I want to YouTube down the Rivers of America

                My first chapbook ‘I want to YouTube down the Rivers of America’ is out in bookstores now. I put them there. Later on the bookstore owners sent them back to me. Barnes and Noble does not respect alt lit. When alt lit is a great genre they’ll be sorry. Probably Barnes and Noble will be bankrupt long before alt lit gets its due or alt lit hears a proper apology from anybody. 

                Due to my store troubles I am selling each one directly to you the consumer. Let me tell you a bit about it first:

-          Has short stories

-          Has poems

-          Has fun

-          Has 8,999 words

-          Has 43 pages

-          Made of paper, staples, and love (lots of love)

-          Bonus features probably, because why not, bonus features are fun

Payment can be done safely and effectively through a paypal account dedicated solely to this chapbook. Yes this email wants to support the chapbook. The chapbook is going out in the big world via a brown paper envelope. Gmail and paypal are there to support it. Hopefully you can be there too, to hold a piece of Beach Sloth history in your hands. Welcome to the first physical artifact of my online existence made by my very own hands. That used to be my body but I have merged to become one with the internet. 

        Paypal the following address $9:

        pleasepaybeachsloth@gmail.com

        *For simple PDFs, you can send $5 and I’ll email you a PDF copy instead. This is for international locations mostly, as I am unable to send the chapbooks overseas. 

        Send me your address via that email or via Facebook. If you are reading this you’re probably on Facebook and probably my friend. I’ll send the chapbook directly to your home. Have Beach Sloth in your home today, or at least a bound paper representative. That’s the best you are going to get. So get excited. I am. This is the first time I’ve offered a hand-made item. Before I worked with the ‘e-book’ format (still available here on Amazon) with mixed success as it felt too impersonal for my tastes. Hope this is considerably more personal. Thus far I feel it is. I want to interact on a whole other level, the IRL level. Help me do that. Thank you whoever has brought and whoever will buy one. I love you the most of all. 

        Help bring me out of the internet and into IRL. I cannot do this alone. I need your help. Bring my blog into the shining light of a brand new day!

april, 2013 poems by jakob maier

                Absurdity is the hallmark of the online lifestyle. Chat rooms began it. Like everything though this has evolved. People talk to each other directly. Live streams depict a youth on the stay. Blank stares make up much of the online lifestyle. Omegle shows off a different part of the internet, a highly sexualized version. Maybe there are people on Omegle who aren’t horny lunatics but that is pretty doubtful. Conversation partners are the new fuck buddies. Geography means nothing anymore. Long ago it meant something via disease, the Spanish flu and the Black Plague. Thankfully people have evolved beyond the physical into the digital. 

                Urgent care clinics will one day become irrelevant. More and more interaction happens online. The term ‘shut-in’ will one day refer to online deities who rule with a benevolent hand over their internet minions. The horrors of urgent care clinics will be a distant memory. Camping remains one of the few times when isolation can truly happen. However Wi-Fi access is becoming readily available to vast majorities of humanity. Someday there will be live-tweeting sessions of hiking out in the wilderness, in case such a thing hasn’t already happened. At least the guilt of the outdoors might prevent instagram filters on Mother Nature. That’s the hope. 

                Flames exist in the mind. Passion burns in the heart too. When a mind is enflamed that means it is working. Elliot Smith’s music can cool minds making them cold sad things. Roofs elevate people to greater heights, such great heights in fact. Unlike Elliot Smith the roofs tell people to embrace the sky. Misinterpretation exists with so many people. Sure the roofs can limit, keeping the rain out. But more importantly few ever bother climbing to the top, to the roofs of bi-levels, the mountains of the suburban world. Bouncy castles are where the suburbs’ monarchs live: the children. America’s greatest resource is their child that’s why children get inflatable castles in the sky. 

                Tapping on the ceiling lets these children know there is a greater world out their literally knocking on their door. Roofs are the new doors; hence skylights which let the sun shine in from impossible angles. Skateboards are the first piece of transportation these young ones get their hands on. Enough to be cool but not enough to really go anywhere skateboards help children realize that transportation can be a fashion accessory. 

