etc.

part 2 of an interview with me is now up on The View From Here.

i reviewed a chapbook called MEN (directly below).

recent thoughts:

"should i start a twitter account?"
"should i change how i pronounce Brautigan from 'brow-ti-gan' to 'braw-ti-gan' now i know the correct pronunciation?"
"i wonder what _______ is doing right now"
"i need to move flats, why haven't i phoned my landlady to tell her yet? what am i afraid of?"
"maybe a Paul Simon blog, like one story a week or something, updated every saturday"
"i need a wee, i will go for a wee in a second"

'i am david' update: 704 views.

"if 'david' reached 1,000 views ... wow ... i don't know ..."

four-part 'feature review' of MEN

1. the men behind MEN

MEN was created by three men.

here is one of the men who created MEN. this man wrote all the text. i think he also did all the 'layout' things. he writes a blog. he has written mysteriously on the blog about the production of MEN, about a possible 'sweatshop'. MEN is not stapled. my copy of MEN looked like it was stitched together on an electric sewing machine with red cotton. i don't think this man used the electric sewing machine to stitch the copies of MEN together. i have used investigative techniches on gchat to discover that this man lives in london, on his own, in a flat. i believe this man is the 'head honcho' behind MEN. this man seems to have a lot of 'lady friends' but also gives off the distinct impression of being a single man, possibly. i don't know. maybe this man has a girlfriend.

this is another of the men who created MEN. this man also writes a blog. this man drew almost all the illustrations of men in MEN, i belive. i think he drew them on MS Paint. the illustrations of men are similar in tone and style to the animated drawings in this video (also by this man). in each copy of MEN, the last drawing of a man is hand drawn by this man. in my copy it is a drawing of an angry-looking man with a large head and a neck that turns into a leg with a boot on the end of it, and a speech bubble coming from the man's mouth, saying, 'stop looking at me.' most of the men this man draws have moustaches, maybe 70-80%. the final man who created MEN is the brother of this man. i couldn't find any pictures of him on the internet. he drew the man on page 24, i belive, although maybe drew some of the other men, too.



2. what it looks like to receive MEN in the post




[note: most pages including front cover, back cover, etc., are not depicted. there was also a cut out of a dinosaur from a Guardian wall-chart in the envelope, also not pictured]

3. review of MEN in the style of a short English essay

In my essay I will attempt to prove that I like the chapbook MEN by Crispin Best, Socrates Adams-Florou and Spiros Adams-Florou. To prove this, I will give examples of drawings and passages of writing from MEN that I particularly like.

Best, and the Adams-Florous present twelve different men in MEN. Each left-hand page has a picture of a man, drawn by one of the Adams-Florous, and each right-hand page has writing by Best, in the style of a monologue by the man depicted. The pictures and writing are very good. On p.7, Adams-Florou presents a 'sassy'-looking man, with long combed-back hair and big lips. In this man's monologue, Best focusses on how this man sees himself -- his hopes and dreams -- mostly in relation to his long hair, and also how he is a boxer who doesn't "want to get punched". Later in the monologue, the man admits that, "When my father combs my hair it feels amazing." I liked this man a lot.

On the next page, we see an 'insane-looking' paediatrician, with a bow-tie, rectangular head, small circular mouth with sharp teeth, large, angry eyes, and a long, wispy moustache. This paediatrician makes jokes about how he would like to torture children, constantly interrupting himself, to make sure that you understand that he "want[s] children to be healthy, not covered in welts and burnholes ..." The constant self re-adjustment of the paediatrician's monologue, his worry that the torture jokes are being misunderstood as intention, made me go, 'ha!' out-loud when I first read it.

There are lots of other men, too, all displaying frailty, honesty, and sometimes a skewed or faulty outlook on life. I liked looking at all the men and reading their monologues. Even though the dedication in the front says, "to men everywhere", I believe this chapbook could be equally enjoyed by women, girls, boys, etc. I liked it a lot.



4. review of MEN in the style of a negative Amazon customer review

104 out of 104 people found the following review helpful:

***** Complete piece of shit, 27 Feb 2009
By J.S. Thomas "the book piper" (U.K.) - See all my reviews
Customer review from the Amazon Vine TM Programme (What's This?)

What a dreadful and terrible letdown. This book is only about 4 pages long. It is not even a novella. It is the shortest book I have ever read. I read it in about 1 minute.

I got this book for free by emailing someone or something.

