Exhibit 1.5.11

Today In Misguided Stock Photography



O, Huffington Post, don't ever change.

Exhibit 1.5.10

A Primer on the Rules of Cricket, Pt. 5




41. Should a rowdydown turn mortal succession shall proceed Lillywald-fashion lest the blondest heir is found to be a papist. In consequence, the fight shall resume till such time as an appropriately fairheaded scion can be birthed.

42. Each batsman may propose one treaty of which can be live no less than six signatories from each side. Upon ratification, the treaty shall be enforced upon penalty of Hostage.

43. Enforcement of the Treaties shall be made the domain of the Council whose seats shall be the highest and made of a wood of a density greater or equal to cherry lest a treaty specifically change the terms of their leisure.

44. Gwyneth Paltrow.

45. Given the dimensions of the pitch, a astrolabe need be procured for the buryment of the King's Coin. Though it has not happened recently, should the Coin anger The Dragon, play shall procede after a Heroe's Queste in the bygone style not ending until rise of the tumulus and the remarriage of the widow however many fortnights. Should the widow choose not to remarry or should no players remain alive from either side or in the event The Dragon wins by swallowing the Coin, the sport shall be ended and the ground salted without need of an astrolabe.

46. At such a time as The Bafflement the sides shall be halved and halved again, with new Banners produced during the Recess and raised upon commencement. Should sides split beyond the number of players, new players shall be procured and new armorials created. Colors too should necessity arise.

47. Should it come to pass that each player plays only for themselves they shall be rechristened families and the field shall be rechristened town. Each player should achieve a trade though this shall not be the end of the game but the beginning of a new one.

48. No rules shall be made pertaining to the angle of despair only that it should be looked upon and lamented.

49. A four bowl must be called a demi-cannon though the first to say it must be an orphan with the compliment seconded by the procurement of a loaf of pudding for all surrounding rapscallions to enjoy beneath the bleachers. Upon completion of the compliment, the orphans shall form their own team, The Ragamuffins, who shall compete only to disrupt the honor of their betters.

50. Forthwith the Littlest Lord shall be allowed to serve as a wicket though should any ball come in contact with him the game shall cease lest it be his moon's day feast in which case any ball not coming in contact with him will be called A Necromancer's Eye and gifted to the lepers to be boiled to tincture.

Exhibit 1.5.9

The Flasher



Of the 20 images that come up when you search for 'the flasher' on my favorite stock photography website--favorite because it's mostly strange Scandinavian people doing strange Scandinavian things--that one is my favorite.

The Flasher can be had here or here.

Exhibit 1.5.8

Marketing

So apparently popular no-effort-mom-pleaser Pandora decided to tie a marketing campaign to the NFL Draft and analyst Mel Kiper Jr. I wish I could have heard that phone call.

Over-thinking Marketing Guy: We want you to represent Pandora!
Mel Kiper Jr.: The music service?
Marketing Guy: No, the popular middle-aged-lady-Pokémon.
Mel Kiper Jr.: Are you sure my obvious and overwhelming charisma won't out charm the charm bracelet?
Marketing Guy: Of course not!
Mel Kiper Jr.: There is serious upside potential whenever you can get a Mel Kiper Jr.

Honestly, I don't know if this is a brilliant example of knowing the difference between one's market and one's actor or if this is the weirdest, dumbest thing to ever happen on an internet full of weird, dumb things. I'm leaning toward aggressively not caring after this period.

Exhibit 1.5.7

Demographic Survey




Now I know which advertisers to approach.

Exhibit 1.5.6

Question Time

J. Stock asks, Author branding question here:If you were to add a stylistic third 'middle name', what would it be?

I'm going to answer this here because A) I'm really only writing this blog for J. Stock at this point and B) It's a good question.

When I first started writing I thought I needed a cooler name, both because Adam Peterson is common enough another writer might share it and because, I don't know, cooler names are cooler (I could name authors I think are twice as popular as they would otherwise be because of good names but I won't).

Still, I'll admit I never thought about Cougar-ing up my name. If anything, I considered going with A. William Peterson because...I don't know. I'm an idiot?

Middle name options:

1) Dagger - My go-to fake cool guy name.

2) Stone - Because my friend Justin always named his RPG characters this and I thought it was cool and Justin doesn't write so screw Justin.

3) Adam - People would be like, "Have you read Adam Adam Peterson's new tiny book?" And other people would be like, "No."

