This is the cover for Issue Six: Sacrifice. The image comes from the photo essay El Pasion en Iztapalapa by Cara Faye Earl, appearing in this issue. I sent this to our intern and she said Oh Jesus, it looks like we’re a Christian mag… are we a Christian mag?

What do you think? Too religious? Would the appearance of a cross preclude you from picking up a magazine? Why?

Just got back from the stock room and it seems Issue #2 is almost all sold out! Get yours before they’re gone forever! Issue includes contributions from Sam Weller, John McNally Jason Gregory, Molly Each and includes a somewhat out-of-place-but-good-nonetheless interview with Nelson George. Oh yeah, and it’s practically free.

{above image by Xenia Fink for the story “Bred in Captivity” by Ravi Mangla}

Did I mention we’re working on our new print issue? And did I mention that it’s got a stupid-ridiculous amount of talent in it? Don’t believe me? Do as Lavar Burton teaches by not taking my word for it and check out our tentative roster for our sacrifice themed issue.

A-hole in Germantown

Story: Mickey Hess

Images: Charles Bergquist

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Three Stories

Stories: Matt Bell

Images: Joseph Wood

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Ashore, An Island

Story: Jonathan Messinger

Images: Ghazal Hashemi

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Goodnight, America

Story: Jack Boettcher

Images: Daniel Lucas

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Baron Von Richtofen Flies Again

Story: Ryan Call

Images: Jenny Kendler

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Illusions [n2]

Story: J.A. Tyler

Images: owleyes

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The National Pastime

Story: Henry Ronan-Daniell

Images: Nathaniel Shannon

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A Very Compassionate Baby

Story: Anne Valente

Images: Chrissy Lau

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A Flawless Pick

Story: Ian Bassingwaithe

Images: Anthony Cudahy

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Our Lady of Guadalupe Needs a New Fight Song

Story: Jim Ruland

Images: Todd Jordan

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Bred in Captivity

Story: Ravi Mangla

Images: Xenia Fink

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How

Story: Roxane Gay

Images: Rose Wind Jerome

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Condominium

Story: Jimmy Chen

Images: Todd Fisher

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Claim

Story: Brandi Wells

Images: Yana Tutunik

Whew. That’s a lotta hooch. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to lose my mind for a week while we try to get this to the printers and back in time for AWP.

We tried to work with Russian artist Eika Dopulo for Issue Six but circumstances got the best of us and we couldn’t make it happen.We have resolved, however, to work with her in the very near future. Check out her behance and her flickr and imagine what could have been and what will be.

My brother, avid Mac disciple that he is, sent the above video this morning. He told me Annalemma should think about developing an application (cannot bring myself to say “app,” the word feels soft and wimpy on my tongue) for the iPad. Making one for the iPhone makes sense, I guess. Something like 65% of all content on the web is viewed with a mobile device nowadays (and I’m willing to bet that 90% of that content is Facebook related). But the iPad feels like such a colossal waste of money. What does this thing do that the iPhone does not? The e-book/reading feature is kinda cool, I guess, but it feels more like an afterthought than a primary function. The publishing world was asking for a savior and they got tossed table scraps.

What it boils down to for the magazine is whether or not what we do is accessible to people. I’ve always desired this magazine to be inviting to the savvy reader and first-timer alike, but with a $700 price tag I can’t see anyone buying this thing just for reading purposes.  It’s going to be owned by the tech elite initially and then, months or a couple years later, it’s primary function is going to sift through, or it will be a total flop.

I’m not really interested in being the first lit mag on the iPad. It would probably garner some initial press and a few people would find their way to the site and even fewer might actually subscribe. But if we created a revolutionary use for the iPad, beyond its original intent, then it would be a signal flair to the audience, to people like you and me.

Who can say with this type of shit, though. I’m the worst tech forecaster ever. What say you, Internet? Do you plan on buying an iPad? Are you excited about this thing at all? Or is Wired simply playing their role? Developing an application because they are expected to, not because it serves any purpose? There for the sake of being there?

(p.s. Someone neglected to mention that Wired’s creative director is a cyborg. Makes perfect sense though.)

Today’s Holiday in Cambodia day here at Annalemma and we’re hoping to get you more psyched on this zine of ours that you have ever been on any other zine in your life. Thus, excerpts:

From Greyhound Christmas by Al Burian

I had been curious to see what sort of person takes an overnight Greyhound ride on Christmas eve. Would there be exciting, sinister motivations for needing to leave town at such an odd time? But the answer, depressingly and obviously, is that it’s mostly born again Christians. This became clear within a few minutes of departure from downtown Chicago, when the first person, an elderly gentleman in a crinkled suit, whipped out a bulky, well-thumbed and thoroughly hi-lighted jumbo print Bible and began shouting praises across the aisles. I looked around for someone to receive my exasperated eye roll, but found no one. The entire bus was enraptured. Soon, Bible quotations and hallelujahs were flying back and forth between the aisles.

