Jamie Iredell's Blog, page 4

Colophon This book was set in Caslon, a...

Colophon
This book was set in Caslon, a font designed by William Caslon, the famous English typesetter, designer, and gunsmith. Despite the continued popularity of the use of his font in books, Caslon’s original intent was for the design to be used for stamping his prototype of the .357 revolver, which had then never before been seen. Caslon was known to hunt foxes, but his deviations in the deserts of northern Nevada, where he rode upon his knees in the bed of a Toyota pickup nighttimes, spotlighting jackrabbits and blowing them away with his experimental weapon, are only now being revealed. It is said that Caslon lost his favorite powdered wig upon bumping into a then-recent flash flood wash, and the wig went unrecovered, presumably, buried under the desert’s drifting soil. The editor of this particular volume was Kevin Sampsell, American author of, most recently, A Common Pornography (Harper Perennial, 2010). The cover art is “The Hawain Tryptych”, by Hieronymous Bosch. The designer was Mike Dockins, author of Slouching in the Path of What the Fuck is That? (Sage Hill Press, 2007), and Letter to Some Person from Some Place (???????). 

Color Blind This is the condition of be...

Color Blind
This is the condition of being incapable of distinguishing colors. There was a man who was color blind. His mother blubbered that the tiny crystals— excavated from the dirt road along the meadow winding river-like beneath Crystal Peak—rubbed upon one’s wrists would send one nirvana-bound. This same woman’s splash of tie dye in skirts and t-shirts, headbands for the sweat she never sweated, except when the LSD wound its way into her blood and her neck, which she rubbed, seemed to whisper oh god what a rush, oh god you have to try this. He knew, in reality, that everyone was different, and that some didn’t deserve. Like his mother, who was too stupid. Like the color blind man, who knew he should be locked up. He kept an apartment on Boulevard, in a neighborhood his mother called “colorful”. He bought lottery tickets at his building’s ground-level convenience store, the Korean owner mouthing hello mister, you want Lucky Eights again today? The Easy Shop’s windows were barred against the light and color of the Earth. This man, our hero, never won the lottery, and wasn’t sure he wanted to. 

Comic Dork Sometimes during the comic d...

Comic Dork
Sometimes during the comic dork’s nightmares— bowie knife-wielding bearded goons hanging over his chest, strapped as he was to the vinyl of the Beetle’s interior—he’d realize that he was dreaming. Taken from films and pseudoscientific peyote poppers, he’d imagine himself like Wolverine, the comic book guy. When the claws flicked out, painlessly, from the backs of his downed knuckles, his perpetrator would laugh and drive the knife point into the boy’s neck. “What do you think this is,” the man reeking of Skoal spit. “This ain’t no dream.” The boy always woke and lay in bed. After a while he fell back asleep. In the mornings as he brushed his teeth, his mother lay her Dawn-soft hands on his shoulders, and rubbed Vaseline into the split of his lip. 

Contrarians The Contrarian is from a re...

Contrarians
The Contrarian is from a region where no one agrees with anyone else. You say archipElago, the Contrarian says archipelAgo. Contrarians show up at folks’ dinner parties flouting their non-ownership of cable television because this, they know, is contrary. Contrarians tell you things you know cannot be true. The polar ice caps cannot be shrinking that quickly, can they? And what will we do with all these humans, according to the Contrarian’s view on the planet-wide overpopulation catastrophe? Contrarians, while entertaining during election periods, are a terrible nuisance at your church’s Ballroom Night Fundraiser. They say, Benny Goodman, hmph! All anyone can do with a Contrarian is agree with him. This puts Contrarians into exciteable states. Should they continue to be contrary and go against their own opinions? You have thus turned a Contrarian from his own side of his truth, kind of like a Jedi who has ceased believing in the stupid fake benevolence of his order, which could really only happen in a dumb movie because people aren’t really that good, no matter what. If you want to make a Contrarian no longer contrary, simply agree with him. This is a logical paradox. We are also confused. 

Copyright This important part of a book...

Copyright
This important part of a book contains the necessary legal information pertaining to the book’s publication, as well as any caveats concerning the material the book covers.
For example the information concerning the present volume is as follows:

© 2011 by Jamie Iredell


All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

Cover design by Bryan Coffelt and Brian David Smith. Photo by Brian David Smith.
Edited by Kevin Sampsell and Christina Brauner.

