Author: DC (Page 32 of 1085)

 

‘Something Wrong with Her is a memoir told in linked essays, with each chapter a kind of formal experiment. Essay titles include “I Write as a Charlatan,” “Interlude: Subtone: I Say Scared, You Say Scary,” and “Riffing: Girls with Long Dark Hair”; these titles point both to a jazz term (interludes, subtones, riffing) and the overarching theme of writing one’s sexual history. These experiments attempt to replicate the feeling and form of jazz via language. Too, each essay-chapter is comprised of literal traces of previous selves: fiction taken from Mazza’s other published works, emails, fragments from her diary, photos and marginalia.

‘Jazz is a cerebral form, yes, but it’s also an embodied one — aficionados discuss its coolness, its soulfulness, its heart. What powers this hybrid, fragmented text is the existential tension between mind and body. Mazza struggles to wrap her head around what seems to come so intuitively to others: how to live sensually in a body. Her language resists the sensory, a neat trick when done in the mode of creative nonfiction.

‘Contemporary essays and memoirs both are often saturated with details of body and place. Consider the rough-hewn descriptions of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild: the backpack that digs into shoulders and hips, sloughing off flesh; the narrator pausing on her trek to have sizzling sex with a stranger. Mazza’s form resembles jazz, yes, in its precision and improvisation on a theme. But it also resembles the mental control executed by the jazz musician as she riffs on but never loses her melody: every word chosen points back to its maker’s struggle to access the world by way of the body.

‘This cerebral focus is the book’s great strength. Mazza’s intellect is incisive — at times bordering on cruelty toward her former self — as she burrows deep into her psyche to uncover what in other memoirs might be referred to as the originary trauma: a failed sexual encounter with the man she retroactively anoints the love of her life. Mazza refuses to read this moment as being a site of origin, or of being irrevocably traumatic, however. She seeks out this man years later, then rewrites the lost years they might have shared as an obsessive wrestling with their relationship’s dissolution.

‘Something Wrong with Her leaves unconfessed whether Mazza ultimately reuinites with her former lover, or if the string of heartfelt emails they exchange is all there is or ever will be. Its subtitle, a memoir in real time, necessitates this final opacity — a happy ending would resolve on a major chord, and this book, rightly, ends on a minor seventh. In this choice, I hear Dederer’s plaint, that “if questioning can’t be part of expressing female desire, that is a diminishment.” Mazza’s work, via form and content, occupies a space of existential doubt: how do we write through both the mind and the body? How does the act of writing and compiling our past selves influence who we get to be in the present? And how does women’s writing about sex especially foreground these difficulties?’ — Brooke Wonders

 

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Further

Cris Mazza Site
Cris Mazza @ Twitter
Lust as Violent as a Hernia
There’s Nothing Funny About Not Being Able to Orgasm
Cris Mazza interviewed @ Bookslut
On Losing It and Other Chick Stuff
A Catalogue of Possible Forewords
“Are We Ready to Read Cris Mazza Yet?”
An Alt-X Interview with Cris Mazza
Fixing “What’s Wrong”
Cris Mazza @ FC2
Didn’t Say No
Is It Sexual Harassment Yet?
Feature Illustrations: Cris Mazza Memoirs
How Cris Mazza Became a Writer
Q & A with Cris Mazza
“Many Ways to Get It, Many Ways to Say It”
Buy ‘Something Wrong with Her’

 

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Extras

Cris Mazza – 1989 APSU Reading

Trailer: Anorgasmia, a film by Cris Mazza and Vitale

College of DuPage – Writers Read Series: Cris Mazza

 

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Interview
from The New Inquiry

 

Megan Milks: The forensic methods you adopt in this memoir are fascinating, especially from a writer’s perspective — you frequently turn to your fiction as evidence for how you have understood or made sense of your life, and the people in it, often on the same pages in which you turn to old journal entries for similar insight. Do you see your fiction as a form of life-writing?

Cris Mazza: My fiction should be able to stand on its own, without a reader’s knowledge of my life, and be or say whatever it’s going to be or say as an entity. So far, from critical reviews through my career, it has and does — often surprising me with the nuances and ideas critics locate. But fiction, mine or anyone else’s, can be life-writing if one looks at it purposely in that way, and with the various spotlights provided by other kinds of artifacts: letters, journals, memories, other people’s memoirs, etc. Or, seen another way: A writer’s fiction is just one more artifact to examine in excavating that writer’s life.

At first I went back to my fiction to help stimulate my memory about the events that had provoked the stories or novels. That helped some, but laying the fiction side-by-side with journal entries, letters, and my memory (the most flawed of my tools) allowed me to look at what I’d done to the experience to make it work as fiction. For the most part the utilization, the changes, do make the fictional unit work better as a story, a novel, as art. But even when the alterations, additions, deletions, etc. are for the benefit of the fiction, looking at specific choices when turning experience into fiction showed layers of my relationship with the experience at the time.

For much of your career you’ve been known as a sexual provocateur — this memoir is provocative and tell-all in a much different way. Was it a difficult decision to commit to this project? What led you to tell this story now?

“It” was in every layer of life: friends, social/professional networks before those on the internet, conferences, students, student work, other forms of manuscript reading, and now Facebook, blogs, and — always present — published works. “It” being: open, free, uninhibited, hungry, and complete female sexuality, not just flagrantly (and insultingly) used by advertisers, but imbued in the sensibilities of women, in how they talked, related personal stories, presented themselves: sexual beings whose lives were made complete by it. Like anyone who got tired of responding one way when you feel another, enough was enough.

Since I came of age long after the ’60s sexual revolution, there was no “honor” or “virtue” in the status of being a virgin. I read the breakout books of the next generation, notably Fear of Flying. It’s appropriate that the word “Fear” came in the title, but Erica Jong’s character was not afraid of sexual contact. I saw, in reading, only women who were frustrated by being unfulfilled by unimaginative sex partners, by stultifying marriages, by being defined by a stereotype of female sexuality with no encouragement for them to express their true sexuality. I saw women who knew what they wanted sexually, who were bold enough to seek it, who still retained the vulnerabilities of being human but were made more complete — even powerful — by the completeness of their sexual experiences. This was before the onslaught of memoirs, and before memoirs ventured into incest and sexual abuse. Even when sex was hurting women, the “recovery” part of their stories seemed to include a road to sexual completeness. When memoirs entered the territory of sexual excess, it wasn’t always the case that sexuality was hurting women. Women were now powerful: the sexual surrogates, the dominatrix, the sex workers, portraying their careers enthusiastically without claiming to be victims.

