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!

Karelle – Richter 7.1

                Karelle is mad. ‘Richter’ is a baffling journey down aural bipolarity. Nothing here is stable. Everything breaks itself apart for fun. Calm moments on here find themselves infused with a palpable uneasy tension. At any possible moment the pieces could collapses. For fun sometimes Karelle lets that happen. Textures here are one of the high points. Letting the sounds roam free means there are no restrictions at all. Occasional blasts of noise are welcomed into the fore. 

                ‘Cave’ starts off on a rather quiet note. The sound is quite beautiful. Hence it is a bit of a shock how Karelle deliberately muddies the waters with a guitar played through numerous filters from miles away. Simultaneously aggressive yet far away it manages to explore whatever it feels like with total abandon. Eventually the beginning elements return back in to try and impose some semblance of order. Honestly this is the most straightforward song on the entire album. After this comes Gregorian chant. Yes it feels extremely classical in origin with perhaps a nod to metal. For the finale though is the longest and strangest track ‘Confidence Benjamin’. Apparently confidence for Benjamin is a distorted disorientated affair. No melody no rhythm it is pure free form. Random shouts only confirm how isolated this track truly is. 

By mixing together very separate elements (pieces of 80s long gone, Gregorian chant, and deeply weird aural experiments) Karelle creates an environment of complete unease. With little chance of escape and even less concern for melody, Karelle works on a visceral level.

delirium syrup by reilly shellito

                Front flips belong in the front yard. Back flips belong in the backyard. Those are the rules. Stargazing from roofs may be a good idea. Normally though the light pollution ruins the beautiful weakness of celestial light. Most celestial lights are dead by the time they reach the Earth. Starlight functions as an epitaph for a big ball of gas too far away to have friends. Late at night people look up to the stars. Why remains a total mystery. The stars cannot help with anything. Stars cannot stop their own impending mortality. Objects taken for granted on Earth would excite the stars: roller skates, flips, these are things the stars will never know. All the stars get to see are lonely insomniacs anyway. 

                New Jersey is home for many of these morbid insomniacs. A boy in New Jersey believes he is steaming fecal matter. That’s poor self-esteem. Hanging out in graveyards most likely reinforces this imagery. Surrounded by death the boy knows little about life. Perhaps it is time that the boy leaves the graveyard. Headstones are eloquent. They basically have to be. Poorly phrased headstones are the leading cause of ghosts. If the boy smokes cigarettes in the graveyard he ought to be extra careful. Ghosts love merging with cigarette smoke and messing with minds. 

                What ghosts never worry about is sleep. They are up partying all the time. Every time someone wakes up it hurts. Clocks reinforce this perception of ‘needing to be somewhere’. Honestly there are plenty of times where nobody needs to be anywhere. Staying in a bedroom all day is an option. Few take it due to the bizarre need to be productive. Rather than sleep in on a weekday they take showers. They clothe themselves. After looking vaguely alive they go outside to do something that somebody else could probably do equally well. 

                Observation though is the main reason for waking up. Without interacting with others in reality there’s precious little to dream about. Part of the joy of dreams is to reinterpret a world in a way that feels more fitting. Dreams can help to make the world appear to be an easier, more welcoming place. Beautiful people in the world help to create better dreams. Smiles too warm the very heart so it is of the appropriate temperature. Love is a microwave for the heart. 

                The most important part of the heart is oxygen-rich blood. That stuff is amazing. Trees make it possible. Whoever is afraid of trees may not truly appreciate all the wonderful things trees do. Carbon dioxide gets consumed by the trees which is perfect because no person loves that stuff anyway. Right on the top of the trees are treefingers better known as branches that caress the sky above, tickling it with every breeze. The Earth and the sky get along better than anyone could ever possibly know.

3. am 154 Peterson Rd by Theo Thimo

                Loneliness can cause people to disappear. The process takes some time. At first there is hope that the loneliness can be overcome. Geography makes it easier or harder. Separate houses do a good job splitting people apart. With each address is a group that remains totally bored of each other. Boys hiding in desolate homes are rather ridiculous. Rain and cigarette butts define lonely boys. Surrounded by smoke they live inside new atmospheres with their heads literally in the clouds. They have no reason to go out. No friends are out there waiting for them. Such a vicious cycle keeps the boys trapped in the homes forever.

                Boarded up homes are lonelier. Structure without purpose they sit vacant. Homeless individuals are generally close to those vacant homes as a sense of irony. Children are advised not to speak to the homeless. Why this is the case is confusing. Parents falsely believe that perhaps the sadness of poverty might rub off on their children. So a sense of superiority comes into play. That plays out with purchased goods, coke, on the fattest of faces. Soda is a luxury. Nobody needs carbonated sugar water as a desperately needed good. Rather it is a nice thing to have every now and then. 

                Gutters keep on reappearing. Bela Lugosi grew up in the gutters of the world. That’s why he sucks. People are afraid of Bela Lugosi because he just sucks that hard. It was not always that way. When Bela was young he discovered just how hard things were in his goal in life. Street lights kept him warm. Eventually with an unsupportive family he ran away into the night, where the darkness could welcome him. Light offered him nothing. He needed the dark. 