My instinctual reaction to loud displays of fervent proselytizing, of course, is to want to jump up and begin yelling counter-arguments in a louder voice. Fuck religion, as the song says, but in this case I immediately recognized that as an inhumane, culturally insensitive attitude, and also that I was hopelessly outnumbered. So, rather than yelling out Crass-style lyrics, I restrained myself and listened.

From Jumping Rope with Satan by Cassandra Lewis

My mother is mentally ill but refuses to undergo treatment.  The first time she was hospitalized she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.  However, another psychologist who met with her and later became my therapist said she believed my mother was misdiagnosed and should have been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia since my mother fails to return to reality, entrenched in delusions.  She’s been hospitalized, arrested, and incarcerated, blaming everyone but herself, refusing to accept responsibility.  It’s all a big conspiracy, of course.  She believes everyone is against her and either works for the mafia, the CIA, or Satan.

From A Christmas Fax from Dad’s Lawyer by Ryan W. Bradley

The clearest Christmas memory I have is waking up, my sister and I beginning to sift through our stockings while our stepdad prepared breakfast in the kitchen. We’d only started celebrating Christmas since our parents had both remarried.

We heard the fax machine downstairs whirr to life. It was from our dad’s lawyer, passing on a court order that my sister and I were to spend Christmas day with our father. We got dressed, hurried through opening our presents, and fumed by the window waiting for our dad’s Isuzu Rodeo to arrive on our street.

From Survival Recipe by Liz Grover

I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I went to Cambodia. I only knew that it was going to be difficult. My goal was to document what local activists were doing to protect street children from child sex tourists, indigenous tribes fighting to protect their dwindling rainforests, and women landmine survivors learning how to make a proud living through weaving, a tradition that was nearly erased during the dark days of the genocidal Khmer Rouge, Cambodia’s totalitarian ruling Communist Party of Kampuchia. Oh, and by the way, it was my first time visiting a country where massive genocide took place.

From My Justice for All by Todd Dills

“I’ve seen the frayed ends of sanity,” Edwin said, finally, pretentiously, as he marched off to the Silver Dollar’s bathroom.

“Me too,” I called after him. “Wasn’t that a Metallica song?” though I knew it was, from the classic …And Justice for All. Metallica was about insanity, after all, and more explicitly death. In their 1980s heyday they sought, however confusedly, to encapsulate living organisms’, man’s, inexorable and punishing route toward death in their hectic, unyieldingly pounding riffs. Death via war, via insanity and bad choices, via addiction, via chance in the chaos of human experience: the unfinished business of the bell, which on their second album they left up in the air, incomplete, but if you got the reference to Donne — and you’d have to be a Neanderthal not to — the implied finale was clear. Luck be damned. Time marches on. The shortest straw is pulled. That bell tolls for thee.

Remember: Limited press of only 100. Supplies will not last. Click here to order!

It’s finally done. And only six days late!

It all started last week, when I had to re-learn how to make a zine. I hadn’t made one since college.This was the Wednesday before last, when the iPad was getting announced. It felt real weird to be doing the most rudimentary practice of media distribution, while thousands of miles away, the “future” of it was being unveiled.

Prototypes. I did a shitty layout, then sent it over to Jen who typeset it beautifully. And for free! Big heart on that O’Malley.

It came time to print and I was having major issues. Printer was claiming I hadn’t loaded the paper properly or there wasn’t enough paper when I told it, repeatedly, that this was not the case. I contacted Epson, who was no help. I was having nightmares of having to take this thing into Kinko’s. Then I saw this red button. And what do you do to a red button? You press it. And the printer started working. That’s all she wanted, just to know that I was there, that I hadn’t forgotten about her. This is apparently the reassurance button.

And BOOM! You got yurself a zine. Not long after this photo was taken I did an email with The Cambodian Daily about this project. No joke. First bit of international press! Oh, and Yahoo users: did you know about this?

Festive table of contents.

Very happy with this one. Oh yeah, did I mention…

Red staples. It’s called attention to detail, people. Maybe you should look into it (this hubris does not apply to typos).

This zine’s dancing with talent!

Did I mention that we’re only print 100 of them and that orders are shipping now? Click here to buy!

We’re slacking a bit on this. I’m not entirely sure why I decided to have a deadline coincide with the printing of a zine. Guess I’m just ambitious and stupid like that.

If you are extremely eager to get your hands on this you can pre-order here.