It is just pictures of men and writing where they talk about themselves. There is no plot or storyline and nothing happens. If this is the state of British publishing then I want to go into the bathroom and fill my sink up with puke and then wash my face with it.

I am sure that if the book had been written by Jeffrey Archer or Jeffrey Eugenides or someone like that lots of interesting things would happen. All in all, I found it seedy, depressing, not-sexy, and instantly forgettable.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? [YES] [NO]


[MEN is out now. It is free. It is published by Unnecessary Ebooks. I think you can get hold of a copy by emailing Crispin Best. I am not sure if he is going to print more copies or do a pdf version. You'd have to ask him about that.]

news, etc.

i interviewed Tao Lin for the Canongate website. i recommend reading this interview. i really like it. it's part of a 'chain' thing they're doing. last month Steven Hall interviewed me, then i interviewed Tao, and next month i think Tao is going to interview someone, etc., etc.

i have a dating advert (part 1 of 2) on The View From Here magazine.

they also reviewed The Bird Room.

i am reading at THIS THING in Derby on saturday night. Socrates and Sian are also reading.

'i am david' update: 628 views.

no point / paint my album / i am david

No Point In Not Being Friends 8 is tonight. i'm looking forward to it.

i read a short 'pornographic episode' from The Bird Room, about halfway through the current Paint My Album video:



i like all the Paint My Album videos. the website is good, too.

'i am david' (see post directly below) has only had 37 hits so far.

short excerpt from a gmail chat this morning with Socrates:

Socrates: WHY CAN'T IT BE A PHENOMENON?
me: i don't understand
what is wrong with people?
they've had OVER TWELVE HOURS to watch it
Socrates: i know
ungrateful fuckers
after all we have done for them
me: i will check you tube now -- see if there's any 'external links' or anything ...
goddamnit
37 views
Socrates: damn
i am singing a song
me: it is a 'slow burner' maybe ...
Socrates: i am david
me: it will just get more and more popular
or maybe we are the only people who think david is funny
Socrates: maybe
me: that is quite possible maybe
i don't care
Socrates: haha
me: i'm really really proud of it
Socrates: i love it

i am david, grand premiere:

i made this short film with Socrates. it is three minutes long. it took us about 19 hours. i feel very proud.

joe le taxi babelfish.yahoo.com english translation prose poem:

Joe the taxi there does not go everywhere does not go to soda its yellow sax knows all the streets by heart all the tits bars all black corners and the Seine and its bridges which shine in its case the music has Joe is the rumba old rock'n'roll with the mambo Joe the taxi is its life rum with the mambo congestion it is like rum and mambo Joe - Joe - Joe in its case the music has Joe resounds is the rumba old rock'n'roll with the mambo can go ahead Joe go ahead Joe go ahead sinks in the night towards the Amazon

Joe the taxi And Xavier Cugat Joe the taxi And Yma Sumac Joe - Joe - Joe Joe the taxi is its life Rum with the mambo congestion Joe the taxi and mariachis Joe the taxi and the cha-cha-chi Joe the taxi and the cha-cha-chi go ahead Joe go ahead sinks in the night towards the Amazon

facebook + nudity

i created a facebook group today.

feel free to join my facebook group.

my 'wild dream' is for this facebook group to become an 'internet phenomena' -- over 100,000 members, etc.

or challenge me to a game of scrabble. i am currently playing four games of scrabble on facebook. there is an 'interminable' wait between turns. i would like to be playing about 9-14 games of scrabble if possible.

Crispin Best made a video. i like this video an awful lot. there is nudity in the video. i helped make the song that's used in the video, which was based on lyrics by Crispin.

the video is, in part, to promote THIS WEBSITE!!!

new stuff, etc.

the next There's No Point In Not Being Friends With Someone If You Want To Be Friends With Them night is on the 23rd of this month (February). i'm not helping organise it, just attending. it looks fun.

i am interviewing Tao Lin for the Canongate website. i just read through Tao's answers to my questions. i made 'gleeful' snorting sounds a few times. i am excited for this interview to be posted (sometime soon?).

i saw Josie Long this evening at a comedy club in Manchester. here is a youtube video of Josie Long recommending books (*spoiler alert* Richard Yates, Kurt Vonnegut, J.D. Salinger, Raymond Carver, Richard Brautigan *spoiler alert*)

i am soon going to be part of 'something very special'.

i would like to get involved with the Amazon Vine Programme (tm). how does that happen? what do i need to do? do i need a 'proven track record'? is there a 'vetting process'? does money 'change hands'? etc.