                Empty homes hide in the bushes. That’s because they are empty. Children are so sad when they see these messed up empty homes. Somebody could be playing inside of them. Unfortunately nobody is. Middle School begins the process when the care and compassion become a literal danger. For a period in time it becomes cool not to care. Apathy becomes cool in High School. Negative worldviews like that are dangers. They make people feel stuck in life. Renewed interest in life acts like drain-o unsticking the clogged lives. 

                Those who fail to unclog lives become sad cynics, clowns. See-saws bring up images of happier childhoods. Little squeaks come out of the rusted near busted devices. Playgrounds serve scarier purposes later on in life. Grams equal losses of time, mental capacity, and ability in those late night playgrounds. Children are never out during those times. Sad words are exchanged at those late night playgrounds.  Disappearing into the night the words become sadder. They can barely stay together. Broken fixtures replace the sadness that no longer needs to be said. Unspoken it is completely understood.

Thank You for Your Sperm by Marcus Speh

                Marcus Speh explores the tender side of absurdity with ‘Thank You for Your Sperm’. Though this is flash fiction it lingers in the mind for much longer. Entire histories are suggested in these small pieces. Not a word is wasted either. From the title to the last line Marcus Speh uses language economically. Words playfully jump across the page opening entirely new histories within histories. Geography is a key part of these stories as geography too can suggest a mood with a simple word or two. Berlin specifically gets rather affectionate treatment. How all of this comes together is quite impressive.

                Characters within these stories are fully fleshed out. ‘Pleasant Pieces’ neatly organize a picture of a singular, titular character. Though they reference many familiar names (Max Ernst, Hansel and Gretel) they tend to focus on the writer’s own personal experiences, thoughts or ideas. How the mind wanders over these topics is brilliant. Little elements of childhood, growing up, ailments, memories, former friends and lovers, all find themselves in here. After a while the stories resemble a reality as filtered through a series of mirrors, constantly reflecting on both life and life’s inevitable interaction with a culture so dominant it becomes part of one’s upbringing.  

                ‘One Thousand Shipwrecked Penguins’ adds additional layers of absurdity onto the overall structure. Here the pieces become more playful. Marcus Speh’s soul shines through the pieces about summer camp, swingers and snipers. Things become near-autobiographical in ‘The Serious Writer’ segment. For this particular series Marcus Speh gets quite personal. Later on this section is referenced as a particularly naked portrayal of himself as a writer. Since he is a German writer who writes in English it is interesting to see his perspective on those classically American experiences, both of writers and of America’s loudest embodiment, the great state of Texas. Tiny pieces of his life filter through in dying hamsters and blogs. 

                Blogs come up a number of times in the book through Marcus Speh’s own experience with his blog and another blog mentioned in the prologue. Technology comes into view with the IPAD which plays out as a comedy of misunderstandings. Writing changes before the serious writer, Marcus Speh’s stand-in. After surprising revelations in ‘The Serious Writer’ section he moves onto lovely, dreamlike imagery of ‘On Christmas Day’. Moving around the world he captures slivers of humanity’s experience. 

                At the end of ‘Unpleasant Pieces’ everything comes together. The absurdity is worked into a weird place. Everything moves. Nothing is stationary. Pieces of the Greek gods show themselves in the ephemeral ‘Thank You for Your Sperm’. By the very end of the book an interview helps to clarify elements of the book, neatly summarizing everything. Marcus Speh writes in a way that is refreshing unique, absurd, sad, and quite touching. ‘Thank You for Your Sperm’ is absurdity done gently from a point of view that’s revealing and surprisingly personal.

Mytrip - Scattered I 7.3

                Mytrip’s ‘Scattered’ references the pioneers of electronic sound. Going through the album is an exploration. The sound has an extremely tactile feel to it. Elements reference academic artists like Vladimir Ussachevsky’s ‘Wireless Fantasy’. All over ‘Scattered I’ there is the same sense of a living breathing organic creature at the heart of all this nebulous sound. What’s particularly likable is how natural it sounds. Lacking any sort of typical ‘digital’ sheen the feeling is quite raw throughout the entire album.

                For the opener ‘September Nothing’ the environment gets particularly dense. The beginning few moments reveal a nasty scratching sound as the sound hones in on its ultimate destination. Less about rhythm the sound is a cartographer of a giant unknowable space. Eventually the sound takes it over to rule over the microscopic lush landscape. ‘I am Abandoned’ takes a darker approach flirting with potentially ear-splitting noise. Yet despite the flirtation it pulls back from the abyss again and again, teasing the listener. On ‘I am Cancer’ things take a more subtle approach creating a perfectly formed drone. The finale ‘Abstinence Insects’ is creepier than it sounds. Manipulating the sounds of insects gives the track a horrible, nightmarish cold-sweat experience. 'Abstinence Insects' is terrifying in its aural awfulness. It is a great track. It is by far the highlight of the album.

‘Scattered I’ uses aspects of a giant pulsing create to get its point across. This results in a living breathing creature made entirely out of sound.