Do get tripped out, in a good way, by Matthew Simmons’s forearm tattoo.

Don’t be a weirdo when you meet Matt Bell for the first time outside the Mercury Lounge. Yes, it’s strange when meeting internet friends i.r.l. for the first time. That doesn’t mean you can’t be a sociable human being.

Do enjoy the shit out of everyone reading at Vermin on the Mount, especially Amelia Gray. Favorite line of the night: “Speak softly and marry a big dick.”

Don’t be scared of this man even though he’s scowling at you from a hundred feet up.

Don’t tell everyone that you caught the early flight out so you could be there for the reading. It makes you sound like an obsessive nerd.

Do feel okay about this and realize that you are an obsessive nerd in a sea of obsessive nerds

Don’t feel bad when Aaron gets his whiskey taken away. He’d been warned.

Do form a band called The Crucible of Science and have this as album cover artwork.

Don’t be scared of Zach Dodson’s mustache. It’s a perfectly natural thing.

Do meet up with old friends.

Don’t try to understand this. There is nothing to understand.

Do learn that Peter Cole, Matt Bell, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Roxane Gay, Ken Bauman, Adam Robinson, Erin Fitzgerald, Jim Ruland, Lauren Becker, Alex Coates and everyone else you’ve met for the first time in real life turn out to be super rad people.

Don’t be depressed about the smallness of this world within which you dwell. If you wanted to make money you’d be at a real estate convention. If you wanted to be famous you’d be in LA.

Do realize that you do not want to be famous.

Don’t question yourself as to whether or not it was worth it.

Do realize that it was worth it just to meet people whom you respect and admire for the words that come out of their heads. It was worth it to feel the buzz of kinship that is diluted over fiber optic cable.

Annalemma Issue Six: Sacrifice officially ships today. Apologies for the delay, shipping software was being a fickle pickle. Click here to order. But first, please observe this primer:

A couple of homo sapiens are walking around in the forest, hunting for some wily beasts to fill the bellies of their women and children. They stumble upon a boar foraging for mushrooms, oblivious. They take aim with their bows and arrows shaped from twigs and tendons and kill it. They hoot and holler around the dead body of the boar. The hooting and hollering subsides and they stand above the boar, silent. They experience the emotion of guilt. Once back at the village, they proclaim to the women and children that they’ve murdered a living creature in order to live another day and that they must offer the creature up to the gods as a token of thanks, lest the gods think the villagers ungrateful and find reason smite them upside the head. And thus, the notion of taking a loss for the greater good, the notion of sacrifice itself, was born.

It’s hard to say that the human race has changed all that much since the concept was created. The last decade began with an act of martyrdom so primitive and barbarous that it couldn’t be mistaken for anything less than an offering of sentient life to an angry god. But the term has also taken on a new definition. Nowadays survival hinges not on the appeasement of deities, but on working an extra 20 hours a week without health insurance. Sacrifice pervades our lives, whether we’re the ones reaping the benefit or remitting the payment. Acts of selflessness and altruism evoke powerful feelings within us. We tend to raise up individuals with purpose beyond achieving personal gain. It’s with these thoughts that we put out the call for stories of sacrifice for our sixth issue.

Artists are a conflicted group when it comes to the theme of sacrifice. On the one hand they’re used to giving up comfort and happiness in the pursuit of a larger ideal. On the flipside, sitting alone in a room working on a story or a painting is one of the most self-indulgent activities one can engage in outside of downright masturbation. Contradictory as artists may seem, they’re experts on the subject.

Two questions kept surfacing in these stories: What are you willing to give up for your loved ones? What are you not willing to give up? We all like to think that we’d give up everything for our spouses, our siblings, our parents. But unless you’re forced to make that decision, you can’t ever really know. The answers to those questions offer quick insight to what a person’s really made of. It’s our hope that through these fictions you might find what your own answers to these questions could be and discover something about what makes you human.