                What else is a fashion accessory though? Twitter is a fashion accessory of the mind. Posing as a social media site twitter helps people show off their minds, the ultimate accessory to any act, good or bad.

iMESSAGE by Ed Halliday and Mira Gonzalez

                Ed Halliday and Mira Gonzalez communicate pretty hard via the iPhone lifestyle. Pretty young things they long to get their ‘mashed potatoes’ on. Due to an extreme inability to actually cook anything they must go to diners in order to get sufficient foodstuffs. Kellogs Diner is a virtual institution of Williamsburg deep in the heart of the hipster mecca paradise. While it is obviously worrisome that these two intrepid souls are unable to mash the innards of potatoes and add butter, it is understandable. Both are the crème de la crème of the Brooklyn blogging scene. Mira runs an enormously successful Tumblr, Twitter, and has a best-selling poetry book out from Sorry House. Ed rules over so many hearts he might as well be the governor of good times. 

                Here the story unfolds ever so slowly. Young Ed lives far away from the mashed potatoes procurement center. Waiting for the bus takes longer than he ever could have anticipated. Though he could have simply walked there or taken the subway he diligently waits for the bus. During this time he begins to hallucinate. Imagining anyone could be Mira he goes mad with hunger. A lack of potatoes currently takes its toll on his sanity. Mira helps Ed’s insanity by playing along, claiming to be dressed in disguises around him. Unfortunately in Ed’s fevered state he believes her creating a rather worrisome scenario. The bus continues to keep him waiting. He begins to panic about whether he could ever eat with Stephen Tully Dierks and Mira Gonzalez. For those unaware, Stephen Tully Dierks runs the Pop Serial game and has received online accolades for this ground-ass breaking twerk. Also people enjoy Stephen’s good cheer and general Stephen-ness. 

                The bus arrives but the bus is a lie. What happens in front in him is enough to drive any young reader to absolute tears. The bus driver leaves the bus. Ed, so close yet so far, breaks down and cries hysterically. Mira tells Ed to steals the bus. For a moment Ed considers it. An ethical dilemma comes up for the otherwise just young Ed. Does he steal a bus in order to enjoy roughly $3 worth of mashed potatoes? Is it worth it for him? Should he get something else on the menu, and steal it, since he’s already busy stealing stuff? Strangely the texts cut off after then leaving the reader. Hopefully Ed chose the right path and set a good example for young Alt Lit tweens across the world.

Low Class Hi-Fi - Love/Death/Things In Between 7.4

                Low Class Hi-Fi oddly lives up to its contradictory name: intimate where it needs to be, grimy where necessary, it embodies the passion of a bedroom artist hard at dreaming. The songs on here tend to veer towards the mellower aspect of rock. Gauzy it owes a lot to the late 80s and its ability to simply transform the simplest emotion into something profound. Vocals on here sound realistic. Sonically it uses a mixture of rock-elements with synthesizer. Drums on here are more of an afterthought. What’s the most important is getting the mood and getting the melody right. And in that pursuit Low Class Hi-Fi is ultimately successful. 

                ‘We Have to escape/Night Driving/Racing for the Dawn’ begins with a Zombie-like stomp. Out of the grubby intro comes a shimmering little melody. Right in the middle things get a little looser. At the very end Low Class Hi-Fi appears to wake up and transforms into a full-on barrage, with the tempo accelerating to some unreasonable degree. This flows nicely into the peppy ‘Hum Sweet Songs’ which speeds along pleasantly enough. On ‘My Brain Is Made Of Stars’ things get a bit spacy with the guitars aiming for the skies. Eventually the entire song appears to lift off into orbit. 

                By ‘Leaving You To Save You’ Low Class Hi-Fi emerge once more into a slow molasses like build to the finish. In general the album appears to delight in the less concrete, more abstracted dreamy aspects of sound. This is a good thing. This is a very good thing.

3 Poems Ghostwritten for a Kid’s High School Poetry Assignment by Libby Rindal

                Libby Rindal becomes the last breath of winter. That means she is early March. It must be tough to be the worst part of a despised season. Everybody loves spring and summer. Pieces of nostalgia are dedicated for those moments. Winter has it too in the beginning. Due to the Holiday season winter is hotly anticipated. Snow becomes a wonderful thing. Unfortunately for Libby though people tire of winter by the very end, with its nonsensical Presidents’ Day sales and mattress discounts. Valentine’s Day can’t save the sad season. Space empties out during the winter months. First ice, then the bleak seemingly endless cold, the winter knows how to clear a tree. Only the evergreens are safe, every other tree retreats into a temporary little death. 