Then using delight in sex became many women’s way of expressing themselves on every topic. It seemed as though one had to reveal how lusty or orgasmic they were no matter the subject being responded to. Pretending anymore was no longer an option for me. I started to get bitchy (if I even joined a Facebook thread), but there’s no isolation like hiding what you really feel (or don’t feel).

Something Wrong with Her is many things at once: an investigation of your sexuality and sexual history, an analysis of past relationships, an excavation of your journals and stories, a performative memoir…It’s also in many ways a collaborative love story — your lover/friend Mark becoming not just your frequent addressee but also a participant in the writing of the book. Why was it important that Mark become a co-author in certain moments?

The true importance of having Mark participate in the book was a lucky (but predictable) side effect to how natural it was that he should be included. Earlier on, every time Mark responded to something I told him about writing the book, usually a remembered event or person I was focusing on, his responses — question or comment but frequently both — would alter and add to where I thought I was going with all of this. With his written comments (in email) being not only enough to prod me, affect me, change me as I wrote, but also so thoroughly him in character, it almost seemed a shortcut to include him in his own words than to try to describe and characterize him. Besides, he was participating in the book, and it was a book “meant to be read while it was being written,” so how could I not include Mark while and in the ways in which he participated? The final way being to proofread a finished draft and comment on anything more that provoked him. Or maybe that’s not even the final participation, as Mark expressed things in his genre when he played the featured saxophone solos for the jazz suite that was commissioned to accompany this book.

Mark says: I had wanted to tell her what I was thinking for 30 years. Having it be important enough to put into a book, and then to even share in shaping that book, was, at the same time, like a fantasy and as natural as the first email, when I said “Some things have happened that I want to tell you about.”

If the book is one “meant to be read while it was being written” — and, it seems, is still being written, as it’s being read — I’m wondering how you see this kind of approach, which seems to resist interpretive closure, in relation to the formal demands of the memoir, given that the genre seems to necessitate closure of some kind. In particular, how do you see your memoir departing from other memoirs of sexuality and sexual abuse, which so often (as you note above) end in sexual completeness and sexual fulfillment?

Yes, and they also usually end in some kind of new self-understanding, new self-acceptance, new way of approaching sexuality — some form of emerging on the other side of whatever experience it was. On the one hand, I can understand a notion that one ought not write a book until a vital experience or phase of life is complete so that the author/narrator can have the distance to see the whole picture. On the other hand, for me, there was no way to “complete” the experience of anorgasmia. Plus, more importantly, the process of writing the book itself was part of the experience, maybe the most important part of the experience, since without the probing, without the going back to find then discuss it with Mark, so many of the ideas and almost-answers I did discover would have never been there for me to have distance from to put into a big picture, as unresolved a big picture as it may still be. Female sexual dysfunction is almost a non-experience, the opposite of an adventure that you have, then process, then write about. Maybe I also see writing — in the circular, obsessive way this book was written — to be somewhat the opposite of idealized sex, which suggests one shouldn’t be clogging things up with thinking but just doing. I don’t know about closure. I think it’s something we’ve invented to pacify the realization that stress and anxiety and fear and regret are part of being an adult.

In an essay on The Rumpus, you point out the ways in which (certain kinds of) sexuality and sexualization are culturally privileged, rendering stories like yours invisible. The asexual community, which (largely) defines an asexual as someone who does not experience sexual attraction, has done a lot of political work around divorcing asexual experience from sexual dysfunction; and around validating asexuality as a legitimate sexual identity and viable lifestyle. My agenda here is not to suggest that you are/could be asexual — rather, I am wondering what connections you might see between asexuality/asexual politics and your relationship to sexuality and sexual politics.

I don’t think I was trying to carve out a definable identity of the anorgasmic that can be duly recognized and take its place alongside other recognized identity groups. Forming groups as such seems to have a political reasoning, as you suggest, and I’m not sure my relationship with sexuality is political. True, culture in general sets aside the asexual if every message — about anything — is based on sexual desire and desirability. Even the weather channel has girls in sexy dresses telling us the forecast. But the same could be said about obesity, or other forms of being classically unattractive — sexual culture has to ignore them. Except, no, they are bombarded by a part of sexual culture — advertising — in that it is assumed those groups have a hunger to join the culture of the “sexy.” That’s why I am uncertain where I belong. Do I wish I were different than I am, sexually? This would mean I view my sexual identity as being inoperative or malfunctioning, rather than my sexual identity simply being different from the culturally privileged one. And yes, the title of my book, in fact, puts my attitude there. And if my “problem” is rooted in personal psychology — without a sound traumatic reason — then there’s not even the “victim” group to give me political posture. Basically, I was in what felt to be a terra incognita, isolated. Perhaps asexual individuals likewise lived in a similar kind of isolation and could band together with the sexually dysfunctional the way the gay and lesbian communities banded with the transgender community. It’s related but not exactly the same..

Basically, my relationship to sexual politics is that I wanted to stop pretending, and finally said, “Hey, what about me!” That sounds like a conclusion many different identities have come to.

Your comment about not being in the “victim” group here seems important. I listened to your radio interview on “Ask Dr. Love” with Dr. Jamie Turndorf, and I was struck by her urge to read your narrative through the lens of trauma and victimization — something you resist quite strongly in the book, and continued to resist during the interview. What is at stake when it comes to understanding your dysfunction as rooted or not in trauma?

One thing immediately at stake for me is Mark. If I were to cry “victim,” then he would be one of the victimizers. No, this isn’t like an awful Harlequin romance where a woman falls in love with her rapist. We weren’t rapist and victim, we were two kids. He was as scared and inexperienced as I was. I don’t know what it’s like to be an 18-year-old boy filled with so much urgency, feeling the pressures and influences and expectations he got from his environment. He was clumsy, he was overzealous, he was following cues he’d seen and heard, even taunts he’d received about incompetence. The same thing might have turned another girl off, made another girl laugh, led another girl to acquiesce, and another girl to show him a better way. But I panicked, then spent years obsessing on my panic. That alone has to be half the problem.

I say this in full cognizance of the football-team rapes and drunken-party rapes filmed on cellphones, passed around, and the victim further punished. Perhaps there’s more behavior like that in recent years because of what their culture has taught them about their status and entitlements. Unlike the first boy I’d gone with, Mark stopped as soon as I bolted. Dr. Turndorf was right about that first boy who played rape games. Just my bad luck that I was so skittish to start with, and then had him as my first boy-girl experience. Mark never had a chance for anything but disaster.

