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

Holy shit, did you know that the deadline for our first themed issue is this Sunday?!? It’s true. If you want to be in the print issue this time around you’d better get your stuff in soon. For the month of February and March we will be reading for online stories only. The shortlist is growing and there’s some impressive names on there as is, so quit monkeyin’ around and send in your A+ material. Today!

Head over to HTMLGIANT where the results for the “When Writers Get Off” contest have been announced. Congrats to Chris Killen for having the most depraved brain.

Annalemma and HTMLgiant are hopping into the sack together for a contest. Taking yesterday’s When Author’s Get Hungry contest, we decided to throw When Author’s Get Off. Go over to the Giant and turn your favorite book title into something ribald, titillating or downright pornographic. Winner gets an Annalemma Bundle. Contest ends tomorrow afternoon. And better bring your A-game, I’m already laughing my ass off.

Also we will be putting out the call for submissions for a collaborative piece named after the winning title.

Thanks to Jimmy Chen for getting the ball rolling!

Like setting sandbags against the portals for an oncoming flood, we’re bracing ourselves for the deluge of work on our next print issue. Which means a few months from now a giant semi truck is going to arrive at our doorstep delivering ten or so heavy boxes full of books. Our storage space is bursting at the seems. To empty it a little bit we’re giving you the opportunity of a lifetime:

Annalemma Issue #4 is on sale for half price! That’s $5 for stories by Joe Meno, Nick Ostdick, Thomas Cooper and many more. What else does $5 get you? Illustrations by Spanish illustration sensation Raquel Aparicio, photos by Simi Valley photographic inspiration sensation Alex Martinez, and an essay by Sam Weller about Kiss.

What are you waiting for? Forget that five dollar foot-long, spend your money on something that will last!

Our intern, Janelle Luce, has been helping me sift through the submissions box for a month or so now. I’ll forward her 10 or 15 submissions, she’ll read them, then send me notes, comments and her opinion as to whether or not we should publish something. One thing I didn’t know when I took her on was she had a knack for brutally honest comments and visceral reactions to the work. Here’s a few of my faves from the last few weeks:

– a hot mess. backwards town, like an episode of the friggin twilight zone

– ending is like, WTF? “This was a long time ago, when my journey was still beginning.” is there a sequel or something? I hope not…

-I do like that he gets his ass kicked in the end. I was happy about that, the snot.

-BLARGH! heavy-handed, wannabe Gabriel Garcia Marquez motherfucker, cool it down a bit

– OH GOD!! starts with a passage from the Bible

– ugh, just… ugh.

– I think this person was high or drunk when they wrote it, just look at the BS in the last paragraph, and the title? oh man.

– EWWW sexual encounter grossly graphic… come wiping and all.

– all surf jargon, which I wouldn’t mind if there were some context clues, brah.

– ugh. just trust me on this one.

Did you know that the deadline for Holiday in Cambodia is tomorrow?!? Holy shit, you better get your holiday story polished up right quick. Especially if you want to be included with the likes of Al Burian. That’s right, Al was good enough to submit a hum-dinger of an en essay that we’ll be posting an excerpt from in the coming weeks.

And in further goodness, Anne took some time out of her busy schedule to answer a few questions about her ongoing work in Cambodia.

(All photos courtesy of Anne’s blog)

Annalemma: How’d you first get involved with the young women in Phnom Penh?

Anne Elizabeth Moore: After Punk Planet shut down—partially due to new governmental policies that made it harder and harder to create your own media—I started investigating places that, like, accidentally allowed the government to have undue control over freedom of speech and yet were still considered democracies. Cambodia is seen as having the freest press in Southeast Asia, but still reporters are threatened, harmed, go into hiding, or are killed all the time. So I started reading about the country and came across this dormitory, the Harpswell Foundation Dormitory and Leadership Center for University Women. Of course, I’ve also always been a feminist because in America, in my opinion, as a woman you become a feminist or you decide to hate yourself, so when they invited me to come be a “leadership resident” I was like, of course! So I go to Cambodia, and was like, ok: no literacy, but a lot of photocopies. No respect for copyright law, but a desperate need to communicate. And a small window in this very traditionally gendered society that might allow us to self-publish without government retribution because, since we’re girls, we’re probably not seen as capable of real harm. (Anyway, I only do one thing in the world, right, which is pretty much make zines, so I figured I’d do it there.)