4) Sarah - People would be like, "Is that a man or a woman?" And other people would be like, "We don't know and we're his parents."

5) Pepsi - I could either go uber-hipster or uber-sell out with it.

6) Night - No way that could go wrong.

7) Toni Morrison - Just because it would be confusing and everyone would ask if we were related although probably not.

8) Adrian - Same.

9) Pope - Because it could easily transition into a fallback career.

10) Wladimir - I've always loved those crazy half-Russian names that Cubans sometimes have. I want one. Now. I'll swim there.

Exhibit 1.5.5

I Only Write to Say I Love Me

Sorry for more self promotion but I'm really excited about this:


I present to you [SPOILER ALERT] out now from Dzanc Books. Done with the brilliant Laura Eve Engel, it's 36 collaborative prose pieces the likes of which you can check out at DIAGRAM here and Sixth Finch here.

And read an interview we did about it here.

And order it here already.

Much thanks to Matt Bell, Dan Wickett, Steve Seighman, and everyone else at Dzanc.

Exhibit 1.5.4

Me Trying to Get a Driver's License: A Play

[Scene: a hellscape of over 100 screaming people with chairs pointed every direction, a kind of adult kindergarten after the teacher has left the room with an intercom slowly announcing numbers well into the thousands like that radio tower on LOST, a place I drove 30 minutes to and waited another 20 in line at]

Me: Here's my old license and a passport.
Lady: I need your Social Security card, too.
Me: That's not what it said on the website. It said I needed it or a passport.
Lady: It changed. Now you need both.
Me: You're honestly telling me everyone in Texas with a driver's license has a passport?
Lady: What?
Me: Well, I don't have my social security card.
Lady: You can also use a college transcript.
Me: What?

[Interruption from an old white woman who asks for a book to study for the written exam and is told they only have them in Spanish. She putters away presumably vowing to vote Republican until she dies next month].

Lady: So can I help you with anything else?
Me: Did you help me with anything this time?

The worst part is: she was totally right and I either misread something or it has changed. And now here I am complaining about being incorrect on the internet because I know I have to go back there tomorrow. I guess with a college transcript and some apology roses.

Exhibit 1.5.3

Lost Tweets

Really I'd rather not ruin my least bloggy month ever by posting something, but I feel a sense of responsibility to my two loyal readers: J. Stock and Asian Casino Big Wins.

But I've got nothing to say, so here's a collection of tweets I had saved on my old phone. I figure if I post them here, I will never post them on twitter which is probably for the best.

Why do I think somehow posting them here will tie them less to me than twitter? I don't know. Why any of it? I really don't know.




* There are only 3 people. Those who like "Dyslexic Heart," those who like "Waiting for Somebody," and those without the Singles soundtrack.

* Why did pizza geometry stop at the roll? I want a pizza box.

* 100% of conversations about karaoke go something like this, “Remember that time we did karaoke that we’re never going to talk about again?” “No.”

* Imagine how Delux, the company that seemingly makes all the checks, feels when all their orders are paid with debit cards.

* Nobody ever asks for a hand job. You should have subvocalized that as Job. Like the Bible guy. Then it’s funny. If not, it’s not.

(Ed note: there was a time when I really wanted to make this joke work. Then I realized I would never tweet about sex acts ever. Then I posted it here on a whim. I really, really don't know).

* So now that David Mamet is apparently making a movie called, “I’m an Asshole,” what role is he going to cast his wife in?

* Has anyone written an essay about riding the bus for a day and learning about the people and their stories? Because don’t. Don’t write that.

* It’s a bit cumbersome to keep saying it, but Andrew Carnegie did pay to build my bathroom.

* I’ve got a lot of thoughts on the country song “Need You Now” that I’m just going to go ahead and keep right to myself.

* It’s a little misleading that YouTube didn’t stick with “thatplacewhereyouwatchtheIGotaManvideo.com”

* I like to put on headphones and listen to Megadeath at a coffeeshop because it feels illicit.

* Whoever told Netflix I like Jason Statham will be hunted down until I get my revenge for what you did to me…o, damnit.

* Going to write a modern day version of Blood Meridian about going to the mall. "See the child section of the Banana Republic…"

* The poet’s car was such a gas ghazal-er.

* Live your life like you're making an erasure of Jurassic Park without the dinosaurs. - confusing advice.

* Whenever someone reaches my blog using Bing I feel like how the Indians felt the first time they saw ships.

* Nebraska – no longer just a Springsteen album.