You spoke in the interview of the tremendous shame that women with anorgasmia and FSD experience in a hypersexual culture, and this is something you address in the Rumpus essay as well. The words themselves — anorgasmia, dysfunction, frigidity, “something wrong with her” — seem to droop with negativity. Is there any way to look at FSD or anorgasmia in positive terms? What if we were to consider these experiences of sexuality as simply more examples of sexual diversity rather than more examples of bodies that need to be “fixed”?

A person born with no legs — like the Olympic runner from Australia — may be an example of body diversity. But a person who experiences a spine injury and becomes paraplegic … would he or she dream of a fix? So, yes, I would see asexuality as sexual diversity. And I admit, something must have been missing from me from the beginning because the fabled “curiosity” that is supposed to drive girls, or whatever physical urges are supposed to overwhelm us in puberty did not happen. Which helped feed my fear when faced with my earliest intimate situations which led that first boy to report on my inadequacy to his friends. Which fed my sense that something was wrong with me. There seems no way out of this circle. Nurture or nature? Which one do we fix?

There are a number of recent or forthcoming books that seem aimed at exploring sex from less, well, “sexy” perspectives. A book by Sophie Fontanel called The Art of Sleeping Alone has recently been translated into English; in the academic world, queer theorist Annamarie Jagose has a new book called Orgasmology that, among other things, considers the fake orgasm to be a productive and valuable invention (as opposed to merely a symptom of sexual repression or bad sex), and Benjamin Kahan has a forthcoming book titled Celibacies. Meanwhile, asexuality is starting to get attention: there’s Anthony Bogaert’s book, Understanding Asexuality, the first on the subject, and my own co-edited volume Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives, due out in March. Where does your memoir fit into all this? Are we entering a new cultural moment for thinking about sex?

I’d like to think we are, and I’d love to be part of it. I was never really part of any of the other transformative moments concerning sex, and I so wondered why it was all happening outside of the bubble I apparently lived in. As I mentioned, the sexual revolution of the 60s was before I could’ve participated (although many precocious children my age might’ve been there for that). Then the feminist/sexual-liberation movement in the ’70s, spearheaded by Betty Dodson, famous for her group techniques with nude women sitting in a circle with mirrors, learning how to masturbate. Even when Nancy Friday was collecting narratives of women’s sexual fantasies in the ’70s and ’80s, I couldn’t have participated; my personal fantasies were unambiguously physical comfort, not sexual abandon or curiosity. Meanwhile, by the early ’80s, my fiction was being labeled transgressively sexual. But in my fiction there was almost always a joyless or otherwise grim tone, and the sex fraught with various forms of dysfunction I’ve not experienced — from violence to power transactions, from cold objectification to punishment, and sometimes just a garden-variety warped search for validation.

But part of me is skeptical of the atmosphere changing in a good way. When I was in my 20s and 30s, I thought someday the progressive political values I and everyone I knew held would prevail, because “we” would come of age as far as leading the country, and the racist, religious, classist attitudes would dwindle into a minority. What a disillusionment. Mainstream culture has come a long way in incorporating ideas and attitudes of gay and lesbian sexuality into its love of “sexiness,” but a person who doesn’t crave or hasn’t ever really enjoyed (or even fears) sex? What can this culture do with that? The books you list show there are pioneers out there, and, again, I’d be beyond honored if I were to be considered among them.

 

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Book

Cris Mazza Something Wrong With Her
Jaded Ibis Press

‘Something Wrong With Her turns away from the bogus story of what’s sexually ‘hot’ to finally tell the story of what’s real and human: the other bodies who don’t fit into this culture of idiotic faux sexual excess. By articulating the chronicle of her own body, Cris Mazza successfully seduces us into questioning the libidinal fictions we’ve been telling ourselves about our own bodies. Beyond brave writing.’ — Lidia Yuknavitch

 

