Zombie Lapdance

Can you spot the new copies of SPACE SQUID in the above photo? The answer is below.

I’m a member of the Austin writer’s group the Slugtribe. The group has a pretty healthy membership these days, with several members bringing in selections from very promising novels.

I brought in the newest issue of SPACE SQUID for their reading pleasure. They got the uncensored version (more on that later!) because I felt that as writers they were all mature enough to handle it.

I also made certain that they were all coming to the SPACE SQUID issue seven release party this Saturday at Frugal Media. Remember, the party is going to have a zombie simulation and improv fiction competitions!

Did you spot all the SPACE SQUID in the picture?

If I can be perfectly honest with you for a moment, the whole point of having a little literary zine, is to throw nasty, death-defying parties.

The release party for SPACE SQUID issue seven is going to be this Saturday, at Frugal Media, 5400 N.Lamar, Austin, TX.

There will be FREE BEER and FREE SNACKS!!!

Here’s the order of events:

1pm Folding and Stapling Party
I put "Bikini Bloodbath" on my Netflix queue, so we will probably be watching that on my laptop while doing the grotesque monkey work of folding and stapling the zine.

3pm Zombie Simulation
You know how in the movies people smash zombie heads with all sorts of things they just happen to have lying around? Haven’t you ever wondered just how hard it would be to smash a head, I mean really smash it? Well, as it happens, heads are relatively cheap in Austin. $3.49 each at the Fiesta. So I’m going to throw together a zombie armature and we’re going to put this head smashing to the test. Feel free to bring your own implements. I’ve got a wooden samurai practice sword, but somebody is going to have to bring a baseball bat, a cricket bat, a machete, etc. Just no projectiles or firearms. You can shoot your own head in the privacy of your own home, so try and keep my heads out of it.

5pm Improv Fiction
We’ve done this at the last couple of parties. We wrangle some poor writers and force them to write a piece of flash fiction, using audience-generated plot points, with only a few minutes to scribble down their prose. Maybe this year I’ll bring something along that will be worth winning.

And of course there will be FREE BEER and FREE FOOD! And there will be the newest issue of SPACE SQUID, completely free (mostly) of giant alien space penis.

But more on that later. There will be DAILY SPACE SQUID BLOG POSTS until the party on Saturday. So keep tuned, squid pals.

I would like to take moment to talk about a Space Squid advertiser. Now, this isn’t one of those times where I’m pimping a Space Squid advertiser on the blog because of a sneaky conflict of interest. This is one of those times when something becomes a Space Squid advertiser because that particular something is so cool, so awesome and so in touch with the hipness of the moment, that they naturally gravitated toward being a Space Squid advertiser.

I am speaking of The Human Party Virus.

The Human Party Virus is a series of free day shows and alternate venues during the SXSW hoopla next week. There’s going to be about 40 bands over the course of five days. You should definitely check out the lineup your own damn self, but I can tell you there’s some good bands playing.

Woozy Helmet will be playing (Sat.March20,Club1808,3:00pm), and they’re one of the great un-sung bands of Texas. They’re like the Wonder Twins of dance-punk. Only there’s three of them.

There’s also the Always Already, Best Friends Forever, and Jana Hunter. All of them well worth the price (free!).

Moth!Fight! has got a show (Sat.March20,Club1808,4:30pm), and this will probably be the last time that they’ll play at a local venue before they get to be too big and cool and you no longer get to say, "I knew them when." They’re sort of like a more raw version of Arcade Fire, but more Texan than Canadian, which is always a good thing.

I don’t want to brag, but I saw Moth!Fight! at the house show which the promoters of The Human Party Virus put on for the previous SXSW. It was just at this dude’s house. The bands set up in the living room, and out back there was a firepit and a table filled with discarded sample liquor from the host’s brother’s bar.

Before the show was over at the end of the night, we had noise complaints called on us five times. On the fifth visit, the authorities showed up with representatives from every municipal department with the power to write a ticket. There were literally four civilians with white shirts and clipboards standing in the front yard. Plus the cops.

So The Human Party Virus has learned its lesson about informal venues, and in the process gone huge.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. This is SXSW. There’re shows everywhere. I was talking to this guy the other night and his SXSW plan was to just ride around on a bike, seeing if there was anything that sounded cool. I heard of this guy who forgot to lock his car when he went to buy groceries, and when he came back a band was putting on a show in his back seat.

It was a jazz-rock trio from Oklahoma. Apparently they were pretty good.

So what I’m saying is, you’ve got a lot of music opportunities this SXSW. So wouldn’t you prefer to choose the music that has the good taste to be a Space Squid advertiser? I mean, seriously.