A: Had any of them written about themselves/told their respective stories before?

AEM: Lord no, that is pretty much considered a massive waste of time in Cambodia culture. You gotta remember, though, 99% of the artists in the country—including Sinn Sinsomouk, the recording artist from whom Dengue Fever steals all their stuff—were killed under the Khmer Rouge. Also, the intellectuals, the engineers, former government employees, and anyone who spoke a different language or wore glasses. So, creativity, access to certain skills, all this stuff that might allow them the time and energy and even idea to create their own media is not accessible to them in any way. Also, partially because of the Khmer Rouge regime and also because this is just the traditional way of teaching, students are taught via rote memorization to repeat back what is told them—this is how writing is taught. As you can imagine, the critical capacity that it takes to decide to write your own story isn’t easy to come by.

A: Has it been a positive experience for them?

AEM: I don’t know. They seem happy to see me, but I also know that their cultural teachings are very strong. I think at first they felt very self-indulgent, to be women and to demand space in culture to tell their own stories, much less to distribute them out around the city. I think they’re getting used to it though. After all, they’re aiming to become the first generation of women leaders in the history of the country, so they’re gonna have to start demanding space sooner or later.

A: You’re there right now, how have things changed for the women since your first trip?

AEM: Enormously. I’m still getting my head around the changes to this city, much less to young college women in a rapidly developing country. For one thing, they’re no longer fresh from the countryside. They’re now women of the world, and some have even traveled outside of Cambodia (Although, still not very many of them, as visas are almost impossible to get for most Cambodians). For another, the KFC’s been completed, and so official Kentucky Fried Chicken signs adorn every fucking thing in town, which is eminently less charming than the hilarious and delightful old Khmer Fried Chicken stand-by. “Globalization,”one of the girls said the other night, and she’s right. So, they’re more comfortable out in the big bad world, which is great, but there are less exciting things for them to explore, which sucks. Now that they’ve been to the legendary Kentucky Fried Chicken, why go to America? I mean, I’m being cynical, for sure, but I think this culture’s taken a real hit lately. As if the secret bombing campaign in the 1970’s wasn’t enough! Now KFC too?

A: What’s you’re overall goal with this ongoing project?

AEM: Well, I learned to establish a voice and presence through self-publishing with very few resrouces, and my original goal was to simply see if that translated. It did, but now I guess the question is, what do we want to say with that voice? Especially when fear of governmental or peer retribution runs so high? I think that’s what we’re struggling with now, as we talk about how to proceed with this work. Can we be both strong and safe? People who speak up–the amazing Mu Sochua is just one example–are getting in a lot of trouble right now. So, as the Cambodians say, we go step by step. Step by step. They say it in a much cuter accent than I do, however.

A: You’ve remarked on your blog that there’s an inordinate amount of giggling that occurs between yourself and these women during the times you’ve encountered them. Please explain.

AEM: Well for one, I am hilarious, most particularly to myself, but also, when you don’t share a common comfortable language, you tend to do a lot of things to express yourself. I do a lot of practicing my Khmer on passing animals, for example. Most imnportantly, though, the thing about these young women–for they’re definitely women now and not girls anymore–is that they’re exactly like young adults anywhere else in the world. They talk about boys, try on makeup, want to be pop stars when they grow up, and giggle about anything. It’s just that they started out in rice fields, or houses on stilts in the countryside, and their parents are all genocide survivors. It gives a little bit of a different understanding to a makeup tip when, 35 years ago, makeup in this country was literally inconceivable.

Thanks Anne! As for the rest of you, send those submissions in soon! Also, thanks to Ryan Call for pumping this project up on HTMLgiant and to Matt Bell for doing the same.

Now that the turbines of the new year are slowly howling to life, it’s time to remind you that the Holiday in Cambodia project is still happening. And the deadline is a mere 10 days away!