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Excerpt

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. Lucius Rex asked me to thank everyone who talked about the post in your comments on his behalf. ** James Bennett, Hi. Evil Stick won, I think. I’m so happy that my fave books are finding favor with you. I liked things about ‘The Witch’. I think he probably should have stuck to making sequels for it. Honestly, I hated everything about ‘The Lighthouse’. As someone else basically here said yesterday, it was like bad theater. It was like Eggers found some rejected first draft Sam Shepard play in a garbage can and filmed it then tried to smother that into something goth-y and trendy with the most standard fare overstylized after effects in post-production like he was Tim Burton who’d smoked too much weed. Not to mention the sad spectacle of the once talented Willem Defoe cranking his long since gentrified schtick up to 11. And Robert Pattinson doing his hundredth slight variation on ‘beleaguered and mopey guy’. That so many people thought ‘The Lighthouse’ was anything more than that made me really depressed. So, there you go, haha. Nice: Italy. Venice is a dream. I imagine you’ve been there before. It’s been a total pleasure for me meeting you and getting to talk with you too. Enjoy the spoils of the south. ** kier, I think you made a toys post for the blog a million years ago if I’m not mistaken? Yes, we conferred on FB, and everything seems great. Thank you so much, pal. I’m happy you’re making the best of your Swedish options. And your two week install is going to pay off amazingly, you know that. I send you French kisses, which actually aren’t as raunchy as non-French people think. ** Steeqhen, Hi, S. It was wonderful: the poem. Cool to hear that backstory. I still haven’t beaten the Mario Party giant scissors boss who can kill Mario with one stab but the week is young. Victory will be yours and mine. Nice headphones. I only wear mine when I’m sitting at the computer so I think I’d feel decadent if I upgraded. But maybe not. Hm. ** jay, Hi. Lucius did a helluva job, yes. Is it not ‘gay’ to like yaoi? Is being properly gay that boring? Rhetorical question. At least over here, wall text makers are suffering from some kind of mania that makes them want to retrofit every artwork throughout history with an overriding intention on the artist’s part to examine their gender and/or race instead of whatever the artist was actually doing. If I had to pick a fave Mann, I think I’d have to go with ‘The Magic Mountain’ maybe. Oh, Horatio. I owe him an email. Damn, I have to get my shit in gear. Thank you: Mario and I need both luck and an instant health recovery mushroom that I can’t buy because the doors of Bowser’s Castle are sealed shut and the shop is in Toad Town. Eek. Best to you and whoever your imaginary best friend is at the moment. ** Bill, I too so miss Toys ‘R’ Us. There’s a big one near where I live in LA that’s still sitting there empty with all of its signage and abandoned interior decor intact torturing passing drivers. I hope the weekend killed off the last of your ills and that you’re pricing out bottles of champagne. ** Charalampos, Happy week. Popularity is a fool’s game. Mm, no, I think I only have that one gifted book by a beloved. Other things, but I think he was the only big reader I was ever obsessed with. I had the titles first for a number of my novels. Let’s see … ‘Period’, ‘God Jr.’, ‘The Marbled Swarm’, and I think others. I think Dunce Codex is now back from the printers and ready to be born, from what I gather. ** Misanthrope, Okay, maybe that’s true, i.e. Bezos, Musk, and all those ever more disgustingly rich fucks at least. I’m a pushover re: GbV, obviously. There’s only one song among their billions that I don’t like. So I’m really, really a pushover. Any actual Mexican restaurant no matter how tight their menu sounds awfully good to me. ** James, Yay again for/to Lucius. So post-nasal drip is your Achilles Heel? Sorry, man. Oh, gosh, how cinema influenced my writing requires too huge an answer for the likes of a p.s. context. Like, a lot, like, thoroughly. How much I like a film usually depends on whether there are things in it that excite me enough to want to try to transpose them into written fiction. It’s mostly style and structure stuff, yeah, I guess. I think I agree about chocolate custard. I would say it’s noble but failed experiment. Oh, Car Seat Headrest’s success is due to the gayness of their audience? That’s interesting. I don’t think my mom was particularly wild about any of her sons, to be fair. One of us gave her a grandkid, and I think that made him the chosen one if she chose. ** Cletus, More cheers for Lucius. Lucius, they love you, bro. I didn’t even know ‘God Jr’ had an audible version. Yikes. Sure, excited for your new chapbook, of course! The holidays will be a puff of smoke soon enough. Hang in there. ** HaRpEr, I totally agree with you about the unbeatable preciousness of writing fiction. Right now I want to make films more than novels, but that only happened after dedicating myself to novel writing for a long, long time to the point where the collaboration and visualising aspect of filmmaking feels really fresh and challenging and novel writing feels like something I’ve conquered already for the most part. Not that I don’t want to write more novels. No, it wasn’t scary to start making films, partly because I have a collaborator who’s a more visually inclined artist than I am. But it probably helped that I wrote Gisele Vienne’s theater pieces for quite a while before film became a doable option, so I already had the interest in writing for physical beings and worlds that I couldn’t totally control. I’m sure I’ve said this before, but when I first discovered serious lit as a young teen, the vast majority of writers that excited me were dead, and I always imagined writing things that some kid in the future would find and be able to enter and appreciate without having to deal with a bunch of contemporaneous noise and factors surrounding the work. Oh shit, that Mike Kelley wall text is a horror. Mike would literally strangle whoever wrote that to death if he was alive. Jesus. ** Arla, Hi, Arla. Welcome! It’s really good to meet you. Sucks about the insomnia. Lack of enough sleep is my worst nightmare, or, well, one of the worst. You sounded totally cogent, if that helps. Lucky you and your sister to have had each other, obviously. And having had surroundings to run wild in. I play video games, and they’re kind of like jigsaw puzzles in a weird way, or the ones I like are. Thank you a lot about the blog. Please feel free to come and talk any time. It would be a pleasure. And I hope your year ends exactly as you wish it will. ** nat, I’d never heard of Evil Stick. I think maybe it was a UK thing? Or I was just out of it. I am thanking you on behalf of the shy Lucius. Shockingly fine! Nice, wow, that’s a fineness I will now hold out as a goal. I don’t know ‘Rejection’, but I’ll look into it. ‘The Proof’ is my favorite of the trilogy novels. See what you think. Good old soup. What soup? My go-to is split pea. ** Tyler Ookami, There are good ass smells if you’re in the right mood. Someone should make a documentary about Swifties in the style of ‘Heavy Metal Parking Lot’. Good luck with ‘Nosferatu’. I suspect you’ll need it. ** _Black_Acrylic, I accidentally live in the so-called fashion district of Paris, so I see an unusual number of celebs and tall, beautiful young people staring straight ahead and walking in a clomping manner down the street. Your hat stand looks like my bookshelf. But better. ** Lucas, Hi. There is the friend-seeing aspect of NYE, that’s true. Plus seeing what your friends are like when they’re shitfaced drunk. That’s kind of interesting too. Yes, March! My weekend was not a ton of stuff. Video game. Talked with my old pal John, an artist who also plays ‘Dad’ in ‘Room Temperature’. And I found out another ‘Room Temperature’ star, Chris, artist who also plays ‘Paul, the janitor’ is here in Paris with his family for Xmas, and I set up a face-to-face with him. Not much else. I hope your health is right as rain again. What a strange saying: ‘right as rain’. In what sense? ** Uday, Hey, U! Good to see you! I’m happy your rough time is history. Oh, re: the post: Basically, send the post as a text with indications of where any images, links, and videos go. Send the images separately as attachments. Also any links that aren’t in the text. I can assemble the post from that on my end. You can send it to me by email, or you can set up a google doc and share that with me. Or something like that. Does that make sense? I’ve been up to not a whole lot, I guess. Well, some writing and friends and this and that. The holidays are pretty quiet. Everybody’s out of town doing their holidays wherever else. What have you been up to? ** Okay. I have spotlit a very good novel by the very interesting and strangely under known veteran novelist Cris Mazza for you to take under your consideration today. So please do that, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Sixfinger
Sixfinger, Sixfinger, Man Alive! How Did I Ever Get along with Five?

 

 

Sheepish Walking Dog Toy

 

 

Evil Stick
A mother in Dayton, Ohio was shocked this week when she purchased a toy wand for her child at a dollar store only to find it ran not on unicorn hair but a picture of a child slicing her arm open. In fairness to the dollar store, the product was named ‘EVIL STICK’, though the pink lettering, fairies, swirls and snowflakes on the packaging ensured it would catch the eye of toddlers. The fact that the wand emits a cackling laugh when activated is probably permissible, the horrific hidden image less so. “It’s a picture of a girl slitting her wrists. I’m outraged over it,” mother Nicole Allen, who bought the toy for her two-year-old daughter. “I want to know how they think that that is suitable for a child. There was barbie dolls on one side and baby toys on the other side, and these were right in the middle.”