Might not be a bad idea to pre order, seeing as 1) it’s for a good cause 2) it’s got a pretty serious roster 3) Two words: limited edish. We’re only printing 100 of them.

We’re shipping this Thursday, when we’ll also have a more in-depth blog post/press release/big hooplah about it. Anybody know where I can get my hands on a saddle stapler besides Kinko’s?

The deadline for our sacrifice themed issue has passed. Much like the science report in high school that you forgot about until the night before it was due, many of you waited until the last minute to submit work. I respect your eagerness to be published. Thanks to everyone who submitted. You’re efforts will not go unrecognized. I am recognizing them. Right here. Consider this recognition.

Now I have to go read 150 short stories in eight hours.

Happy Friday everyone. As a special present for making it to the end of the week, we give you the fruits of the HTMLGIANT “When Writers Get Off” contest. In retrospect, it may have been wise to choose a less confusing title to parody, but whatever, it makes for some good ol’ fashioned time wastin’ on a Friday afternoon. Thanks to everyone who submitted!

And now, Annalemma is proud to give you a work of classical literature that has been totally porn-i-fied. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you…

Finnegan’s Wank

force that through the green fuse drove the wildebeest in rear of the long bus with high seatbacks for high school play, untucked oxford shirt, corduroys unsnapped, downzipped to match her plaid skirt split thigh-wide, knees pinked, still drives me to wankshire, memory slick with swells of youth, yea, I was still a boy back then, virginia’s son, unlicensed but with mansome fingers, guitar-licking at the loudhouse, labial mimetics of miss winnie who would whimper first, a chorus, huff-n-hew, then lift me with her muttonbrooch, the niceliest mouthing of fist with slurp hole, oh, imagine the sound, how I would soak the buttoned cotton clean through. learned to launder by eleven, so dear mother, sweet saintly mami, immaculate cleanser of marriott and sheraton, would not know nor touch the spraycrust from breath slide, wring and bell-tongued ball (like wool-white plunge for heaven’s serf) of the selfsame girl who’d heave jameson at the freshman formal, but not before geyswerk beneath cloth table. we told ourselves no one could see, yet when discovered otherwise saw no need for disgrace, groan with willful eyes, glouch before mirrors, windows, open doors, like this one now, upon the aerie annalemma. finn’s splooge is yours.

- jesusangelgarcia

Mastabatoom, mastabadtomm, when a mon merries his lute, he tips un a topping swank cheroot, giving the Paddybanners the military salute, from out the belfry of the cute, to send more heehaw hell’s flutes, comming nown from the asphalt to the concrete, from the human historic brute, schwants (schwrites) ischt tell the cock’s trootabout, to traverse same above statement by saxy luters, and the Beer and Belly and the Boot, in spite of all that science could boot, like to ants or emmets wondern upon a groot, very largely substituted taker of the tributes, for render and prender the doles and the tribute, when rodmen’s firstaiding hands had rescued, the prettiest pickles of unmatchemable mute, when an explosium of his distilleries deafadumped all his dry goods to his most favoured sinflute.

Saddenly now. On a second wreathing, a celt, unwishful as he felt, was pelted (in pelted thongs), lugging up and laiding down his livepelts (birthday pelts), a lad’s thing to elter, and boundaried round with a twobar tunnel belt, where the poules go and rum smelt, and yet smelt the highstinks aforefelt, erning his breadth to the swelt, and devious delts, a bright tauth bight shimmeryshaking for the welt, and candlestock melt.

- William Walsh

Finnegan sat in the corner, spent.  He was sad now.  The softest part was always the hardest part. He spit on the ground and looked around.  He grabbed a dirty towel and weakly cleaned himself.  A big fart let loose from his fat ass. The magazine he used was called Phoenix Park, and Finnegan made a note to himself to remember the title.  It was a keeper.

The bachelor’s apartment only had one room, other than the bathroom.  The only sink was in the bathroom.  Finnegan kept a hot plate on a table near the only door in the apartment.  He occasionally cooked grill cheeses on the hot plate.  He had never cleaned the hot plate.  He owned two dishes, and he would clean them in the shower at the same time he showered himself.  He owned one fork, and cleaned it with spit.

Through the dirty window, Finnegan spied a bird flying.  He coughed once and turned away from the window.  He lay back and stared up at the ceiling, scratching his belly.  He imagined the two Asian girls he saw at drycleaner earlier in the day.  They leaned over a sink, each washing a shirt.  One was tall like a tree. The other was squat and short, like a stone.  They were both beautiful.  They were both perfect.  Each time he jerked it thinking of them, he felt closer to them.  Every day he felt closer to them.

Finnegan waited to get hard again.  It wouldn’t be long.

- P. William Grimm