For the participants of Staple! the independent zine expo, the phenomenon that is Space Squid issue seven is already a reality. Approximately 300 lucky Staple-goers picked up a Space Squid for their very own.

Several RevSF regulars were there, including Alan J. Porter and the Klaw. You can just barely see Mr.Porter in this photo if you know what you’re looking for.

For those of you who didn’t attend Staple!, you have probably missed your chance to get your hands on the un-censored version of issue seven (but more on that later), and of course you’ve missed out on the last vestige of true underground zinesterism left in this country.

Coming up, the table of contents, more details about the issue seven release party (Frugal Media, Saturday, with free beer!), and the controversy around censoring the giant alien space penis. So stay tuned!

We’re going to be getting a lot of up-to-the-minute posts on this subject, and here’s the first:

SPACE SQUID ISSUE SEVEN HAS GONE TO PRESS!

Here is the very first copy to be assembled, stapled, and folded.

Once again, we’ve hit our deadline without violating our long-standing requirement that no-one pull an all-nighter (although there were definitely some late-nights).

In case you were ever wondering just how skeezy a zine this is, here’s the issue printing on Sanjay2, my closet photocopier.

Thanks to Dave and his constant, vigilant scouring of freecycle and craigslist, we have a free photocopier and about four boxes of precious legal-sized paper. Once the entire 1500 run issue is printed up (which will take several more nights of folding and stapling while watching movies), we will have several boxes worth of stapled, hardcopy zines.

After watching Rock and Roll High School and The Monster Squad and parts of Saturn 3, we now have 400 finished zines, which I will be releasing at the Staple zine expo in a few minutes.

Watch this space for more updates, including the table of contents, a report from Staple, and Space Squid censoring itself.

For months I’d been kicking myself for going to the marisco diner up on North Lamar, Taquerias de Las Chivas, and not ordering the octopus cocktail. I mean, seriously, a cocktail of octopus! What was I thinking, passing that up?

So I went back.

From the pictures I had the impression that it was bits of octopus suspended in some sort of gelatin, but actually it’s bits of octopus (pulpo) in a bath of something not unlike cocktail sauce and salsa.

It’s served in a fluted glass with a pile of cellophane-wrapped saltine crackers.

The experience was not unlike what I would have as a mid-afternoon snack, only I wasn’t eating it out of the can and sitting on the floor.

The frakker deputy ordered a dish that turned out to have a random montage of seafood bits, sandwiched between tilapia fillets, and drenched in cream sauce.

My sci-fi comedy action short A Natural History of the Pancake Badger has just been posted on The Town Drunk. It’s been a whole year since Gimpbomb Enters Room, my chilling vision of the chatrooms of tomorrow, appeared on the same site. Man, it doesn’t seem like it’s been a year, but I guess it has.

There’s quite a long explanation behind "A Natural History of the Pancake Badger," but I think I will only touch on a little of it here.

Partially this was a response to a regular attendee at the slugtribe writer’s group, a man who responded to everything he read by declaring it boring. So I wrote a story that was one long chase sequence. Sort of like Run Lola Run, but with Catholic schoolgirls and aliens. Which automatically makes it a contender for the title of most exciting short story ever written.

The second half to the story behind the story involves me confiding the plot to an actor I met while doing some crew work for a local theater company.

"I had this dream where an alien attacked some Catholic schoolgirls," I told him. "And bigfoot showed up. I think I’m going to make it into a short story."

"That sounds interesting," he said with an actorly straight face.

A week or so later I was drunk at a theater party and I overheard him telling people about my idea. They laughed. Everyone laughed at me. Well, WHO’S LAUGHING NOW YOU LOCAL THEATER WEIRDOS!?!?!?!? IT’S A GODDAMN PUBLISHED STORY!!!!

No revenge is sweeter than success.

Over the summer I gave Love Story 2050 the only positive review it had in the entire world.

Well, Love Bollywood, the BBC Bollywood gossip show is running a facebook campaign to give Love Story 2050 the credit and the love that the story deserves.

Normally I think that facebook campaigns are horrible, disgusting, wastes of internet space, but I’m making an exception in this case because the cause is so important.

It’s less than a week until the next issue of Space Squid comes out. And don’t worry, everything is coming together quite nicely.

This is the first Space Squid to come out in a new era of Hope and Change. With the hard choices ahead, it’s comforting to know that a wise and competent squid is watching over us.

Here’s some more goodies from web-surfing that shouldn’t go to waste. Today’s theme: animals!

Fish with see-through head. Deep-sea of course.

Baby Fennec fox’s are cute.

As are baby gorillas.

Rats in Bangladesh are less cute. Let’s kill them.

Here’s a neat plan that the Scots have implemented to recycle squirrels.

And a spooky kid in China can see in the dark.