Online zines ranked; My pipeline to the universe is porn

Short, Fast and Deadly editor Joseph Quintela tweets about Flavor Wire's list of the ten best online lit zines. S,F, a D didn't make it, but I agree: if there were a top twenty, JQ, it'd be there. Def.

I recognized half of the ten -- Pank, kill author, DecomP, anyone? -- but now have a few more to check out. Not sure about number one. Are its contributors really Matt Damon, Ben Whofleck, and Sarah Silverman? I... huh. Gotta think about that before clicking. Don't think I'm anything less than a media junkie and total TMZ follower, but this disturbs me. Could be that I've got this thing about circles in my world overlapping. All circles stay separate! There shall be no mixing!

Along with the questionable list at top, I found a blog by Tom Kepler, writer of flash fic, reviewer of online zines, and... instructor of transcendental meditation? For the moment, I'm ignoring that last part. I dig meditation; the whole world could benefit from a bit of that every day. But a blog of "consciousness" by an instructor of TM makes me slightly wary. Everybody and their brother has got a pipeline to the next dimension, a way to open your mind to the universal wavelength. For a fee. So, yeah, I'm wary. But since the blog isn't about that, but is actually totally interesting and very informative and well-written, I'm recc'ing it!

And besides, he's got a writerly, reviewerly blog with a side of peace-and-love, and I've got a writerly, reviewerly blog with a side of cocks!

This was on AOM. He has no idea what it's made of or who did it, but I'd say it looks like a very good Sculpey creation to me. Could actually be bronze and gold, but I doubt it.

It is definitely, however, a cock yin-yang. And that makes me happy. Something else that made me happy: AOM did a whole self-love series on Sunday. For once, I don't care that the guys are hot underwear models and not real men I'd meet on the street. Is there anything hotter than men masturbating? Not much.

For the people who are here because Joseph Quintela said my chapbook was a "stunning debut" and some other very nice things (that made me cry -- again!), or for the folks who are here because my review of "The Honey Month" has been linked somewhere literary, the above must be a shock. Let's end this, then, on a piece of micro-flash that didn't make it into "Letters":

Light Change

He beats off to beat the light. The long red at St. Mary’s and William is his favorite. Most days, it’s an exercise in frustration. He imagines the lights winking at him -- yellow a sly challenge, red a lone hard stare, an alien eye of denial. He tenses through the seconds, floors it on green, eager to meet his next conquest.
He rarely visits his mother. She lives a long, light-deficient stretch of road away.