Hmmm.... Kristen.

Seriously, more Mind Pulp going here just by looking at this poster.

Calliope Nerve books at Amazon.com. Looks like we're almost there.

Need more brain food now.

Very cool I-Pad type slide show. Images as words.

Have you played with an I-Pad yet?

I'm already hooked and I don't even own one.

I know I've ran this before but it couldn't be more fitting than now.

Lulu Creator Sales Report 2010-05-21

Content ID: 8686233 Content Title: six years of relative happiness (black and white) Units Sold: 1

I'm trying to read with my kids as many versions of Alice In Wonderland as possible. Most of them have stunk so far but it's still been fun.

"...The abstract expressionist idea that the work is a sort of record of its own coming-into-existence ...When I was fresh out of college, abstract expressionism was the most exciting thing in the arts poetry seemed quite conventional in comparison. I guess it still is, in a way. One can accept a Picasso woman with two noses, but an equivalent attempt in poetry baffles the audience." --John Ashberry

Lulu Creator Sales Report 2010-05-20

Content ID: 8686132 Content Title: six years of relative happiness (color) Units Sold: 1

I still can't get over this. I'm stoked we're at Amazon and eventually all the books will be there. Count on it.

My brain won't shut off. At all.

Slogan to introduce the paperback versions of hawrs and [+!]:

"Calliope Nerve: We may not make you rich but we won't make you famous!"

Music lighting up my mind:

Filter: The Best Things.

Lulu Creator Sales Report 2010-05-17

Content ID: 8790789 Content Title: Set Apart Before the World Was Made Units Sold: 10

I was at the comic store a couple of weeks ago and found a vintage Samurai Skeletor for eighteen dollars. Gut instinct said buy it, should be able to get at least 35.00 for it. Didn't buy it. See above picture. When it comes to business intuition, I should know by now, go with the gut.

"Every one of you could be the same.
Every one of you could play the game.
Gotta green light, gotta green light yeah
But ya goin' nowhere.

You know the best things in life aren't for me.
You know the best things in life aren't for free" --Filter

We'll get out more promotional material soon, but quickly I wanted to do a run down of all the new cool reads you can buy at Calliope Nerve with all that lawn mowing money, you just earned. Be the first on your block to own them! All the other kids are doing it...

Imparadised by Peter Magliocco
"After reading this fine and fearsome work, I must scream, Peter Magliocco: Give me my soul back!" --Nobius Black (Author One Nite Pig)

John Swain's Set Apart Before the World Was Made
"John Swain is the definition of eloquence. Every word he writes, every phrase he creates, in your heart of hearts, you'll feel it." --Nobius Black (author One Nite Pig)

Michael McAloran's The Gathered Bones
"Michael McAloran sets inner demons to words. He is an artist of sense, a tamer of Muse." --Nobius Black (Author One Nite Pig)

six years of relative happiness
"Steve Calamars channels artistic greats like Billie Holliday and Chuck Palahniuk. And Steve Calamars channels Billie Holliday vs. Chuck Palahniuk, four figure leg locking in the squared circle no holds barred in an Elmination Chamber Match. I laughed, I cried, I ran for Prozak." --Nobius Black (author One Nite Pig)

Free shipping from Lulu on most books shipped in the states.

Look for more upcoming releases from RC Miller, David E. Patton, Shawn Misener, Michael McAloran, Felino Soriano, and the re-release of Calliope Nerve XV: Pleasured Hands. The Redux will feature the issue in it's entirety, original material, and a preview of every Calliope Nerve book to date and it'll sport a new cover from zine phenom Wayne Hogan. And that's not all.. because we never sleep. That's why Kristen finds us so attractive.

And she should too. Because we're good looking. With good hair. And damn it, people like us...

Warren Ellis: Making A Story Out of a Brilliant Idea.

From Private Library:

"As a "next generation" book collector, I'd also like to put in a few requests to the older generation, all of which could probably be summed up by the singular request that they quit treating the art of collecting as dead or dying!

Buying books online is only useful in so far as the collector knows what she is looking for, and the novice collector is less likely to know this than the more experienced. We need to see books and collections, and have access to librarians, other collectors and dealers. We need to be able to browse and ask questions. I often feel that dealers are responding to a difficult market by focusing exclusively on their known market, existing and deep-pocketed customers, with an eye on eventual (and imminent) retirement rather than the future of their businesses and the art. It's easier, in other words, to make yourself available primarily to people who know you and what they are looking for, with no worry about the accessibility or visibility of your shop because, really, in another 5-10 years you're just going to retire anyway. Online or "by appointment only" stores do little for a new collector.

Some more forward-thinking shops might want to begin by taking on apprentices. What better way to learn about the trade and art than to work in it? And I'd like to start building relationships with dealers who might still be around in twenty years."

***********

Booksellers, are you listening...?

Bruce Ferrini, Akron rare book dealer, dies at 60.

A fascinating and in the end, tragic tale of Akron's great bookseller and Curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

"It would be a pretty piece of irony if future scholars find books published decades ago, in which the scholarly apparatus was an integral part of the book, more useful than today's hybrids...." --L.D. Mitchell

I find Warren Buffet and his company fascinating. Though I do often wonder, if he realizes what happens to most good people when a company like Berkshire Hathaway takes investment or ownership.

Last week, Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B) reported first quarter earnings that showed a marked improvement from the prior year’s results. Generally speaking, as Berkshire has evolved from a leveraged investment vehicle to a conglomerate, the company’s results have become more tied to the overall fate of the US economy.

One of two things will happen child:
I'll hate myself in the morning
Or total addiction.

