Semi-Realtime Notes: Oh No Everything Is Wet Now

This is a new e-book collaboration by ANA C and RICHARD CHIEM

I'm reading this and feeling it out. Right now. That's how this will work. Okay?

Follow the path with me. Here.

Launch

I go to Magic Helicopter Press and read the little blurby, though not thoroughly and then click.

Gah: my first thought. I sort of curse Chrome because it loaded the page wrong.

I think something went wrong.

Something went wrong. A dull metallic background. Seems like pre-2k Angelfire.com html.

Arrival 

A cat is wearing red sunglasses. The left temple extends in a solid line, breaking eastward in a beam towards an unknown destination. It forms a path. Subconsciously I remember on the previous page, something about following and so I follow this red line to the next destination, curious at my discovery.

Scene 1

A google image search for the term "oh no everything is wet now". Screen-cap art is beautiful to me, the collection of what is seen through the eyes of the browser's browser... here a feminine Hitler, Ana herself, some prominent font-bits from Richard's blog. This is the e-book existing externally within itself. A short meditation on what it "is" to exist at all on the internet.

Scene 2

Red line continues to break right. We're still in the intro-credits. Another cap, an RTF doc cap, "A NOVELLA IN SMALL PARTS", Richard's lips stretch still and pink and pixelated in a canvas over the red path which now turns south. I click the play button (which seems to pierce Chiem's lower lip). My shitty internet connection sends a white spiral into motion. Ana and Richard start chanting the title of the e book, shaky at first but building in confidence and improvisation. They walk through a city and laugh and chant and Richard suggests a swimming pool they can visit.

Note: Going to a pool.

Scene 3

Following the path south now. Another video, another pixel-Chiem. He's standing at the apex of an escalator. Where is the fucking pool? What's in his hand. I click the button. More load time. Ana asks "up or down". Slightly to the left of the video I see the first hard "text" of the e book and as I read it, Ana also reads it as they explore the motion of an escalator in forward and reverse motions. Up and down. The piece analyzes distance, someone attractive in the distance at some restaurant the distraction makes the food seem stale.

Scene 4

The path has gone from red to silver. It breaks left now and I slide my fingers along the touchpad and go, flow. More video still. More RTF screencap. More prose on food. Eggs now. Richard reads, he holds a double umbrella. Someone thinks of the narrator, and the narrator thinks of someone. Ana cuts in and drops ice. Everyone drops ice and it's a terrible feeling because it's a crash and a spill all at once. Narrator (Ana) is sorry she ruins everything. Everything is in ruin and I feel sad and imagine ice melting.

I want to better understand this image so I take opportunity from my desire to piss. I get up and piss and go to the freezer and take out an ice cube and drop it onto the floor and leave it there. Now the metaphor exists. There is no moisture yet, the ice is still in form.

Scene 5

The path is red again and southward and I follow her to a new space. A new video and a pee story. I'm getting the drift of this now. I just peed. Now there is a pee story. Peeing, looking out windows. Seems like a good moment of any day. Another mantra: Now is Now. There is a simplicity here in each image and a message that sort of curls out at you like carving rind from apple. What is the use in thinking? It seems dull and deadly. You think only in the past or future only of what you've done or what you'll do or what they've done or what they'll do. Now is now and really the only time you have to know yourself.

The ice cube is struggling to hold itself together. I can see its perspiration now. I bet if I lift it up it will reveal a puddle. I'm not going to touch it.

Scene 6

A brief intermission. I follow the line, silver again. Another google image cap. "Now is Now". I note a story within the cap, and a video. This is the most descriptive piece yet. Richard is watching Tao's BEBE ZEVA DVD. They've made it to the pool. Richard exclaims "FUCK THE MOON". There is a tension arising, a mention of the suffering. There is a connection between two people. There is a connection between people who know each other's cell phone numbers. There is a new kind of way to hurt the one you love by ignoring their light on the little ear box.

There it is, I see the ice. I see the water. The floor is hard wood. I'm in my mother's house. She's going to be upset. I feel happy.

Scene 7 

Breaking right again on silver to the story of an orange and tits. Women compare their breasts to food. My breasts are pears. Bebe's breasts are plums. Ana writes breasts as oranges. Nutrition. Mexican nipples. Spicy candy. Ola.

The ice is forming into water. I fight an urge to wipe it up. The video is musical, repetitive. "Theycontrolmetheycontrolmetheycontrolme". Seems urgency is increasing.

Scene 8

Mary had a little lamb but I have a computer. Richard walks through a produce section. The female character watches a wall. She's slow and drunk and cracking. The wood is whispering her name. Seems to be a despair here. I don't know. I feel odd.

I don't want to look at my ice cube.