                Witnessing birth is beautiful. After the death of winter the life of spring fills full. The color returns. Flowers bloom. Optimism returns to Mother Nature who dresses in her very best. Jars on the walls contain elements of spring. Butterfly fetishists collect dead butterflies to show off to their freaky friends. Vibrant butterfly colors are admired for their resilient beauty. Body forms to whatever bodies feel like for any animal. Although the metamorphosis from a lowly caterpillar to butterfly is wonderful other animals have similar transformations. Humans start as little burbling babies. Then through the power of time, food, and affection they become adults.  How this happens is rather beautiful. Creatures do it all the time. Lack of intelligence sort of marks the beginning of life. Stupidity is compensated by extreme health. Healing is necessary with dumb little human children. Upon aging though the little human children realize just how lucky they were. It is the power of aging. 

                Sun burns bright over the course of a life. Empty beds love the sun. For too long beds remain empty devoid of dream travelers. Beds need a friend. The sun is happy to oblige. Vessels travel across beds all the time. Powers of sleep compel people to do exactly that. Happy to travel together the artificial temperature-controlled air guides minds to better climates. In the dreams the salty air tastes wonderful like a virtual freedom from reality. From the mind to the lungs the breathing slows down a little bit in dreams. Dreams are simply that compelling. Breath is taken away with the power of dreams, especially when these dreams are realized in reality whether for good or bad. Thankfully in dreams the viewer is the sky encompassing everything, moving everything, controlling everything without having to lift a finger.

"Alt Lit" - Episode One - presented by NerveTV by Sebastian Sommer

                Sebastian Sommer asks the question that everyone has been asking about Alt Lit lately: “Is there enough sex in Alt Lit?” The answer is an unsurprising no. However there is a high Gini Coefficient expressing severe fuck inequality within Alt Lit. Obviously this cannot continue. Being young means getting some. It is troubling that the vast majority of ‘fuck’ being provided within the Alt Lit community goes to a select few. While there are plenty of ‘fuckers’ within Alt Lit there are few ‘fuckees’. Good thing Sebastian tries to cover this phenomenon with the tact and grace that bestow all of his particular projects, from his rendition of some of Tao Lin’s work to his more recent full lengths. 

                The episode begins in an unfamiliar place called a ‘shower’. Water comes out bathing the two young lovers in a wet sensual glow. For some reason the guy is wearing some strange YUPPIE Shaman amulet. Although the amulet is not specifically discussed it is well-known that the amulet provides increased sexual vigor. Many cannot handle its ability to increase fuckability to an unbelievable degree. Perhaps this explains the lack of steam from the water: that the two must take a cold shower to control their throbbing sexual urges. 

                A writer appears after this encounter. He stares vacantly. The life story of this writer is tragic. Right at the young age of 13 he watched someone die. Next to him the reporter questions his desire to write for spiders. Millions of spiders are borne every day. Yet only a few select spiders are able to properly read. Charlotte of ‘Charlotte’s Web’ fame is perhaps the most famous literary spider. Other spiders generally lack that same level of sophistication. Stephen King’s ‘It’ is another well-read spider, though Stephen King’s spider generally preferred Marquis De Sade over Alt Lit. 

                Out of somewhere a party appears. The writer reads quite passionately to the gathered few. Relationships revolve around the writer. The writer is alone. This makes the writer a good one. Lonely writers are typically preferred to those happy cheery sorts. Alt Lit readings typically are nothing like this gathering though. For these people are not quite insane enough. Rather they seem surprisingly calm. Usually in any Alt Lit reading there’s a lot of screaming, stabbing of bean cans, and far more depravity. Here though there is a slight hint of depravity it is nowhere near the ‘rolling around in filth’ quality that makes a party an Alt Lit party. 

                Hopefully Sebastian will continue to cover this elusive, surprising and downright shocking sub-culture known as the cult of the Alt Lit.