These are the books currently on my desk. One self-help book, one brand new pop-science book on neurology (check out the author’s Ted Talk on the concept of the brain’s connectome [the interlocking network of neurons formed by the connections that our brain creates as we go through life]. Great, jaw-dropping stuff.), and two novels (one Canadian and one Australian [which is better known for its movie adaptation by Nicolas Roeg]). I’m in the middle or beginning of all of them, so I can’t tell you how they are.  

Also, the cover of the album I’ve been listening to while making this post. It’s I Hold a Wish For You by Aspidstrafly, a small group (duo?) from Singapore that I found on mog.com recently. Their name comes from a George Orwell novel I had never heard of before called Keep the Aspidistra Flying. Ethereal, spacey stuff. I listened to the stream so much on mog that I bought the dang thing.  (Links: mogiTunes, youtube)

Warning: Don’t look at the above image if you don’t want to see a nipple.
The new issue of Asymptote is out! I was on the sidelines for this issue because I was working overtime when it was being put together, but I did work with a writer on this interesting piece that compares Vikram Seth’s 1400-page English novel A Suitable Boy to its Hindi translation, and the possible influence Bollywood had on the translation. (Hint: all the sex and the gays are gone.) 
The real highlight is the special feature on Taiwan which our founder/lead editor Yew Leong Lee spent four months assembling on the ground in that country. The issue’s cover and the illustrations throughout are from Legend Hou Chun-Ming, an artist one on the editorial termed the “Taiwanese Keith Haring.” Perhaps if Keith Haring were from hell he’d make things like what you can see in this slideshow of Chun-Ming’s art based on Chinese religious symbolism. 
In addition to that, there’s plenty of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama… and it even fits in your pocket*! 
*smartphone required

Warning: Don’t look at the above image if you don’t want to see a nipple.

The new issue of Asymptote is out! I was on the sidelines for this issue because I was working overtime when it was being put together, but I did work with a writer on this interesting piece that compares Vikram Seth’s 1400-page English novel A Suitable Boy to its Hindi translation, and the possible influence Bollywood had on the translation. (Hint: all the sex and the gays are gone.) 

The real highlight is the special feature on Taiwan which our founder/lead editor Yew Leong Lee spent four months assembling on the ground in that country. The issue’s cover and the illustrations throughout are from Legend Hou Chun-Ming, an artist one on the editorial termed the “Taiwanese Keith Haring.” Perhaps if Keith Haring were from hell he’d make things like what you can see in this slideshow of Chun-Ming’s art based on Chinese religious symbolism. 

In addition to that, there’s plenty of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama… and it even fits in your pocket*! 

*smartphone required

In 2010 Mark Baumer walked across the entire United States (from Georgia to California) which he documented on his tumblr, The Baumer. This year he’s writing 50 novels. On Sunday he asked Tom Hanks for $50,000 dollars to cover costs for that project. Tom Hanks declined. So now he’s asking the rest of us for $50,000 on Kickstarter. He sent me this exclusive excerpt from his novel I Only Hang Out With International Couples, which is one of the fifty, to share with you. 

The heat in Richard’s bedroom turned everything brown. He put on a beige raincoat and walked to a tanning salon.

Richard did not feel comfortable going inside the tanning salon so he pressed his face on the tanning salon and looked inside. His breath fogged up the window. Richard drew on the glass with his finger. The drawing began to wrinkle and bubble. A woman came out of the tanning salon and told Richard not to breathe on the windows. She had nice fingernails.

A bus stopped near the tanning salon. A man and a blond woman climbed off the bus. The man pulled a piece of gum out of his arm pit. The blond woman was already chewing gum. The two of them chewed each other’s gum for a few minutes until the man said, “I have to pee.” The blond woman said, “You should pee on that man in the beige raincoat.” The man asked Richard if he could pee on him. Richard shrugged and looked away while the man peed on his beige raincoat.

The man who peed on Richard ended up going to the movies with the blond woman. Richard followed them and watched their faces be tender to each other inside the movie theater. After the movie the man and the blonde woman went to an amusement park and played inside a room filled with the thought of children laughing until they made bad smells. Richard ate some cotton candy and watched the man and the blond woman make bad smells inside the thought of children’s laughter. When the man and the blond woman got home they ate hummus and sat on the couch. They watched the evening news, three episodes of an old sitcom, and a television court drama before they went in the bedroom. When they were both naked the man pointed at Richard who was standing outside their bedroom window, breathing on the glass. The man opened the bedroom window. Richard began to crawl inside, but the man peed on him so Richard stopped climbing in the window and went home.

A few weeks later Richard saw the blond woman at the fitness center. He waved at her. She was touching a machine that Richard didn’t know how to use. The blond woman stopped touching the machine Richard didn’t know how to use and walked over to where Richard had been laying on the ground doing his stomach movements. The blond woman said her name was Jenny and that she was married to a patent attorney who liked to pee on other men. Richard apologized for standing outside of her bedroom window while he husband was peeing. Jenny laughed and said, “My husband probably wouldn’t like it if he knew I was talking to you.” Richard tried to think of something funny to say, but couldn’t so he said, “I would like to eat your husband’s vegetables.”

When they got to Jenny’s house she said her husband would be home late and showed Richard a green pepper that her husband probably would have eaten. Richard asked if he could wash it off before eating it. Jenny pointed at the kitchen sink. Richard washed the green pepper and then went in the living room. He took off all his clothes and sat cross-legged in the middle of the carpet while he ate the green pepper. Some of the green pepper seeds fell on the floor. Richard asked Jenny if her husband would be mad when he found green pepper seeds in the living room. She ignored his question and asked why he was so pale. He didn’t say anything and put his clothes back on. Jenny asked Richard if he wanted to see her husband’s collection of mannequins. Richard said he didn’t because he was tired and wanted to go home.

Mark Baumer

Quick Fiction #18 came in the mail after a long wait! It’s the unofficial Iowa City issue with at least three Iowa Citians inside its pages: Me, Dylan Nice, and Rachel Yoder. The story I have in it is called Neighbors and I wrote it after reading Carl Sagan’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors which has a few paragraphs on caterpillar behavior which I decided to adapt to humans. Kind of a nice story. 

Visit the web site to order a copy, or to check out Dylan Nice’s story There’s Bugs or my story from the previous issue. 

“The perfect man is pure spirit. He does not feel the heat of the burning deserts nor the cold of the vast waters. He is not frightened by the lightning which can split open mountains, nor by the storms that can whip upon the seas. Such a person rides the clouds and mounts upon the sun and moon, and wanders across and beyond the four seas. Neither death nor life concern him, nor is he interested in what is good or bad!” —Chuang Tzu

Someone said I should post these. On January 1, 2012, I woke up and read an email that said the shed in back yard of the house I’m living in had blown off its base. By the time I got outside to look, it was halfway up the hill to the front yard. Fifteen minutes later it was in the front yard and the wind was brisk in its work to blow it into the street. I flagged a passerby down and had him call the police. We held the shed against the wind until they showed up, and we pushed it back down the hill and, yeah, tied it to a tree so it wouldn’t blow away again. It didn’t. It’s still there in the yard. What do you do with an upside down shed?