Scene 9

Ana on a zebra rug. What is a suicide girl? I've googled it. Now I know. Ana mentions camel toe. Seems like this is the first time I've heard camel toe in fiction. Is that possible? Is camel toe cliche? No. Not yet.

The ice is gone. Maybe.

Scene 10

The line is black now. I've made it this far. The place is at once uncomfortable and familiar and sad. Magic. The characters are together again. What are these things, this places in the relationship? Seems like they are the things we don't feel compelled to speak about, they seem to feely or too abstract to describe. Seems like there is a finger on a slug in this piece, pressing slow but hard and pushing out a colored goo. I've been here before, in cupcake land.

Melt.

Scene 11

A flurry or images now and a new aggression. HaHa You fuck. Pop cultural name dropping galore. Everyone wears red lipstick and only Gwen Stefani isn't a clown. I keep looking at the pink cupcake on the screen. Ana laughs at "coexistence". What's so funny? Feels like I know. Feels like I have a lot of shame right now. I'm thinking of my own life. My mother is stomping around upstairs, working and cleaning. I'm down here blogging. Messing up the hardwood. Haha.

The floor is wet.

Scene 12

 Richard is eating cupcake. The next piece has another staircase. Is this the third or fourth reference to one? The narrator escapes into a room, seems to be in a place he'd like to be but can't be there. I like the line about sexual tension.

I want a cupcake. I need some paper towel. The floor is soaked. The cube has made a splash. I can't look away now. It's been a few minutes, me just watching the shape form and, not form.

Scene 13

A silver line shoots north, it's a long scroll all the way up. Here we go. This is it. I'm at the end. The path ends here. Richard is at the pool, working at the umbrella. Two people retreat into a room to FUCK. The story fades away as the narrator imagines fucking fruit. Ana and Richard chant in a thumbnail sized thumbnail video "Oh No Everything is Wet Now"

I'm getting up. I'm going to look for mistakes in this blog and clean the floor. I'm going to go upstairs and face my family. Our house rests on the edge of a small lake. There are loons fucking musically not far off. I can hear them, but I can't see them. It is one misty morning.

*RICHARD CHIEM*

the fucking MAN 

@

NOÖ Weekly

STORIES BY PEOPLE THAT MATTER 

WHEN IT COMES TO STORIES

luna miguel

*

steve roggenbuck

*

me (though i don't matter)

*

timothy willis sanders

*

ana c. 

*

THE FUCKING MAN

BEACH SLOTH a semi-comprehensive guide to BEACH SLOTH

I will attempt to do a few things in this blog post.

1. Illuminate the figure and spirit of Beach Sloth.
2. Outline successful pieces crafted by Beach Sloth.
3. Signify the cultural relevance of Beach Sloth.
4. Paste some nice things Beach Sloth has said of Frank Hinton.
5. Chant

WHO IS ?

"Beach Sloth" has crafted an extensive blog-portrait of me at his blog "Beach Sloth"

Beach Sloth has become known to me via DADAGATE... see THIN EYEBROWED KAT DIXON and SLOTH'S RESPONSE.

Beach Sloth seems highly intelligent, playful and relevant. Beach Sloth seems to have a powerful sensory taste in music. I like "Beach Sloth". It feels like Beach Sloth is behind "Let People Poems"

Beach Sloth blogs "extensively" and stands to break his blogging record of 2010 this year. 178 posts since January is very impressive to me/makes me horny.

WHAT DOES ?

Here are 3 posts I thoroughly enjoyed on Beach Sloth's Blogspot:

1. Re Hipster Runoff

Illuminations on Gawker's premature funeral for HRO. Profession of love for my existential jesus CARLES.

2. Reactions to Facebook Relationship Status Update

Breakdown of potency surrounding the socially networked human's relationship status. Pixelated, almost red half-broken heart emoticon.

3. My emotionless, vaguely unsuccessful future

BS/SG sees his future roll out before him by glancing through the lens of Mike Judge's cultworthy? film EXTRACT.


4. Here is a bonus "amazing" post by Beach Sloth where he profiles Richard Chiem.

BONUS: CHIEM



MY VIEW ?

Beach Sloth seems a worthy person to pay attention to and follow. He has peaked my interest to higher levels than most blogs. His writing has becoming highly attentive to "internet poetry" with a strong focus on Steve Roggenbuck, Poncho Peligroso and the tribe of HTMLminimalist boykittens meowing about the litsphere.

Here are some kind things Beach Sloth said of "Frank Hinton"


1. By using an obvious pseudonym, it makes things more interesting. Her online persona is extremely shadowy, mysterious. We don’t really know much about her besides her writing. Keeping mysterious yet accessible makes the work more interesting, as I find it can be easier to write something when I know I’m anonymous. The pain of writing something with your actual name attached probably contributes to a great deal of dishonesty within literature, as if the writer is trying to impress you in some small way. Frank Hinton’s writing is direct painfully so at times.


