goreletter:cold_cuts
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+ | THE GORELETTER: | ||
+ | Arnzen' | ||
+ | |||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | +++ Vol. 5.01, Oct 19, 2007 +++ | ||
+ | |||
+ | **Cold Cuts** | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | ====BLATHER==== | ||
+ | Blather. Wince. Repeat. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Cold Cuts | ||
+ | |||
+ | One of the ways I entertain myself when I stand in line at the local sandwich shop chain is by watching the cold cut artists behind the counter as they prepare my meal. They arrange the order line so you can customize your sandwich as they create it, dictating what toppings and sauces you'd like to include in your meal. It makes you feel special. | ||
+ | |||
+ | But me? I'm fascinated by the open display of butchery and cold meat. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Standing behind the sneeze guard glass makes me feel like I'm in a surgical theater, watching doctors operate as they slice bread with their long knives and handle meaty tissue in their latex-covered hands. They spritz and drizzle dressing along the cut like they' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Those creepy latex gloves they wear. That's what sends me into this fantasy. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And they don't change them often. They don't scrub in. They don't sterilize their instruments. They might put on fresh gloves when you place your order, but they rarely change them when they pick up a dirty butcher' | ||
+ | |||
+ | It's like they think the gloves are there to protect their hands, rather than the sanitation of your sandwich. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And eating all that contact residue is like -- I dunno -- like you're on the subway, licking the seats or something. | ||
+ | |||
+ | - | ||
+ | I fear raw meat and cold cuts. For more of my opinions on such culinary delights, here's an oldie from The Goreletter: | ||
+ | < | ||
+ | |||
+ | ====WEIRD SITES OF THE MONTH==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | They Eat People | ||
+ | |||
+ | I Eat People: Animated Video by Dan Hess\\ | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | Cannibal Corpse Lounge Music: YouTube Parody by unknown lounge act\\ | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | Why Dost Thou Love to Eat People?: YouTube weirdness by anonymous guitar-playing vampire freak\\ | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | (this too has been parodied...badly)\\ | ||
+ | < | ||
+ | |||
+ | ====ARNZEN NEWS==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | EXQUISITE CORPSE: NOW ON DVD\\ | ||
+ | Exquisite Corpse: Films Based on the Writing of Michael Arnzen is now available on DVD. To purchase in the US send $17 ($15 + $2 shipping/ | ||
+ | |||
+ | AWARD PICK: A WITCHY FOR THE SCAB\\ | ||
+ | Producer Jim Minton just received a 2007 Tabloid Witch Award for "Best Animated Horror Short" for his adaptation of my poem, "The Scab" (which some of you might recall from the Stoker-winning poetry book, Freakcidents, | ||
+ | |||
+ | Tabloid Witch Awards: http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | Exquisite Corpse: http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | AUDIOVILE: MUSIC TO YOUR FEARS\\ | ||
+ | My "album of flash fiction" | ||
+ | |||
+ | Publisher' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Gorelets' | ||
+ | |||
+ | 100 Jolts on Amazon: http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | HOW TO GROW A PSEUDOPOD\\ | ||
+ | Pseudopod: The Sound of Horror has just podcast my short story, "How to Grow a Man-Eating Plant" (read by Sheila Unwin). Listen online or subscribe through iTunes and start gardening now. | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | AN ARNZEN OMNIBUS: PROVERBS FOR MONSTERS\\ | ||
+ | You're hearing it first: Dark Regions Press now has signed trade paperback copies of my latest collection, Proverbs for Monsters, available for order direct from the publisher. With art by Matt Schuster, this "best of Arnzen" | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | DEALT OUT\\ | ||
+ | Raw Dog Screaming Press reports that my novel, Play Dead, is now officially out of print and virtually all copies are sold out from their warehouse. You should easily still be able to find it on the secondary market, but it won't be around forever. Likewise, Novello Publishers is also reporting that they have only a handful (or is it a mouthful?) of my comedic novelette, Licker, left in stock (see "boo coupons" | ||
