11. Lucy Corin goes:

So when people call books bad for being masturbatory what they are saying I think is that they hate the culture/community/ personality type they associate with where that creative product comes from.  They don’t want to hang out with those people, or those people make them feel bad about themselves or the world in a ‘what has become of us’ sort of way.  Because if you LIKE someone, you probably LIKE watching them masturbate, after all.

2. Turgenev Hunter’s Sketches online. Oh hell yes. Grab me some black bread and vodka and I’m holing up like an elevator.

2. Sci fi Aimee Bender story online, you Star Cheeks.

3. And Stanley Fish goes,

The essence of all this is contained in an aphorism I formulated in 1964 as I watched my colleagues at Berkeley turn from abasing themselves before deans and boards of trustees to abasing themselves before students. Here is the aphorism: Academics like to eat shit, and in a pinch they don’t care whose shit they eat. Of course, had I known enough at the time, I could have saved myself the trouble and simply quoted Freud. For the masochist, Freud explains, “it is the suffering itself that matters; whether the sentence is cast by a loved one or by an indifferent person is of no importance … but the true masochist always holds out his cheek whenever he sees a chance of receiving a blow.” Whatever else they are, academics are resourceful, and when they set their minds to it, there are no limits to the varieties of pain they can inflict on one another and on themselves.

14. Word is AWP registration is sold out. 9300 registrants! First thought: Damn, that’s a lot of colorful skinny eyeglasses. Latte, anyone? OMG aging writer with a ponytail. (Let it go, Sean! Only if you let go your scarf matching your Converse sneakers.) Next thought: Time to put Book Fair pass on eBay.

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