No doubt things have quieted down for you somewhat. The kids are plunked down in front of their new dopamine-releasing game console. Customers at work have stopped acting like outright assholes, now just disoriented, as if the Christmas monster truck had come up behind them, roared over top of them, the giant rear axle missing their skulls by inches. The world is generally asking less of you and there is nothing to do with this misplaced rage and overall unhappiness toward the holiday madness that we put ourselves through every year. But wait! There is something you can do! And it’s for a good cause!

Send us your story of the crazy holiday bullshit you had to deal with this year. Send us the story of your cousin calling his sister the c-word in front of everyone right before you all sat down to Christmas dinner. Send us your story of getting delayed seven hours in the airport when  you had nothing to do but flirt with the middle aged man with a cloud of black hair and a George Clooney chin, only to have his trench coated wife walk up on the both of you while you were giving him an amateur palm reading. Send us the story of walking in on your Pastor smoking weed in the bathroom.

These things happen. You need to express them. That’s what we’re here for. And we’re donating all the proceeds to helping young Cambodian women make zines!

Send your submissions to holiday [at] annalemma [dot] net. There is a submissions fee on a sliding scale. Login to paypal and click the ‘send money’ tab to the email address above, any amount you feel is fair. Try to keep it under 3000 words, please. True stories only. The only Santa Claus that should appear in your story is the one at Macy’s that smells of Christian Brothers. Bring it!

Hope the holiday break was as reinvigorating for everyone else as it was for us. My computer took a shit and I had to get it fixed, hence the crickets and tumbleweeds over in this little corner of the internet for the past week or so. It was nice to step away for a bit, but I did get the feeling like the world was jogging away from me while I sat in a lawn chair and sipped hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps. Time to get off my ass! Time to get off your ass! Time to catch up with the world! Time to jog up to it and goose it as you run by it, then run backwards to face it and give it the two-fingers-to-the-eyes-I’m-watching-you move and then turn on the afterburners!

So what happened while we were away?

Someone came up with the best idea I’ve seen in a long time: Oprah, Read This [via]

Some people unleashed a final avalanche of year end lists and this guy made the definitive one. [via]

Some stuff got expensive.

Some big guns came to the aid of a Chinese writer.

Or wait, was this the definitive year-end list?

What else…um, some asshole set himself on fire on a plane, that blue cat alien movie made a shit-ton more money, and Rush Limbaugh didn’t die.

Some randomness from my week without cyber drugs:

Oh hey, Lexy. Who are you gchatting with?

Oh hey, Steve. Why’d you just close that gchat window?

Walking home from the store we found a park. I said it would be a perfect place to throw a ball or a ‘bee around. Magically, these were on the bench, waiting for us.

I lit off fireworks and danced on New Years Eve.

I drank but did not get drunk. While the ladies were inside dancing, the men leaned against a strangers car and talked about relationships. The first New Years where I felt old. I did not feel good or bad about being old. Just okay with it.

We bought fish. Not for keeping…

But for releasing.

To start the year off with some good karma.

In hindsight I realize this could potentially be environmentally irresponsible, releasing a goldfish into an ecosystem that isn’t used to it. I imagine I’d have a tsunami of bad karma coming my way if I destroyed an entire habitat.

Shit. Need to think these things through more.

Oh well. Here’s to hoping they don’t tip the balance too much.

Before we bust out for the break, we’ve decided to leave you with a feature that I’m really excited about. Read Dawn Sperber’s If the River Men Take You. It’s a bit longer than some of the stuff we’ve been posting lately but it’s worth it. A fine story to ease you into the holiday.

Not sure what you have planned but we’re going to be spending as much time as possible in a warm bed chipping away at the book pile, eating very fatty foods with friends, sipping hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps, and pretending that we have the metabolism of a humming bird and that a walk around the neighborhood counts as enough exercise to burn off the excess calories.

We hope you’ve enjoyed the direction we’ve taken things this year and we hope to take the magazine in new and exciting directions in 2010. If you’ve been coming back here week after week and reading the stories we’ve been posting and feel that they’ve resonated with you somehow then we’d like to hear about it! Post something in the comments, it’s always nice to hear from the readers. And a big thanks to those of you that have commented on the stories. We hope the year is coming to a peaceful close for you and we all get the rest we deserve before we settle into the oncoming frozen months.

See you in 2010!

Thanks to anuragyagnik for the image.