 

 

Mugen Peri Peri
Opening presents is a great feeling…why not replicate it forever? Mugen Peri Peri (Infinite tearing open) is the latest “infinite action” gadget that simulates the feeling of opening packages such as Fed-Ex envelopes, Pocky, and boxes. No money to buy packages to open? Have a shopaholic friend who just loves opening new boxes? Mugen Peri Peri is the solution to such addictions.

 

 

Classic Wrecks Beat Up Car Toy
Don’t give your child false hopes with a toy car in the form of a Porsche or Lamborghini. Be more realistic with this rusted 1984 Chevy Citation.

 

 

Slip ‘N Slide
The Slip ‘N Slide had a design that made people above a certain weight vulnerable to possible neck fractures. The original manufacturer, Wham-O, discontinued the product in the 1970s after three reports of broken necks. But after Wham-O was sold in 1982, the new owner brought back the Slip ‘N Slide, leading to additional deaths and injuries resulting in quadriplegia. Lawsuits brought the danger of the Slip ‘N Slide to public attention, and as a result the company stopped making the product, recalled products from retail shelves and issued a safety alert.

 

 

Capsule toys
… have been around for more than 40 years but the craze really took off in 2012 when Tokyo-based manufacturer Kitan Club launched its “Koppu no Fuchico” (“Fuchico at the edge of a glass”) product. This figurine of a woman wearing a typical office worker’s clothes, whose arms or legs were designed to hang over the edge of a glass, became an instant hit with adults. “We never thought of targeting children. Their numbers are dwindling and adults have more money,” said spokesman Seita Shiki.

 

 

Magic Monster
Up for sale is this bizarre “Magic Monster” toy. It takes two AA batteries. When you turn it on it rocks back and forth, the axe lights up and it plays “oh when the saints go marching in.” Best of all, the face moves around and becomes distorted which is absolutely mesmerizing (do yourself a favor and watch the video on the website mentioned later- I can’t paste the url on this listing) The box is a little beat up but it works great and is in great shape. I believe it was made in 1985 but I can’t confirm that.

 

 

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Lego. Obóz Koncentracyjny

 

 

27876

 

 

The Strange Change Machine
This “electrical toy,” manufactured in 1967 is actually but a small hot plate or heating chamber of sorts. What this comes down to, essentially, is this: with a pair of blue plastic tongs (included), you would insert small red, yellow and green “capsules” into the heating chamber (and on top of the hot plate). As they heated up, the cubes would unfold in glorious slow-motion into, as the box copy reads, “Membrane Men, Fragments of Space Creatures… Crawlers… fliers… Skeletons of Human Types…. Mummies… Robots.” This Mattel invention also came complete with a “compressor” on the red heating unit so you could crush the 16 hidden wonders back into their original cube forms and start all over again. The box implored kids to: “CREATE ‘EM! CRUSH ‘EM! and CREATE ‘EM! AGAIN AND AGAIN In the STRANGE CHANGE MACHINE.

 

 

Toy Murderers

 

 

Fighting Ear of Corn

 

 

Harry Styles Toothpaste Topper
Brush the Watermelon Sugar off your teeth with this Harry Styles Toothpaste Topper! Comes with 4 caps to fit all major brands of toothpaste. Fits Crest, Colgate, Arm&Hammer, CloseUp, Aim, and more.

 

 

Marx Toy Soldier Casualties
I first remembered these toys during a conversation, some recent years back, with a friend of mine who was going through a seemingly inexplicable, plastic dinosaur freak-out. The discussion set my mind to ruminating over my own childhood’s crappy plastic dinosaurs, cowboys and Indians, and army men. I voiced having once had some WWII figures that included both American GI’s and Germans. Not only that but *dead* Germans and wounded Americans. My friend was dubious of this assertion, not daring to believe that a toy company of the time would have made anything as heinous as a wounded American GI – but my mental image remained – I knew it to be true. Were they a rarity, manufactured by some weird, little company? A few creative eBay searches later and I am rewarded. There they are and more than I had remembered: the stretcher bearers with patient, the crawling wounded Marine, the injured soldier slung over a compatriot’s shoulders, the shot soldier with his flapping helmet and dropping pistol.

 

 

Toy from feudal era Japan. This toy tiger is animated by placing it against a wall and fanning it, causing it to skip and jump.

 

 

Cinema of Fear
Cinema Of Fear was a toy line of action figures, plush dolls, “screen grab” dioramas, and limited edition toys based on New Line’s horror franchises: Friday the 13th, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Rob Zombie’s Halloween II remake.

 

 

Ryan Sheckler Omnitech Skateboard Figure
The Ryan Sheckler Omnitech Figure is the most realistic skateboarding action figure ever made! Instead of holding on to your action figure, the patented Omni Tech handle allows you to take your hands off the figure and flip, spin, and grind the board in any combination.

 

 

Coarse Toys
Mark Landwehr and Sven Waschk started Coarse, a company that creates resin and vinyl toys, both and small and life-size. Up until now their toys, like most toys on the market, have remained inanimate (and I don’t just mean battery-operated). Their latest release, however, breathes new life into the world of toys, literally. The project is called Oops, and it arrives on your doorstep as a seven-inch embryo. There’s a whole line-up of embryos to choose from, iconic Coarse characters in their most infantile state so fans can experience the birth, growth and eventual death of their favorites. The embryo starts out as a spore and then becomes a shoot, then a fruit and, finally, flesh. Once it has reached this stage it emerges from its protective pod and life begins.

 

 

Moon Shoes

 

 

Toy Piano

 

 

Shimajiro Toilet Training Tiger
The Shimajiro Toilet Training Tiger videos feature an animated tiger struggling with potty training and his animated personified waste. The accompanying toy attaches to the toilet paper roll holder and yells out encouraging phrases while you go.

 

 

Hpp&Lgg; Brand funny scary nausea alien model luminous large maggots toy

 

 

Remco Baby Laugh-a-Lot Doll

 

 

Remote-Control, Hopping, Yodeling Lederhosen
The Remote Control, Hopping, Yodeling Lederhosen is a pair of toy Bavarian trousers that stand 6.25 inches tall and are controlled by a plastic knockwurst remote. The trousers will hop around the room while yodeling. It runs on three AAA batteries and sells for $19.95.

 

 

Baby in a Mircowave

 

 

Tuttuki Bako Finger Game
Tuttuki Bako Finger Game is a small box with a screen that begs you to stick your finger in its hole and see what happens, and although that would normally be a terrible idea the Tuttuki Bako makes poking around fun again! Each stage features something you interact with by poking it. Stick your finger in the box and a digital representation appears on the screen mimicking your motions. From what we can tell the various stages of the game include terrorizing a tiny stick man, poking a girl in the face and flicking a tiny panda.