Click here to order your copy.

Washington DC power group and friends of Annalemma, Bluebrain, just unleashed this video on the world. It’s an all-too-common story of what happens when your glass ball tear distributor gets caught in your steamship’s prop and you’re forced to detach your head to fix the problem. Excellent 3D and texture work by director Gabe Askew.

Our intrepid intern has a brother named Andy. He outputs under the name Visual Armory. Out of the kindness of his heart he sent me a little care package.

Why, whatever could it be?

Cards! Beautifully silk-screened inspirational cards!

Andy’s work boasts an attention to detail and a level of heart that shines through and will take him very far as an artist and a person.

I know who I’m sending this one to…

Thanks Andy. Your gifts warm my heart in a season of unending cold. Cyber hi-five.

The above is from Mark Weaver‘s Make Something Cool Every Day project. Check out his flickr page to see the whole set, each image more magnetizing than the last.

I know there’s a lot of you out there who make it a point to write every day and sometimes it feels like a job, that you’re just sitting there typing away at some bullshit because otherwise you’d feel lazy and unproductive. What if instead of telling yourself, “I’m going to write every day,” you tell yourself, “I’m going to write something cool every day?” Whatever the definition cool means to you, you write it.

I try to write every day. Sometimes it feels like a job. Like I’m just typing away at some bullshit because otherwise I’d feel lazy and unproductive. As an experiment inspired by Mark Weaver I’m going to stop telling myself, “I am going to write every day” and instead tell myself, “I am going to write something cool every day,” and see where that gets me. Go, Mark Weaver, go!

Thanks to Gia for the heads up!

Book cover design virtuoso Jim Tierney redesigned four classic Jules Verne novels, not for some reissue campaign for a big time publisher, but for his senior project.

Jim employs all sorts of whimsical, rarely-used cover design methods like die cut half jackets, spin wheels and translucent film.

The best part about these covers is you need only glance at them to get a potent taste of the adventure that lies within.

The worst part about them is that they are one of a kind. Hey Penguin! Get off your ass and mass produce these.

Click over to Faceout Books to read a short interview with Jim about the process.

Thanks to Danny J for the heads up!

I don’t know anything about this book but I’m already interested. When designing a book cover, this is the sentiment you’re trying to get out of a random book buyer. Caketrain not only nailed this requisite, but they just plain knocked it out of the park with Kim Parko’s Cure All. They’re getting their money’s worth out of Elene Usdin’s dreamy, haunting photograph. Full of movement and light, straddling a line somewhere between enticing and frightening. Well done, Amanda and Joseph.

Heads-up: Elene Usdin is unveiling her new show, “Femmes D’Interieur,” in Brooklyn this month. If you like this cover you should go check out this very talented French photographer.

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!

Stumbled upon UK illustrator and book cover design virtuoso  Adam Simpson and found his cover for last year’s Up a Tree in the Park at Night with a Hedgehog by Aussie writer P. Robert Smith. It’s rare you find yourself looking at a book cover for more than three to five seconds. This one won’t let you take your eyes off it until you’ve figured out what’s going on with every tiny Where’s Waldo-esque character. You are amazing, Adam!

Our intern reports from Miami. Take it away Janelle!

Art Basel was in Miami this past weekend and I just had to be there. Why? Well, I love Miami, I love art, I love a good time, and my sister was in need of some inspiration.

Can I be honest though? I say I love art, and I do, but I know very little about it. What I learned in humanities classes years ago is long gone and there were probably times this weekend I was ignorantly admiring advertisements like this guy…

And the idea of writing about art here made me anxious.

But it’s all okay. Thanks to my sister. She supplemented my slack-jawed appreciation with some solid facts and I ended up learning a few new things.

Shepard Fairey.

Os Gemeos.

You have to see this. Just because.

Art is forever evolving and I shouldn’t have assumed I ever knew anything about anything. All I can do is appreciate and support.