No middle.

No way.

"The sickness is myself." --Switchfoot

In the City Itself, I see a movement (not a cult) of people that are going to commit virtual suicide at the same time... after they've done everything else virtual sex, viral drugs, smoking binary.

Into the idea folder.

The numbers have been good. Need to help the authors keep moving books.

Lulu Creator Sales Report 2010-05-14

Content ID: 8686233 Content Title: six years of relative happiness (black and white) Units Sold: 3
Content ID: 8790789 Content Title: Set Apart Before the World Was Made Units Sold: 2

Lulu Creator Sales Report 2010-05-12

Content ID: 8790789 Content Title: Set Apart Before the World Was Made Units Sold: 50

And to prove myself wrong, Christian music can be extremely relevant while remaining fun. Found this today:



"I made a mess of me. I wanna get back the rest of me. I made a mess of me I wanna spend the rest of my life alive." --Switchfoot

Lulu Creator Sales Report 2010-05-11

Content ID: 8686233 Content Title: six years of relative happiness (black and white) Units Sold: 3

Lulu Creator Sales Report 2010-05-10

Content ID: 8779481 Content Title: Imparadised Units Sold: 25

Need to remind myself of these sales. Though we're not making money, we have moved units which is the first important step.

Trying to find the entire thing, but in the meanwhile I really like the add for Natalie Merchant's new album. Great art, great title, she looks great, and the books of the bookshelf... nice.

All right, we're starting to get somewhere.

Content ID: 8313930 Content Title: The Rapacious Night Units Sold: 1
Content ID: 8710213 Content Title: The Gathered Bones Units Sold: 10
Content ID: 8686233 Content Title: six years of relative happiness (black and white) Units Sold: 9

I'll have to change the villian's name in current story. Evidently, since I've only read bits and pieces, there is a Fables character called The Advisary. More research needed.

Will be balancing the humor and the seriousness of the story but looking forward to our characters meeting Art and his now limp sword he pulled from a stone.

The book was printed in a letterpress edition of 140 copies on Arches mouldmade paper and quarter-bound in African goat skin by Bird & Bull Press. Books can be purchased for $425 by contacting birdandbull@yahoo.com.

I'm not sure that the Dream, or the Story, has any moral, you know but if it has, it is what the Duchess said on another occasion:

"Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise."

--Nora Archibald Smith on Alice In Wonderland

"You're a disgrace to Minions everywhere." --The Zula Patrol

"Maybe it's not God doing the sending." --X-files: I Want To Believe

Female character in The City, Itself: Alice. Why didn't I think of it before?

Her origin will show a quick flashback in the beginning of the comic to when she was a child with this:

Cut to a figure of a shadow (he's the Emissary), a devil's whisper in her ear: "Alice, do you know who I am?"

Next frame: "I'm God."
_________________________________
The Emissary will cause a war between "our heroes" Gabriel, Alice, and Aaron Midas (and others yet to be fleshed out) and the Clockwork Angels
_________________________________
The absolute beginning of the book, may need work:

Panel 1: "When the Angels came from the sky."

Panel 2: "Fell from Heaven..."

Panel 3: "Or so we thought..."

Panel 4: "With them came war."

Panel 5: "Their victory brought peace."

Panel 6: "But the City changed."

Panel 7: "It had breath. Laughed, cried, mourned for it's shape."

Panel 8: "The City changed."

Panel 9: "It lost identity..."

Panel 10: "The City was Schizophrenic."

Panel 11: "And Angels froze."
_____________________________________________________
More story ideas: The Emissary likes darts. He moves them with his mind. And he has a huge fleet of space ships hidden behind the dark side of the moon ala 'V.'

I still miss Jane Baldur's ass.

Would like to have one character in the story with real faith.
____________________________________________________

Need to flesh out the adventures our characters will have including a trip to The Elvis Throne and a Star Trek type convention full of zombie hookers and a William Shatner knock off. Jesus shaped poo for sale at auction. A healing stripper pole.

X-files meets Fables here we come:

Gillian Anderson looks far better with long hair:



"I want to believe."
______________________________________________________

This entire website appears to be ran on Amazon Store tech. Has me thinking more, if that's possible.

More Notebook From Warren Ellis.

"...but those unfortunate few have their rights and must be told of all the adorably funny things that happened to Alice, and of all the adorably funny Alices that happened to the things." --Nora Archibald Smith on Alice In Wonderland

Damn, solid ending. When Warren Ellis is fracking brilliant, he's God D*mn genius.

I'll definitely be excerpting some it in quotations over at Calliope Nerve.

Definitely going to re-read this one for years to come.

A review is in order here.

"My poetry is a bomb." --Nobius Black

Need a female character for In the City, Itself. Jonah Hex's Megan Fox is very similar to what I had already imagined. A beautiful pirate/cowgirl type woman, finely dressed, who carries two spirit guns. The guns shaped like old fashioned pirate guns don't shoot bullets but rather souls.

My character will will have the Tyra look.

Now all she needs is a name.





And when she meets Midas, his greeting, "What's your story?" Aaron ain't exactly in love.

Thinking I might change the name of this series of misc. notes to something a little more flashy like BRAIN MEAT..

Need a brief essay on why I believe there's room for corporate giants and small press/publishers to co-exist. And though I definitely prefer the later, not all things corporate are bad. If it weren't for LULU, I'd never be a book editor.

Another brief essay on why I don't even think about people's race, ethnicity, religion, and why the idea of white guilt infuriates me. Yes, one must realize a culture's, etc. good and some of my fore-fathers did wrong/evil but I am certainly not them. Nor ever will be.