 

 

Remco Toy Drive-In Theater
We can all bewail the loss of drive-in movie theaters, but perhaps some of our more enterprising readers will invest in a theater of their own. This Remco toy might be a little smaller than you were thinking, but here’s a drive-in theater that’s ready to go… no messy dealings with movie distributors, and no cleaning up after your little plastic patrons. For just south of a thousand dollars you can pick up this mint boxed toy drive-in from 1959. It includes toy cars, changeable movie marquees, and most impressively it has a built-in projector for showing filmstrips taken from actual movies.

 

 

Piglet Weapon
A mother who killed her three-year-old daughter by suffocating her with a Piglet toy is facing life in jail. Mum-of-four Helen Caudwell, 42, murdered Bethany in October with the Winnie the Pooh character. She had led a double life, convincing two men they were the girl’s father. Caudwell, of Stockport, was convicted at Manchester Crown Court despite claiming she had been suffering an “abnormality of the mind”.

 

 

Statue of Liberty is Too Free
One of Japan’s newest toy lines features the Statue Of Liberty feeling all kinds of free, just like a real life lady! She lounges around looking at her tablet, bends over backwards in some sort of Yoga position and generally defies the stereotype that she’s a big stiff.

 

 

Space Shuttle Columbia Kit

 

 

(0-0) Toys Ltd.
New line of knitted, stuffed toys for Fall 2015

 

 

Jarts
Lawn Darts were a game from a simpler, more naive time. Sure, they could embed themselves in your little sister’s head just as easily as the lawn, but they were fun. Now they’re back. They’re back thanks to the unfortunately named Jarts In Your Heart web site, which sells the banned items thanks to a little bit of legal gymnastics. You see, since lawn darts (or “Jarts” as they’re known here) transform so easily from an innocent backyard game into deadly weapon depending on who’s holding them, Jarts In Your Heart has to sell the plastic fins and metal tips separately. Sad.

 

 

God Jesus Robot
This strange all knowing Japanese toy debuted in the 80’s and answered your questions in a magic 8-ball style.

 

 

Easy Out

 

 

Kaba Kick
Now children can reenact the famous Russian roulette scene in ‘The Deer Hunter,’ thanks to The Kaba Kick! How does The Kaba Kick work? Pull the trigger and find out! You earn points if nothing comes out. If a pair of pink hippo feet come out and kick you in the head, then you, my friend, have just lost.

 

 

DRAMAtical Murder Seragaki Aoba 1/7 Scale Character PVC Action Figure Collectible Model Toys 26cm

 

 

Potato Chips Tank Scary Prop Toy
Do you want to be the superstar during the party? If do, this toy will be your best choice. Carrying this, you will be the most horrible, insane, and the king/queen of scare. You can carry it on parties, masquerades, birthday parties and wedding occasions. Carry this and feel the fun. It is suitable for girls.

 

 

Dangerous Popsicles
Would you lick a popsicle if it was in the shape of a deadly virus or bacteria such as HIV, MRSA, E. coli or the chicken pox? Designer Wei Li created popsicle sticks, which she calls Dangerous Popsicles, in the shape of these viruses to see if a person’s preexisting knowledge of something would effect the way they perceive something else. “You look at the popsicle and you are intrigued by what it will taste like,” Li told the Daily News. “At the same time, your brain is bringing up all of these other associations.”

 

 

Pull Toy
by Monty Monty

 

 

Charles Ray ‘Firetruck’
Best known for his sculptures of almost imperceptibly altered, or wildly exaggerated, familiar objects, Charles Ray creates mesmerizing, disorienting works that challenge perception. With Firetruck (1993), for example, Ray enlarged a toy Tonka truck to the proportions of an actual fire truck and “parked” it in front of the Whitney Museum in New York. From afar, Firetruck looked real. It was only upon approach that viewers saw that it was not.

 

 

Murder Nova Slot Car

 

 

________
Swing Wing

 

 

KFC Chicken Keyboard & Mouse
Because fried chicken is the greatest thing in the history of the world, and considering Japan is from the future, it’s surprising they got their first KFC only 30 years ago. To celebrate that anniversary, the franchise is currently holding a contest on Facebook and Twitter with probably the most amazing prizes ever. The first prize is a KFC Original Keyboard – a specially-designed keyboard that looks like a KFC plastic tray with lots of chicken on it. Every single key has been designed to have a chicken drumstick, a thigh piece, or a chicken wing sticking out of the key. Although the actual definitions of the keys are in white next to the keys, for the most part, it’s a sea of chicken, with only the letters “K”, “F” and “C” as actual letter keys. The KFC logo replaces the Windows key and the keyboard also comes with a miniature Colonel Sanders standing by, as well as a KFC milkshake and a KFC bucket on the edges. If that’s not good enough, you could also hope to walk away with a signature KFC wired PC mouse, which is shaped like a chicken drumstick, or a USB memory stick, which has a USB connector hidden in the middle of the plastic chicken piece.

 

 

Incriminating Lego
Lucille Johnson, 78, was strangled and beaten to death in her Salt Lake City home in February 1991. The murder has been unsolved for the last 23 years. Last year it was reopened and investigators made a breakthrough with DNA found on some Lego toys taken as evidence from the house linked them to John Sansing, 47, a convicted murderer. Fingerprints on the toys matched that of Sansing’s juvenile son. Police believe the boy was playing with the Lego in the house when Sansing killed Mrs Johnson. Sansing is currently on death row in Arizona for the murder of a church worker who was delivering a charity food package to his family.

 

 

Pop it Pal
Everyone has their own unique obsession and this obsession is the pickers dream toy! The Pop It Pal™ is made of skin safe silicone with an all natural puss that simulates the popping of a huge pimple! Every Pop It Pal™ comes with 15 pimples ready to be picked the minute you receive it.

 

 

____________
Galton Board
The Galton Board is a 7.5” by 4.5” desktop probability machine toy. This delightful little device brings to life the statistical concept of normal distribution. As you rotate the Galton Board on its axis, you set into motion a flow of steel beads that bounce with equal probability to the left or right through several rows of pegs. As the beads accumulate in the bins, they approximate the bell curve, as shown by the yellow line on the front of the Galton board. This hands-on Galton Board allows you to visualize the order embedded in the chaos of randomness.