+ | |||
+ | Play Dead: http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | Licker: < | ||
+ | |||
+ | HOWLING AT THE MOON\\ | ||
+ | I'm presently revising a new story for a collectible chapbook (tentatively called "The B**chfight" | ||
+ | |||
+ | YOU HAVE TIME FOR THIS\\ | ||
+ | You Have Time For This: Contemporary American Short-Short stories (edited by Mark Budman and Tom Hazuka) is a new anthology of flash fiction that includes my tale from 100 Jolts, "The Curse of Fat Face." | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ====GORELETS: | ||
+ | |||
+ | My Pet Vampire | ||
+ | |||
+ | Tight as a tick to a scalp, \\ | ||
+ | I keep my vampire nailed down\\ | ||
+ | to the floor in my bedroom.\\ | ||
+ | His arms are stretched pale and flabby\\ | ||
+ | as the hairy little bat I know\\ | ||
+ | he wishes he could turn into\\ | ||
+ | when I see him squinching his lupine brow\\ | ||
+ | and grunting like he's constipated.\\ | ||
+ | But the nails won't set him free\\ | ||
+ | from the clock-handed impalement of his limbs.\\ | ||
+ | Maybe he could transform into a flying rodent\\ | ||
+ | but he's stretched so tight, the tension\\ | ||
+ | between those silver spikes would only split\\ | ||
+ | him right in two. I keep him fed\\ | ||
+ | with stray pet blood and sometimes\\ | ||
+ | he acts like he loves me for it -- \\ | ||
+ | cooing like he's the one stray I kept, \\ | ||
+ | the one pet I cared enough about to take in, \\ | ||
+ | the lucky survivor I won't kill. \\ | ||
+ | At other times -- usually at night\\ | ||
+ | when I peek over the bed before sleep -- \\ | ||
+ | his eyes quiver ablaze and he stares\\ | ||
+ | right at me like some starving feral animal\\ | ||
+ | caught in a barbed wire fence.\\ | ||
+ | Asleep, I dream of torture -- \\ | ||
+ | of drizzling holy water left-right\\ | ||
+ | across pasty dead flesh, drawing\\ | ||
+ | cross-shaped wounds in the gray canvas\\ | ||
+ | of skin. I dream of taking needle nose\\ | ||
+ | pliers to teeth before teasing him\\ | ||
+ | with my bare wrist and strained neck.\\ | ||
+ | But in the morning, the sunlight blares\\ | ||
+ | into the windowpane, fizzling his face\\ | ||
+ | and he screams like a drowning hyena.\\ | ||
+ | It's annoying. And as I close the curtains\\ | ||
+ | I deeply wish I could just finish him off,\\ | ||
+ | but this supernatural sundial\\ | ||
+ | is the best alarm clock I ever had.\\ | ||
+ | |||
+ | ====ARNZEN APPEARANCES==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | TONIGHT!\\ | ||
+ | Oct 19th 7:30pm | BottleWorks | Johnstown, PA\\ | ||
+ | Poetry reading along with Gerry LaFemina [gerrylafemina.net] at the Bottle Works Ethnic Arts Center (3rd Avenue & Chestnut in Cambria City), sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. Free event, open to the public. | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | TOMORROW NIGHT!\\ | ||
+ | Oct 20th 8-10pm | Dv8 Espresso Bar & Art Gallery | Greensburg, PA\\ | ||
+ | Come kick off the Halloween season by watching me gargle piping hot coffee while reading horror stories as the featured reader in the "Get Lit" series of literary performances at this wonderful art gallery in Downtown Greensburg (208 S. Pennsylvania Ave). While you're there check out Nora Jayne Thompson' | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | [The Rots: http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | NEXT WEEKEND!\\ | ||
+ | Oct 27-28th | Zombiefest | Monroeville Mall Expo Mart, Pittsburgh, PA\\ | ||
+ | I'll be reading on a panel and signing books at the Raw Dog Screaming Press table during this brand new Convention of the Undead, which culminates with an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the largest " | ||
+ | < | ||
+ | |||
+ | Nov 10th | PARSEC Lecture | Carnegie Library (Squirrel Hill Branch), Pittsburgh, PA\\ | ||
+ | Presentation on " | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | Nov 30th 4pm | Seton Hill University, Administration Building Rm 308 | Greensburg, PA\\ | ||
+ | Screening of Exquisite Corpse and a presentation of my recent creative work to the campus community (where I teach in the MA degree program in Writing Popular Fiction). Free and open to the public. | ||
+ | < | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | July 16-25 | Alpha SF/F/H Writing Workshop for Teens | Greensburg, PA\\ | ||