2. Her piece for Lamination Colony, called “How to be Me, an Instructional Video narrated by Frank Hinton” shows a certain playfulness. In here you learn how to hate people on a bus, chew off your fingernail in public (which is an actual skill) and how to avoid negative thinking upon waking up. Since she does have this on the internet, she explains how to post online in order to flame or remain anonymous (both good choices). Along with these apparent instructions is the final sentence which states “You were once a child and you had it all”. That’s probably one of my favorite lines of hers. Children get lucky with the amount of happiness they get. Then come teenage years they grow overly angst-ridden and depressed. Finally, in their twenties they begin trying to improve themselves through questionable practices of self-help, self-improvement and other endeavors of dubious merit.

3. Part of my joy reading these are how well she describes various feelings about love. Love is a difficult thing to write about without falling into the extremes of anger, sadness, despair, happiness, coy, and so on. Frank Hinton avoids these. She writes things with an honesty that’s hard to find. Being honest could be funny or tragic, it depends on the circumstances and often her work can be both.  Her chapbook will explore these themes even further. 


CHANT NOW ?

Now I will create a chant which serves to enforce the fact that Beach Sloth is a vital entity. Please read this next section aloud and know that I have done so myself. I did not copy and past this. Each character was typed out by my own shadowy fingers. Dim the lights.

BEACH SLOTH
BEACH SLOTH
BEACH SLOTH
BEACH SLOTH
BEACH SLOTH
BEACH SLOTH
BEACH SLOTH
BEACH SLOTH
BEACH SLOTH
BEACH SLOTH
BEACH SLOTH
BEACH SLOTH
BEACH SLOTH
BEACH SLOTH
BEACH SLOTH
BEACH SLOTH
BEACH SLOTH
BEACH SLOTH.

2o11.

Thoughts about Richard Chiem's WHAT IF, WENDY

Lover's Spit, Broken Social Scene [Bee Hives] by NeathenAlero



What if, Wendy is a short story by Richard Chiem. It was published by the minimal/html site Pangur Ban Party in late 2010. Maybe early 2011. The story takes place in a hotel room with the song Lover's Spit by Broken Social Scene continually playing around two characters: an unknown female and Jesse. The female is a prostitute and Jesse is the buyer.

What if, Wendy

The thing is.

I don’t know how to be good anymore, he says.

The thing is.

I can’t find anyone, he says.

It seems as if Richard envisions and understands these sort of metaphysical holes that everyone has in them, odd sub-conscious vacancies that only certain souls can fit exactly into. Throughout the piece the female character and Jesse both contemplate how to enter one another. The female is looking for the perfect match, someone who knows just what to do. Jesse has lost something, he lives on the memory of a lost girl who initiated him into the world of spiritual-sexual connection. Both Jesse and the girl are cognizant but mindless creatures wandering in a whiskey-induced haze toward some promised land that is nowhere in sight.

How would he be able to read her thoughts like that? How would he know exactly what to do? What makes her happy.

It seems that the result of the yearning in this story is dispassionate action. What happens to a body on he path in search of the perfect mate? People mutate themselves and their minds just in order to feel something. The story is about the crafting of an unrealistic wish. A wish that is never granted, but seemingly always requested. It repeats just as the song Lover's Spit does in the story.

The central action centers around Jesse's first love, a girl who did everything to him, in a loving way. Her name is Wendy. She was torn away from him when he was young. Jesse seems bent on recreating Wendy's willingness and experimentation. A part of that, Jesse confesses, was when Wendy let him have anal sex with her in the reclined seat of a car. The female prostitute takes this fact well.

Yes she says, sipping the drink he hands to her, unfazed by his question. I love anal. It feels like, like a more, powerful lucid dream because of the added and soft pain. She pauses and says, masochism is still pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, and takes another large sip from her glass and almost hiccups smiling. I like admitting it too.

Like most of Richard's writing, images are stretched, poured  like liquid,  heated to a vapor all at once. His imagery is like a perfume. You feel the notes between the gestures, though sometimes the sentiments are hard to interpret, like most good feelings.

They both miss a humming growl, they realize, from the cooling vents that stopped blowing sound from the floor and ceiling. She thinks the DJ of the late, late night radio show must be asleep or away, because the same album keeps playing and shuffling over and over again from the alarm clock and she looks at the time. Nearly three in the morning, and she wants something else to happen: serendipity or bestiality. So come on, she says, taking Jesse’s palms and leading him from the bed to the middle of the room, where the music is loudest. A slow dance is impromptu and he does, tremble. Look at him she thinks, he’s wilting like blown feathers.