 

 

_______
Deer Ride

 

 

Rupert’s corpse
Last night, Rupert, joey of Rowena the toy kangaroo, was badly mauled and mutilated. By the time we found him, he had severe facial trauma and half an ear missing. My plastic surgery skills weren’t up to the task, so unfortunately, we had to pronounce Rupert dead.

 

 

Toy Tank
A visitor looks at artist Amy Cheung’s full size wooden ‘Toy Tank’, which visitors can climb into and operate, at the ‘Hong Kong Eye’ exhibition at Saatchi Gallery on December 4, 2012 in London, England.

 

 

Scary Car for Children
This toy car is not good for child as they may scared of it…. But this cool baby is so brave that he rides of that car…

 

 

Pachi Pachi Clappy
One handed clapping is now ridiculously easy thanks to the Pachi Pachi Clappy toy, the toy that does all the clapping for you! Pachi Pachi Clappy has two “big soft squishy hands” on top and a funny lil’ face in front, so you can carry your own private cheering section around with you wherever you go!

 

 

Marx Whistling Spooky Kooky Trees
1960s. 13″ tall tin litho with soft plastic simulated leaves on top. Wonderful design and actions including whistling sound, moving leaves, eyes move up and down, mouth opens and closes, arms move up and down and bump and go action. Works well. Dark brown variety. Scattered light wear with a few small scratches here and there. VF appearance. In the top ten of battery toys.

 

 

Monster Science Colossal Water Balls
This recall involves marble-sized toys that absorb water and grow up to 400 times their original size. They were sold as Monster Science Colossal Water Balls. Monster Science packages contain eight balls and “Growth Powder.” The balls were sold in an assortment of blue, green, orange, purple, red, yellow or clear colors. Many children ingested the delicious-looking toys, which their genius designers made capable of expanding within a child’s body. Woe be to those who also choked down the ominously labeled “Growth Powder.” From there they caused life-threatening episodes of vomiting and dehydration. To top it all off, these things were impossible to X-ray and required surgery to remove.

 

 

Junkie Jane

 

 

Ooze It
Here is one of the most obscure 1970s toys ever. It is made of latex and does get filled with a type of syrup. Ooze it was thought up and designed by a family in Metairie, Louisiana and produced overseas in Hong Kong. Oooze It Incorporated produced only this toy that has become its “one hit wonder”. Ooze It is so incredibly rare that only 5 are currently known to exist at the present time.

 

 

Lucky Dog Unchoken
If money is burning a hole in your pocket, then let it burn a hole in this pooch’s powerful digestive tract instead. Just pop a coin in his greedy gaping mouth and watch as he eagerly snaffles it up. His wide eyes dart about, his tail starts to wag and his hind legs begin quivering frantically as he spins round, squats and “deposits” your cherished coin into the box beneath him.

 

 

Am I Like Father

 

 

Supply the whole person pen inserted Funny Tricky Toy Toy murder the entire human voice Toys

 

 

___________
Pretty Death
This Chinese toy noose doesn’t just defy logic; it pummels it, leaving it doubled-over wondering what the hell happened. Hopefully the rationale with this bejewelled rope was inspiring kids to be cowboys. Lassoing an imaginary horse is something I could possibly get behind, although even then the risk of accidental choking seems pretty high. But if this toy’s point is for kids to make light of suicide then I no longer wish to live on this planet.

 

 

Aqua Dots
Aqua Dots would seem inadvisable for little kids even if the toy didn’t release a date-rape drug when ingested. The thing’s basic component is small beads. Using a smart-looking applicator, kids arrange the beads on a grid in little crafty patterns. Then you spray the beads with water and, voilà, they fuse together. The finished product looks something like three-dimensional beady works of needlepoint. Kids love Aqua Dots! In Australia, where they’re sold under the brand Bindeez, they were named the country’s Toy of the Year. Let me say this again: Aqua Dots are small beads that look like M&Ms.; It’s kind of like a toy involving candy cigarettes, except that the cigarettes aren’t made of candy but tobacco. And they’re made of a date-rape drug. In a fantastic piece today, the New York Times’ Keith Bradsher explains how doctors in Sydney, Australia, spent a couple weeks getting to the bottom of the menace posed by Aqua Dots — leading to international recalls of the product, including one in the United States this week by the Consumer Products Safety Commission.

 

 

Upside-Down Vomiting Goo Will
Will from ‘Stranger Things’ goes from looking like a Mii to a Mii with a gaping wound where his mouth should be. Will apparently comes with a little Upside-Down goo accessory that can be jammed in his mouth. Note that Will’s hands look perfectly fine, thus ruining the effect.

 

 

Fantastic Gymnastics Game
This gymnastics toy is made by Hasbro and is known as the Fantastic Gymnastics Game, and features a guy that you spin around a high bar and then try to release him at just the right time for him to 1) land right side up on his feet, and 2) land within stripes within the landing pad for the most points. Assuming you’re with a group of people, this game will probably give you a lot of fun while you compete against each other for the highest amount of points.

 

 

Slashed Wrists
The Slashed Wrists are used as Halloween makeup, where you can stick the toy onto your wrists so they look like they were slashed. This toy only glorifies suicide and self-harming, and kids should not be exposed to those issues early on in their young lives. Suicide is a sensitive issue, which affects adults as well as young adults, even teens. It should not be made fun of or treated like it is just something that normally happens.