+ | I'll be a guest lecturer at this year's Alpha writer' | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | Chances are good I'll also attend the ICFA and World Horror Convention in Spring 2008.\\ | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ====ONLINE GIZMO OF THE MONTH==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Face Dances | ||
+ | |||
+ | Mono-1.com (a progressive advertising agency) has posted a fun "mix and match" game where you can assemble all the elements of the human head into a freaky photorealistic picture. They say there are 760,000 possible " | ||
+ | |||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ====DICTIONSCARY==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | suppurate | ||
+ | |||
+ | If I didn't know any better, I'd think that " | ||
+ | |||
+ | It comes from the Latin term " | ||
+ | |||
+ | ====THE CONTESTATORIUM==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | The winners of the "Be My Audiovillain" | ||
+ | |||
+ | Visit the " | ||
+ | < | ||
+ | |||
+ | VIRTUAL HALLOWEEN COSTUME CONTEST! | ||
+ | |||
+ | This one ought to be easy and your chances of winning are good! Send me a photo (whether at a party, on your doorstep, or whatever) of someone/ | ||
+ | |||
+ | Rules: | ||
+ | |||
+ | Deadline: November 5th (do send before or on Halloween if you're able)\\ | ||
+ | Preferred format: .jpg file (may be re-sized for space)\\ | ||
+ | Size limit: 1.4 megabytes\\ | ||
+ | SEND TO: arnzen@gmail.com \\ | ||
+ | |||
+ | Horror imagery preferred. Points for creativity, craft, and use of scenario/ | ||
+ | |||
+ | ONE GRAND PRIZE TO MY FAVORITE PHOTO: A free signed limited hardcover copy of PROVERBS FOR MONSTERS upon release ($50 value!) & one DVD of EXQUISITE CORPSE ($17 value!) with autographed Arnzen ephemera inserted in the clamshell case. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ====OUR ODD TRIPLE FEATURE==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Office Space Terrors | ||
+ | |||
+ | For your next movie night, rent: \\ | ||
+ | The Temp (Holland, 1993)\\ | ||
+ | Office Killer (Sherman, 1997)\\ | ||
+ | Netherbeast Incorporated (Ronalds, 2007)\\ | ||
+ | (or The Netherbeast of Berm-Tech Industries, Inc. (2004)) \\ | ||
+ | |||
+ | ====OTHINGS (* other things)==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | CHATTER\\ | ||
+ | Last month I was a guest blogger for a week on the website, "A Bunch of Wordz." | ||
+ | Here's an interview about horror that appeared in At Home with Jennifer (a regional magazine similar to Oprah), called "Dr. Dread: Seton Hill University Has its Own Professor of Horror": | ||
+ | </ | ||
+ | |||
+ | CONTEXT\\ | ||
+ | I was the " | ||
+ | |||
+ | One of the highlights for me was chatting with Gary Braunbeck, who hosted a Saturday night conversation with me. We talked about all things horror, I confessed about my past, we listened to tracks from Audiovile, and we screened short films. We not only watched Exquisite Corpse, but Gary was kind enough to share an advanced screener of the upcoming film based on his knock-out short story, "Rami Temporalis," | ||
+ | |||
+ | Context is a great, intimate and even educational conference. Their website is: http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | GORELETS.COM UPDATE\\ | ||
+ | Welcome to the fifth volume of The Goreletter! I've been running this internet sideshow for over five years now, and it remains a blast to put together. Almost 2000 people read this whenever I send it out (and I'd love to have more readers, so please spread the word)! Thank you for subscribing and reading for all these years, and for continuing to support my creative sickness. | ||
+ | |||
+ | When I sent the last issue (July 18, 2007), I received a number of " | ||
+ | I may be changing servers in the months ahead, which might produce a temporary outage on the website. If I need to change domains, I will e-mail you first to alert you. | ||
+ | |||
+ | I'm also seriously considering expanding The Goreletter into a book of some kind in the year ahead. If anyone has any leads on an ideal publisher who might be interested in such a venture, by all means, please let me know. For now, a few choice pieces from The Goreletter will appear in my new "best of Arnzen" | ||
+ | |||
+ | ====INSTIGATION: | ||
+ | |||