* Why did indie rock find it necessary to start a sub-genre tentatively titled “Sometimes We Sing about Orphans”

* If we have HOV lanes, I don’t see why we can’t have bumper car lanes.

* When Dane says be less gauche, I always think he’s saying be less ghost and I’m like, you’re right, Dane, I probably should.

* I didn’t think this would come together but, yep, there it is, a castle. Thanks, Lego.

* I look exactly my age because eating Eggos in sweatpants is timeless.

* My least favorite modern composition is John Kale’s four minutes and thirty three seconds of salad.

* Sadly, I play basketball like I play guitar: how Dave Matthews would do it.

* When someone says it’s an oldie but a goodie, it means ‘I hope you know how to safety dance.’

* Wise men say, only fools rush into purchasing UB40’s greatest hits.

* Hey, Men at Work, I know who it can’t be: a record label.

* If you add vodka to a Shirley Temple it becomes a Lindsey Lohan.

* I’m not sure why the Catholic church taught me that “A Whiter Shade of Pale” was about masturbating.

(Ed note: See Job joke above).

* My dad's lives every day hoping someone asks him if he likes Earl Grey so he can say "That's my cup of tea!" It's important to have dreams.

* I'm not afraid of robbers. I'm afraid of robbers judging the amount of dishes in my sink. Maybe they'll steal them. That would help.

* My god, this conspiracy goes all the way to the Top Gun DVD case.

Exhibit 1.5.2

Remember When I Had a Blog

That was weird.

Exhibit 1.5.1

Weather

So apparently Houston is going to flood (again) and we're all going to die (again). This is too bad as flooding doesn't even rank on my list of terrible weather disasters I would hope to kill me. The list:

1. Tornado - Always chance it just transports me ala Zelda, Mario, and every other story about tornadoes.

2. Blizzard - Could have a cool story about how I got lost and walked in a huge circle when I thought I was going straight. Also, future people might discover my frozen corpse just outside a Casey's General Store and speculate about my living habits based on my sweatpants and Museum of Jurassic Technology t-shirt.

That's really pretty much it. It must be the Plains in me, but everything else just seems foreign and weird.

Hurricanes - Have eyes.
Floods - What did we do to god this time?
Mudslides - Applebee's drink.
Tsunami - Scary, but unlikely to come from the Platte River.
Earthquakes - Only exist in sitcoms where a pregnant character rides an elevator.
Wildfires - Actually, I can see dying in a wildfire. That's sort of Plains-y. Not grain silo explosion Plains-y but four wheeler accident Plains-y.

Exhibit 1.4.27

The Flasher



So The Flasher is now for available for pre-order from SpringGun Press. There's free shipping and all that, too. Go check it--and the other, awesomer books--out.

Mostly I just wanted to show off the cover. I love it.

Exhibit 1.4.26

Black Out




If anyone asks, this blog hasn't been updating because of SOPA.

Exhibit 1.4.25

"The story has by now acquired the status of legend
among those in the disposable office supply industry."


Lorraine Nelson:
A Biography in Post-It Notes

By David Hawkins
Now Available

1 tape-bound volume
Book Design by Todd Seabrook

$15/year subscription, $5/individual


Selected by Michael Martone as the winner of The Cupboard’s first-ever contest.


*ABOUT THE VOLUME*
There are ghosts who have never died. David Hawkins's Lorraine Nelson: A Biography in Post-it Notes is about such a person or maybe two such people. A mysterious name. A terrible job. The drudgery of the office makes ghosts of many, but can be survived with wit, imagination, and heart. Lorraine Nelson never lived, but in this volume, selected by Michael Martone as the winner of The Cupboard's first contest, she's given the elegy she deserves.

Of the volume, Martone writes that "it's made up of surprising but complex asides, elaborated and compacted articulations that scale beautifully into a durable and brilliant skin, a chain mail of associative links and leaps. The language is massive and minute, mute and malleable. The whole piece performs the paradox, recombining the airy ephemeral with an adhesive that does, in fact, stick."

Read an excerpt here.


*ABOUT THE AUTHOR*
David Hawkins's poetry and nonfiction have received awards from the Utah Arts Council and have appeared in a number of journals and periodicals. He is an assistant professor/lecturer at the University of Utah where he was the editor-in-chief of Quarterly West from 2001 to 2005, and he lives in Salt Lake City with his wife and their two boys. He still pulls the occasional crappy job.


*SUBSCRIBE*
Every year brings four new Cupboards. Collect them all for $15 here.