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. This weekend we have a solid treat in store, a guest-post created by a self-defined dedicated reader and non-commenter of this blog named Lucius Rex. They asked me to apologise for their not having gotten this post ready in time to have influenced your Xmas shopping. Please spend a portion of your weekend enjoying the catalog and wishing that such a discerning toy store existed, and thank you ever so much, Lucius. ** James, Hey. I owe a lot of my writing to what I learned from certain cinema, so I say your instincts in that regard seem correct. There was a time when you could safely guess that androgynous anime characters’ anuses smelled like ink, but now it’s anyone’s guess. Well, since when is gross a drawback? Btw, I did finally eat two custard donuts yesterday, one normal and one chocolate custard. The normal one was better. Well, a billion people would make the case that Taylor Swift’s songs are memorable, and we live in democracies where numbers rule, so fuck my opinion basically. Are there bands that are liked by gay people? I feel like most gay people only like solo artists. My mom would have disowned me and adopted you, which would have ruined your life, so it’s good she’s dead in that regard, I guess. You were indeed the first to comment. And the first to be responded to. So you got me fresh and still a little under-caffeinated. You’re welcome/sorry. ** Misanthrope, You’re a reliable pushover when it comes to The Doors. That I always keep in mind. Hm, I don’t think what Zuby said makes a lot of sense, but hey. Ah, Tex Mex, you bastard. Okay, no, was it good? ** _Black_Acrylic, Thanks for paying attention, pal. Huh, I’ll step into a Sephora and see if they have a Blackpepper tester. Rei Kawakubo: what a beautiful name, no? I actually saw her in person on my very street. My street hosts a few fashion show rooms, and one day I was walking along, and there was Rei Kawakubo standing in the doorway of one of those showrooms waiting for her Uber and dressed insanely in this crazed, multi-level outfit and looking like she was a billion years old, like a barely living corpse, but amazing. ** Steeqhen, Right, gasoline that makes sense. Good one. I liked your poem a lot. It’s a beauty. Perfect ending too. Kudos, sir. There are worse ways to watch the year die around you, for sure. I would never have imagined that ‘Trap’ was worth watching, so that’s interesting. Huh. Did you manage to conk out at 9 pm? 10 pm is my conk out time unless I have something better to do. ** jay, Hi! Golden rule: never read the wall texts that accompany artworks in museums. Title, artist’s name, maybe date, and that’s it. They’re always trying to turn something wonderfully mysterious into something disappointingly didactic. No sex in ‘Death in Venice’, that’s for sure. In the heads of its readers, all bets are off. You and your beau look very sympathetic. I think I’m going to steal that one comment: ‘The champion hat is giving trade’. Awesome about your great day! Mario had a successful day, but now he has to fight a giant pair of scissors, and I’m a little worried about us. ** Bill, Very interesting work: Enard. Unfortunately very difficult to actually watch. Thanks, I’ll check the interview and probably the book/soundtrack soon thereafter. I hope you have a very wide awake and nostrils-unimpaired weekend. ** Lucas, Hi! I’m okay. New Years Eve is the worst holiday in my opinion. But I don’t like drinking, and I don’t like parties, so my judgement is impaired. I’ll either ignore NYE or walk down and watch the Eiffel Tower fireworks. Send that poem to SCAB! I’ve never read Duras’ ‘The Easy Life’. Huh. Is that an early one? I’ll go check. Yes, I do have certain books that are sacred things to me, I guess usually if they were gifts from someone who really mattered to me at the time. I have this copy of a Martin Amis novel that was given to me by this boy I was totally obsessed with in the early 80s — I wrote my first good fiction work, ‘My Mark’, about him. And I don’t even especially like Martin Amis, but that book turns wherever I put it into an altar nonetheless. I think I should be here in early March, yes. I’ll get more travel-y once the film gets born, but that won’t be until April. So, yeah, it would be awesome to see you, of course! ** Diesel Clementine, Hi. Rammstein has a perfume? Why not, I guess. Does it smell like its name? Happy 25th birthday one day early! Well, I guess it depends on when you read this, but you get the point. Me at 25 … that would have been 1978. I was going to a lot of punk shows and writing a lot of poetry and I think I had Acid Reflux. Seriously about the theme of your party? Holy moly. Take pix. If the guests do it right, there should be a lot of dazed looking wallflowers. Which sounds like an ideal party to me. Don’t forget to get your passport!!!!!!! You’re going to have a gorgeous weekend for absolutely sure. I’ll be happy if mine’s just pretty. ** Måns BT, Hey, Måns! You are back! I’m totally fine, thank you. And thanks about the premiere! At long, long last. We’re relieved. I’m going to go out on a limb and say ‘Room Temperature’ is by far our best film, but you can judge. Xmas was kind of just another day, I guess. Quiet. A few unusually warm texts and emails and a phone call or two. Your aunt and grandma are awfully nice to give you my book. I had no idea Lukas Moodysson wrote a novel. Strange that it’s not in English. And very unfortunate. ’Gösta’, no, but I’ll see if I can stream it or something. Enjoy the partying aka the waning light of 2024. And slip some poem writing in there if the partying doesn’t make writing poetry seem like a hassle. Actually, poetry over party! That’s my advice. You’ll thank me for it. ** xoxo, Dennis. ** Darby𓃱𓃱, Darby with a ‘y’! And two giraffes or, wait, ‘giraffes’! I somehow think those perfumes you suggest must exist somewhere somehow. I remember ‘The Tin Drum’ being really good. And long. But good! The only normal movie I’m kind of interested in seeing in a theater is ‘The Brutalist’, but it’s almost 4 hours long so I’m almost sure I won’t. I hope ‘Nosferatu’ was fun. Everybody’s excited to see it, but I hated ‘The Lighthouse’ so much that I never want to see another one of that guy’s films. The custard did the trick. I want another one. What higher praise is there? Ooh, thank you for the gift! I’ll listen to it when I’m post-p.s. and need some personal interference. Have the best weekend! ** HaRpEr, We are of like-minds yet again. Yeah, I think the people recommending we exploit the ‘trans angle’ are thinking logistically about getting the film viral and not about what the film intends to be. It feels like most people these days are most interested in that kind of ‘success’ rather than artistic success. There’s very little longterm thinking. It’s a disappointing state. Or, yeah, even if they do actually think about a film, say, with particularity, it’s all about representation. But they mean well in their own way, I guess. I’m still a wannabe Rimbaud about things. Like you. Interesting: do you feel any loss at all in embracing writing over filmmaking? In the sense of giving up whatever ideas you might have had at one time about visualising your ideas? My dad wanted to be a writer when he was young, but he only ended up writing a few godawful rhyming poems before he became a businessman, and yet every time I saw him, he always told me how much greater a writer he would have been than I was. He was a trip. ** nat, Hi, nat. Wow, thanks for putting your considerable mind to the blog’s recent archive. Much appreciated. A lost writing year can end up seeming like a lost writing minute. No sweat. Been there, survived that. No, having a cover before the book’s content is written is not a problem, I can’t imagine. I’ve started with a title. Having a preset visual to work around is not really different, I don’t think? I’m happy you like Joseph’s novel, and I hope he saw that. ‘Pineapple Hole’, haha. I’ll ponder that. Everyone, nat has a present/puzzle for you that’s totally appropriate to the blog’s weekend theme. Take it away, nat: ‘saw another sex toy by the anus scent company today actually. I’ll let people here play roulette on what it is. here.‘** Okay. Be with Lucias’s curatorial gifts until I see you again on Monday.