into a creative mindset, because I've mostly felt like ignoring this aforementioned website (since I keep breaking it instead of fixing it). And this usually works -- if I fire up the ol' iPod and stare at an HTML file long enough, eventually I start typing, moving blocks of information around, celebrating what I fix and cursing what I break. It doesn't take too much of this before I'm completely absorbed. Lost in the process. Totally in the zone. Forgetful of the fact that I had to trick myself to get there. Wondering if there's a better feeling than abandoning myself to the act of creation.
But enough about me. It's time to talk about you. What does it take to get you into a creative frame of mind? Do you wake up that way, or do you sometimes have to work at it? How do you get yourself started? And once you have, what are you like once you're in the zone? Do you have to follow a specific process every time, or do you vary it?
Dear Diary …
by Caryn Thurman on Wednesday, February 23, 2005 11:32 amFebruary 23rd marks the birthday of English diarist Samuel Pepys. Born in 1633, Pepys is probably the most famous and widely read diarist in the English language. A detailed account of London life in the 1660s, the collection of Samuel Pepys' journal entries are interesting not only for their sheer volume and the historical scope they represent, but most often for the seemingly mundane everyday happenings that he chooses to chronicle in great detail. Pepys would often comment about the political and social climate of the day, historical events (such as the Great Fire of 1666), new trends and fashion as well as the people he met and interacted with on a daily basis. Unlike most Englishmen of the day, Pepys went beyond the simple listing of daily events in dry record and incorporated humor, observation and his personal opinions and feelings in each entry. He also included many comments on more intimate details of his life, as well as of others':
Throughout the diary, there are times we might identify a little too much with Pepys. The following excerpt illustrates how, in many ways, life in 2005 doesn't differ too much from life in 1661:
Aside from their historical value, do you find diaries interesting as literature? Do you enjoy reading them? Why or why not?
It could be said that Samuel Pepys is the patron saint of modern day bloggers, considering the amount of personal detail he chose to include and the fact that he was the person who eventually bound his journals and handed them over to a college in Cambridge. Do you keep a diary, journal or weblog? If so, do you find it motivates you to write more than you would otherwise? Are blogs another form of modern literature? To come full circle, the diary of Samuel "The Bloggfather" Pepys has been serialized as a blog. You can check it out here and find out what he was up to all those years ago.
Sunday 28 April 1661: After supper my father told me of an odd passage the other night in bed between my mother and him, and she would not let him come to bed to her out of jealousy of him and an ugly wench that lived there lately, the most ill-favoured slut that ever I saw in my life, which I was ashamed to hear that my mother should be become such a fool, and my father bid me to take notice of it to my mother, and to make peace between him and her. All which do trouble me very much. So to bed to my wife.
Throughout the diary, there are times we might identify a little too much with Pepys. The following excerpt illustrates how, in many ways, life in 2005 doesn't differ too much from life in 1661:
Wednesday 3 April 1661: Up among my workmen, my head akeing all day from last night's debauch ...
Aside from their historical value, do you find diaries interesting as literature? Do you enjoy reading them? Why or why not?
It could be said that Samuel Pepys is the patron saint of modern day bloggers, considering the amount of personal detail he chose to include and the fact that he was the person who eventually bound his journals and handed them over to a college in Cambridge. Do you keep a diary, journal or weblog? If so, do you find it motivates you to write more than you would otherwise? Are blogs another form of modern literature? To come full circle, the diary of Samuel "The Bloggfather" Pepys has been serialized as a blog. You can check it out here and find out what he was up to all those years ago.