Individual volumes, including past volumes from Amanda Goldblatt, Andrew Borgstrom, Anne Marie Rooney, and Ryan Call and James Scott are available for $5.


* SUBMIT*
As always, subscribers are invited to submit prose between 4,000 and 8,000 words through our Submishmash site here.

Open submissions will return in the summer. But…


!CONTEST!
Everyone is invited to submit to The Cupboard’s Second-Ever Contest. This year’s contest will be judged by Maud Casey, author of The Shape of Things to Come, Genealogy, and Drastic.

Submissions will be open between February 1st and March 31st. We're looking for prose submissions between 4k and 10k words of short stories, essays, collections of flash fiction and prose poems, and combinations thereof.

The winning author will receive $500 and the manuscript will be published as an upcoming volume. Submissions are received and read anonymously, and all submissions are eligible for regular publication. We again plan on offering contest submitters a discounted submission to The Cupboard.

Look for more details and an official announcement on February 1st.


*OUR NEXT VOLUME*
The next volume of the Cupboard is by Chanelle Benz and will debut at AWP this spring. Look for us in the Table X section again sharing a table with Octopus Books.

Thank you again for everything,

THE CUPBOARD


www.thecupboardpamphlet.org

Exhibit 1.4.24

Review of the Plains States' Shapes

Look, I don't want to get into a big thing here about what is and is not a Plains state. These are the Plains states as far as this exercise is concerned. Does it make any sense that Iowa is one but Minnesota isn't? No, no it doesn't. And what about Eastern Colorado? Well, since Colorado pretends there's no Eastern Colorado, we will too. But what is Eastern Wyoming if not the Plains? Why it's a desolate dust and despair factory we'd all be better off without.

So in no particular order:

Oklahoma


Okay, so Oklahoma is pretty cool looking. This brings us to our first and probably only real conclusion from this exercise: panhandles are cool. Unless they're Florida's. Then they're the worst. But otherwise: cool.

Oklahoma also has the jagged lower edge which sort of makes it look like a whisky jug God broke and is using to fight off Texas. And by sort of I mean: this is happening.


South Dakota


The best thing about South Dakota is that little Minnesota tumor on the eastern border. I don't think any of us would be surprised to wake up twenty years from now to look at a map and find the tumor had metastasized to cover most of the Black Hills.

I'm really not sure how in that metaphor Minnesota became cancer while South Dakota became an otherwise healthy body. There is nothing healthy about South Dakota except its appetite for the distasteful.


North Dakota


Or Kansas. Who the hell knows. Let's just say that if this outline came up on a geography test, the answers would range from "Ontario" to "The capital of Oregon is Salem."


Nebraska


I could talk about how Nebraska's shape is the country's best fusion of natural geography, history, and panhandle, but that would be to ignore that the greatest achievement of Nebraska's shape is that it somehow connotes motion while the state itself remains stuck in 1938. And eastward motion at that.

I mean, it's a great shape, but it sort of does look like the entire state is a 1992 Chevy Lumina minivan hoping to take a permanent vacation outside Virginia.




Kansas


Nope, wait, this is Kansas. You can tell because if you go east enough you find some personality.

(As a Western Kansan, even I'm offended).

I know a guy who has a tattoo of Kansas on one arm and a tattoo of Oklahoma on the other (presumably to let everyone know he hasn't so much lived places as he has lost a fight against luck) and the tattoo of Oklahoma is instantly recognizable. The tattoo of Kansas, however, was a hand spasm away from being Colorado. My thought is, if you need to add tiny wheat fields and tornadoes and Judy Garland to make your tattoo recognizable, you were probably better off just getting Danny Manning's face. Which, by the way, would make for an excellent state itself:I say, we carve out this shape in the middle of Kansas, give the rest of the land away, and tell the Missouri River we're not going to pushed around by its whims anymore.


Iowa



This, actually, might just be Danny Manning's face in profile. I don't know. It's just a good thing Kansas and Iowa don't share a border because otherwise, we might have trouble. Danny Manning-related trouble.

Iowa is rightly proud of being the face in the Mississippi's dumpy little person though as a child I always thought that person was probably Chef Boyardee. This didn't dampen my enthusiasm any, just made me slightly disappointed when I moved to Iowa it wasn't full of ravioli but fervent Ron Paul supporters.

Let's face it though, Iowa is basically Ohio turned on its side and told to keep quiet unless it has something to say about John Wayne.