"oh, i am a young published novelist, my life is so hard, i have so much to complain about"

more reviews of The Bird Room by:

Lee Rourke (The Independent)

Francesca Segal (Guardian Online)

Adam Coates (Internettle Soup)

Sameer Rahim (this week's TLS -- not online, just the contents page; was kind of 'damning', said something like 'not funny enough or smart enough' at the end.)

Jenn Ashworth (in an email: "... it was much darker than I thought it would be. Which was a good thing. It was sort of nasty, in some ways - which I mean in a good way too.")

i think that is all the reviews 'done with' now.

i'm not sure why i typed the reviewers names -- maybe i was thinking that they might find this blog post if they were googling themselves, the same way i have been googling "chris killen" + "the bird room" the past however many days.

i have been 'frantically' looking at the amazon sales rank number (about four or five times a day) too. it peaked at around 2,500ish, a few days ago. yesterday it was at about 17,000. i think today, the last time i looked, it had dropped to 27,000ish.

i feel that the 'initial flurry of excitement' is over now.

(possible) future sales will be determined by 'word of mouth' from now on, i think, or a nomination for a prize (ha), or something unrelated which generates publicity -- a 'controversial' appearance on a daytime TV quiz show, or a 'violent accidental death' or something.

i have to just sort of 'come back down to earth' and 'carry on with my life' now, i think.

yoga, learning a musical instrument, swimming, buying innocent smoothies, better posture, a haircut, special face cream, moving flats -- something like that.

*note: i feel this is maybe my most 'obnoxious' post ever. i feel this is post 1 in my 100-step plan to destroy first my blog and then my 'career'.

this is not a new video

this is something i put on you tube about a year ago. this video is supposed to convey 'please keep reading my blog, it will not all just be promotional posts about my novel, i will upload a new video on you tube or in some other way make a fool of myself, in a way unrelated to my novel, soon':

review of 'Naive. Super' by Erland Loe

i am 106 pages into 'Naive. Super' by Erland Loe
i feel kind of strange reading it
i feel it is very similar to my novel
even though i didn't read 'Naive. Super' by Erland Loe until now
it is even the same publisher in the UK
and similar jacket design
Erland Loe uses lots of line breaks
even the things that are different -- the chapter titles, etc. -- were things in earlier versions of my novel
i feel like 'Naive. Super' (up to and including p. 106) is a 'positive' and 'sweet' version of my novel
like it is dealing with some of the same ideas but from a different perspective
if anyone reading this post sort of liked my novel but found it too 'bleak' or whatever
i would recommend reading 'Naive. Super' by Erland Loe
i am a bit drunk right now

here is another review of 'Naive. Super'

here is a (cat) website i read about this morning in The Metro

my friend Socrates is writing a 'choose your own adventure' blog

i just changed the name of this band to "dogs.com.uk" ('changes may not be searchable for up to 24hrs')

interview on 3:AM

i was interviewed by Lee Rourke for 3:AM. (i also interviewed Lee Rourke for 3:AM. i assume that interview is forthcoming.)

here is an edited version of the interview with me (click the edited version if you would like to be 'transported' to the 'unexpurgated edition'):

LR:?

CK: ... I guess ... maybe ... sort of ... kind of ... maybe ... I think ... a bit ... and like ... I don’t know ... a bit ... I have no idea ... kind of ... I don’t know... maybe ... a bit.

'Hotel For Dogs' -- out cinemas, Feb 7

more reviews, interviews, publicity, etc., here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

one is an interview in Art and Things.

one is a Guardian review.

one is a video where my face looks like it's melting a bit, as i read (whispered) a short chapter from The Bird Room for Murmur, a new online magazine run by Prathna Lor.

one is a blog post by Crispin Best.(you can order the chapbook 'MEN' by Crispin and Socrates here. i am excited about this chapbook.)

one is an online interview in Second Life, which lasts somewhere between 45mins and an hour i think (i haven't watched it back) in which i say 'um' about 1,000,000 times, and read two short excerpts of The Bird Room, and generally make a fool of myself. i think there is one point where i make a strange noise and then say, 'sorry, i was almost sick'. (i changed my 'avatar' into a short obese person.)

one is an amazon video customer review by Tao Lin.

the publicity will stop soon, i promise.