First Edition

No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher. This is a work of fiction; any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

ISBN 10: 1-892061-39-2 
ISBN 13: 978-1-892061-39-3

Future Tense Books 
P.O. Box 42416 
Portland, OR 97242
www.futuretensebooks.com

Courtship This is mimicry of all mimick...

Courtship
This is mimicry of all mimicking animal and plant life. This is woman: the reason for cologne and four- by-four pick-ups. The bottle helps, cause of and solution to all human wrinkles. So too the pen. And insomnia. Many have a laundry list—of all things to list. Nearly filling the list are socks. Fifty-two individual white socks. Six of various colors. Next: T-shirts, mostly black. And in the pants’ pockets: other lists. They are all for groceries: eggs, bread, aftershave, a trove of fall mums. This is all more mimicry for woman. Also, too much beer. 

Danes One legend concerning the foundat...

Danes
One legend concerning the foundation of the country today known as Denmark concerns a man named Dan. Adolf said, Let’s kill the Jutes. Gunvor said, I’m for the destruction of the Romans. Kresten said, Let’s hear what Dan the Zeal has to say. We should see what Dan thinks. Dan was all like, let’s kill the Romans, and go to In-N-Out Burger. Dan would typically order a 6x6, Animal Style, but after that one asshole ordered the 100x100 now the In-N-Out will only let you go as high as 4x4, so that was what Dan would get if Dan were still alive today. It is inconclusive whether or not Dan’s death was directly related to In-N-Out consumption. That has not stopped Signe, who has waged a rather ill-conceived plot of revenge against her uncle Jarl, proprietor of the Solvang, California In-N-Out, where sales have gone tre høj. Solvang, it should be noted, was founded by Danes in search of respite from Midwestern winters, which is fucking weird because they’re fucking Danish. Danes sweat in ten Celsius. One noted Solvangian, Søren Andersen, replied, I hate snow, and fish, and Danishes. That’s why I live here in Solvang, where one’s served the world’s best tacos de sesos. 

Deaf The inside of his ear had turned t...

Deaf
The inside of his ear had turned to cottage cheese. He tried elbowing his elbow in there, and grinding things out, because his doctor said that elbows were just the right size. He rooted around with a Q-Tip because his father said to do it. His father was blind, and Q-Tip instructions—on the box’s reverse—have never been written in Braille. Soon, the telephone muttered when he answered, his mother’s voice like the inside of a bag of cotton balls. He answered with the receiver curled to his other ear, but realized that, too, had filled with curds that smelled of what he would later learn was bacteria that grows in warm and moist places. That later was when he was sixteen and gloriously deaf, parked on the stretch of road straighter than the girl’s brunette head, under the sky star-studded so that he hated the word “studded,” and he was lonely. 

Dedication For Sarah, my freak ...

Dedication












For Sarah, my freak who found her freak 

Dicephalic Parapagus Dicaphalic parapag...

Dicephalic Parapagus
Dicaphalic parapagus is a form of conjoined twins that is commonly found in the United States of America. In one example, when first born came a stereo, wailing, squelching, blasting static. Then the doctor felt an arm, a head. The room filled with squeals of white noise. Nurses scampered, heels clacking the children off from the birthing room. Do you want to hold them? Their mother blubbered, knowing one day she’d shower them with love in the shape of water from the shower in her bathroom. And so they came: one body, two heads, the boy and the stereo. And the mother said my god what a gift what a miracle my god I will love you.

They learned to coordinate movement: the boy leaning toward an open window, the stereo squelching out and searching for a signal. There was the hint of man shoulders, squared, of a tape deck, a CD carousel. Sure, people stared and took photos. The television stations came in droves, demanding that they owed the world their story, because televisions cannot exist without stories.

Their tiny town, with the tiny market, with the tiny BP, on the tiny corner, across from their tiny school, accustomed itself to the boy and the stereo, how they played basketball, drove their car while other kids played their stations on their own stereos.

By senior year a change stormed through, the stereo pumping out rap, the boy screaming for punk rock, 
Skynyrd, Golgotha, anything with guitars! The stereo bassed it up and the hip hop blasted out. The doctor said separation was impossible: separate hearts and lungs, distinct wiring, but a shared liver and intestines.

And the boys, despite their obvious musical differences, did not want to separate. Together and separate, they said, the stereo now blasting “I Tried” by Bone Thugs-N- Harmony, together and separate, the boy said, popping the collar of their Polo knit.