+ | + Write a story from the viewpoint of a groundskeeper at the graveyard -- avoiding any of the typical trappings of the horror genre. Make it mundane, even. Avoid using speculative fiction technique at all until you get to page three. Then, if you need to jazz things up, let her rip. | ||
+ | |||
+ | + Devise a plot surrounding a schoolyard bully...when he's elderly, in the nursing home. | ||
+ | |||
+ | + Describe a tuft of stiff hair that has grown in a very unexpected place on your main character' | ||
+ | |||
+ | If you publish something instigated by this department, let me know and I'll mention it here! Congratulations this time around to D.W. Green, for his story " | ||
+ | |||
+ | ====AS YOU LIKE IT==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Here's a department where I recommend titles that have a similar appeal to my own work that you may not have heard of before. (Oh, okay, I stole the idea from amazon.com, but why let a profit-based computer code decide what you read? Here you've at least got an egocentric writer doing the job!) | ||
+ | |||
+ | If you liked GRAVE MARKINGS ... \\ | ||
+ | you'll like THE BONE PARADE by Mark Nykanen\\ | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | If you liked 100 JOLTS ... \\ | ||
+ | you'll like SPIDER PIE by Alyssa Sturgill\\ | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | If you liked AUDIOVILE ... \\ | ||
+ | you'll like GONZO SCIENCE by Jim Richardson\\ | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | If you liked LICKER ... \\ | ||
+ | you'll like GLEEFULLY MACABRE TALES by Jeff Strand\\ | ||
+ | < | ||
+ | |||
+ | If you liked PLAY DEAD ... \\ | ||
+ | you'll like THE SCALDING ROOMS by Conrad Williams\\ | ||
+ | < | ||
+ | |||
+ | If you liked EXQUISITE CORPSE ... \\ | ||
+ | you'll like EXPERIMENTS IN TERROR 1 & 2 compiled by Other Cinema\\ | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | If you are curious about any of the Arnzen books that I mention above, just visit the handy-dandy bibliography page at gorelets.com (which include cover art, contents lists, reviews, excerpts, ordering info, and more): http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ====BOO COUPONS==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Here's some exclusive coupons and discounts on horror-related merchandise -- your reward for scrolling down! | ||
+ | |||
+ | LAST LICKS\\ | ||
+ | In an effort to move the last few copies of my chapbook, Licker, out of their warehouse, Novello Publishers is offering Goreletter subscribers a special "buy Licker, get one book free" offer. Order Licker and they' | ||
+ | < | ||
+ | |||
+ | LIBRARYTHING\\ | ||
+ | LibraryThing.com is still graciously offering up a "one year unlimited" | ||
+ | |||
+ | Are You FICTIONWISE? | ||
+ | Fictionwise.com -- the web's best sci-fi and horror e-book seller -- maintains a special 15% off page for Goreletter subscribers, | ||
+ | < | ||
+ | < | ||
+ | |||
+ | ====COLOPHON==== | ||
+ | All material in The Goreletter is © 2007 Michael A. Arnzen, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to forward the entire contents of this newsletter as a whole, without alterations or excisions. Direct links to articles in the archives or the weblog are permitted and encouraged, so long as credit is given to Michael Arnzen or gorelets.com. For permission to reprint individual pieces, please contact arnzen@gorelets.com. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Delivered free since Sept. 2002. Issues to date: 37. Winner of the 2003 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Alternative Forms from the Horror Writers Association: | ||
+ | |||
+ | Subscribe, unsubscribe, | ||
+ | |||
+ | Read The Goreletter online as a draft-in-progress, | ||
+ | |||
+ | Visit Arnzen' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Our surrealist product endorsement: | ||
+ | |||
+ | With apologies to latitude 53,41667, longitude 27,91667. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Help spread the strange. Forward this issue to your weirdest friend! And if you'd like to link me, you can find bizarre buttons for your website here: http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ====PITHY MORBID THOUGHTS==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Look Out, Cannibals! | ||
+ | |||
+ | "When the fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs; then thought I, 'If you eat one another, I don't see why we mayn't eat you.' | ||
+ | -- Benjamin Franklin (died 1790) | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | {{page> |