On Saturday May 15th, Mykle Hansen is riding one hundred miles on this eight foot tall bicycle, to raise funds for the American Lung Association!
 Not Afraid Of Snakes Mykle writes:
“I’m just as sick of being asked for donations as anybody. So just let me say this: the ALA is a great organization. In their advocacy for clean air, their work in smoking cessation, and their contributions to asthma research they have acheived much with little. If you have lungs — and I know you do — then you really ought to take a moment to learn about what the ALA has been doing on your lungs’ behalf.
If that’s too boring and wonky for you, then just take my word for it and visit my fundraising page. I’m sorry it’s so spectacularly ugly, but that’s a great example of the ALA’s frugality: they could have spent donor’s dollars on a fancier website, but they said ‘no, we’ve got to spend that money on lungs.’ Lungs like yours and mine. Delicious, pink, juicy lungs. Mmmm.”
More details here.
… is the title of a short story by Mr. Hansen in the just-released Journal of Experimental Fiction, issue number 37. It’s a humorous tale of robot love, crystal meth and the end of the world.
This latest issue of the JEF is dedicated to Bizarro Fiction, and contains fresh works from well-known authors and newcomers alike. Gina Ranalli’s intense THREE STORIES, Cameron Pierce’s flash-romance CRAZY LOVE and Forrest Armstrong’s lyrical ARIAS OVER THE DRUM MACHINE are all excellent pieces worthy of the admission price, and that’s just a quarter of what you get.
Provocatively, editor Echkard Gerdes’s introduction fires a shot across the bow of Carlton Mellick III’s widely-read essay EXPERIMENTAL FICTION VS. BIZARRO, taking umbrage at the core arguments of that piece and flinging back a mini-manifesto of what makes the JEF tick. Will CM3 respond? Is a literary cat-fight in the brewing? If it sheds more light than blood and fur, we say “bring it on!”
Mykle Hansen discusses writing, publishing and arson with the charming Lori Hettler over at The Next Best Book Blog. Check it out!
Not just mine, either! Read all about it on the HELP! blog … and sharpen your crayons now!
 Win these in Patrick Wensink's Coloring Contest!
WE INTERRUPT THIS BLOG WITH AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM THE FAMOUS AUTHOR:
Hi,
My publisher, Eraserhead Press, is awesome in so many ways that I could write a whole book about how awesome they are and ask them to publish it. (Although they might decline to publish it, because who really wants to read a whole book about that? But then again, it would have lots of unicorn battles …)
But for instance: FREE BOOKS. Thanks to Jeff Burk at Eraserhead, from now until Thanksgiving you can use download free PDFs of several fine titles … including but not limited to THE BIZARRO STARTER KITS.
Now, I’m often asked what Bizarro is all about, and for all my loving it and knowing it and being it I sometimes struggle to explain it in straight-man terms. But really if you want the scoop you need to read one or both of these collections. My own novella, MONSTER COCKS, appears in the Blue starter kit, and one of my favorite absurd stories of all time, THE GREATEST FUCKING MOMENT IN SPORTS by Kevin L. Donihe, appears in the orange one.
For those reasons alone, you ought to avail yourself of this limited-time gift opportunity, and download these and other fine Eraserhead books. Then, after you’ve enjoyed those fine works of bizarro literature, you can investigate the works of two dozen other authors working in the genre. Love them? Awesome! Hate them? No problem — that’s the freedom that only free stuff can give you. All you have to do is download.
Do it now; do it here. Free is a very good price!
-mykle-
News flash: Rampaging Fuckers of Everything On The Crazy Shitting Planet Of The Vomit Atmosphere has just been awarded the Wonderland Book Award for best story collection published in 2008! The above photgraph doesn’t really do justice to the splendor of the trophy, or the depth of Mr. Hansen’s gratitude. (However, it does catch the nefarious Mr. Andersen Prunty red-handed in the trophy-snatching act. Bad author! No snack for you!)
“The Wonderland Book Award is what exactly?” you ask. Why, it’s a handsomely engraved crystalline love sandwich, awarded each year at BizarroCon — the annual gathering of our particular subculture — by a vote of writers, editors and publishers across the bizarro genre. All of us here at Me were extremely startled and flattered that our book was chosen over this year’s strong field of nominees.
Five books are nominated for each of the two Wonderland awards each year. In fact, Help! A Bear Is Eating Me! was nominated for best novel, but that final honor was bestowed upon Mr. Kevin Donihe for his novel House Of Houses. Thank goodness! Winning both awards would have been trés awkward, and might even have triggered a knife fight with the fiendish, unstable Mr. Prunty.
Since his victory, Mr. Hansen has often been seen lovingly polishing his Wonderland Book Award with a pungent ammonia-based cleanser and a soft chamois. He carries it with him wherever he goes, but plans eventually to mount the award on the ceiling above his bed, in a hand-tooled solid gold frame encrusted with a bank of internet-enabled strobe lights that automatically flash each time a copy of the book is sold by Amazon.com .
 I’m polishing my suit and ironing my shoes … for BIZARROCON, this weekend at the Edgefield Manor in outer-outer Portland. It’s an entire weekend of activities for authors and fans of the ultra-weird lit genre we call Bizarro, and this year’s convention promises to run me glamorously ragged.
How ragged, you ask? Here’s my itinerary:
- I’ll be appearing on three panels on Saturday, talking about Guerrilla Marketing, Bizarro Humor and how to read in public for maximum effect. I’ll be joined by some impressive co-panelists including authors Carlton Mellick III, Andersen Prunty, Bradley Sands, Jeff Burk (author of Shatnerquake) and Cameron Pierce. Whether you think I’m full of shit or of wisdom, this is a good day to come get a scoop.
- I’ve been nominated for not one but two awards: the Wonderland Book Awards for best novel (Help! A Bear Is Eating Me!) and best collection (Rampaging Fuckers of Everything …). If I win something, I will give a speech and do a little dance. Even if I don’t, there will still be cocktails at the Eraserhead Press Anniversary Party.
- I’ll be competing in the Ultimate Bizarro Showdown — the cage-match equivalent of story performance. Last year, first place was stolen from me by that scoundrel Garrett Cook. I’ll show him, oh yes …
- Jeff Burk and I will run a late-late-late night screening together of our favorite weird video clips, starting Sunday morning at 2am. No sleep for us!
Aside from all that exposure, there’s approximately one bazillion other activities and events on the convention schedule. This will be a weekend to remember. In fact, I’m getting tired just thinking about it … so tired … zzzzzzzzzz
“BizarroCon, it’s like an enema for the soul…” – Andersen Prunty
 image: Pablo Picasso There once was a chicken, silver and gray. It was broody and uncooperative at our friends’ farm. We got it for free; we thought a change of scenery might help it. But in sixteen months it never laid one egg. Worse, it became tangled up in an underground egg-eating ring — a ring that we recently busted.
Over at my other blog: an ode to autumn suppertime in the Pacific Northwest.
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