No news today - Guest Post - Barry Graham

No news today. I didn't mind at first because news lasts thirty seconds and the cheesesteak and wings taste pretty fucking good and that should be enough. Why isn't that enough? There was no news yesterday either but some kid near me set himself on fire to prove some point that wasn't his to make and really he seemed like such an asshole for doing it, but my skin still looks fine and I will have the good fortune of still attracting the opposite sex. I really wish he wouldn't have done that. Now I have nothing to compare myself to except for my father but he's dead and I'm so fucking tired of doing that anyway. I don't even know why I'm thinking about him right now. I haven't done it in so long. Maybe because it's Thursday. Fuck. There was; however, news the day before. I didn't know what it meant at first because it wasn't for me. My box was empty. But I saw the pretty brown package with my neighbor's name on it sitting outside his apartment door and I shouldn't have taken it but why not. He won't miss it. His son is getting ready to burn to death and he won't be missing anything anymore. I was hoping for CD's or DvD's or hardcover books from some shitty bookclub, but it was none of those things. It was news. Nothing substantial, nothing worth remembering now, as clearly I have forgotten, but it was news and that's something isn't it?

barry graham is the author of the national virginity pledge and nothing or next to nothing (atlantic city blues), look for him online at www.barrygfunk.blogspot.com

No news today - Guest Post - Jesus Angel Garcia

Record temperatures in our hood. The ice on your eye will be water again soon. I saw a baby bunny nibbling pork fried rice from a styrofoam bowl. The picnic’s at the park behind that school where they found that girl in the dumpster. Burned alive, they said. Luddite thug sending a message. Of course, you’re invited. Text your neighbor, the one with the Ice-Nine tattoo. But please don’t talk about Triple-A ball or slugs in your orchid bed. Mom and Pop tire more easily now. Robert says, Caring or not caring is no reason to not vote. Potlucks are false advertising unless the brownies come from Pam. When everything is free, poets will be bakers. There’s a thick ball of fuzz purring beneath the trundle bed. Cyrus drove his Prius into a DSL box early this morning. He had just drunk-dialed his ex and her daughter picked up. In Mexico, they found traces of cat in a popular brand of all-natural dry cat food. It was recalled for excess vitamin B. Now trending on Twitter: #EverythingIsFree. No news today. We’re still hungry.

Jesús Ángel García is the author of “badbadbad,” a transmedia novel (forthcoming in May 2011 on New Pulp Press). 3xbad stories, songs and a trailer for the first in a five-part series of interconnected short films based on themes of the book can be found here: http://badbadbad.net/.

No news today

There is no news today.

Within the last couple of days, entirely newsless as they were, Asunder was published.

Until next time, hoping your news is no news.

No news today - Guest Post - Roy Kesey

No news today.

Today is Veteran's Day and I wish there was no news. Or if not no news then some news other than that which we have: today, Veteran's Day, and the news is that more veterans are committing suicide than ever before. That they are twice as likely as non-veterans to commit suicide. That in 2005 (the one year for which we have relatively solid data, data that the VA has been very careful never ever to compile and release) at least 6256 veterans killed themselves.

That's 521 per month. 120 per week. 17 per day.

My family is rich in veterans, my friends and acquaintances richer still and I love them and do not want this to happen to them, or to anyone, and do not misunderstand me. I know that Once more unto the breach, dear friends, et cetera, and I also know that i sing of Olaf glad and big, et cetera, and I know of the pit between them. I know that defeat brings worse things, et cetera, and I believe that, I do, but I also know that that's what Dick Cheney sang to every kid headed to boot camp, not those words exactly maybe but that same song, and it was the wrong song, and Dick Cheney knew it, and those kids went to boot camp and then on to Iraq, and came back, and knew, too, that it had been the wrong song.

So maybe instead of no news or current news we could instead today have the news that someone accidentally waterboarded Dick Cheney while raping him to death with a rusty bayonet.

That's some news I could get behind.

That's some news I could drink me some coffee over.

Roy Kesey's debut novel Pacazo will be published by Dzanc Books in February 2011. His work has been widely published and anthologized, with stories appearing in Best American Short Stories, The Robert Olen Butler Prize Anthology and New Sudden Fiction, among other places. He currently lives in Peru with his wife and children. (www.roykesey.com)

No news today - Guest Post - Elizabeth Ellen

File this one under obituary. Well, it’s happened again, Robert. Another plant has committed suicide. As I was telling you when you were here last, I can’t seem to keep one alive. It’s hard to say the exact number I have carried out to the garbage can in the middle of the night (I avoid undertaking such exercises during daylight hours when a neighbor might see and make the sort of judgment for which I could not fault him or her, nor offer a defense) since I moved into the house four years ago. Suffice it to say, it is not a small number and that my lack of memory may be serving to protect me against the knowledge of my own bad deeds. That said, you should know these deaths are not premeditated (on my part). I spend an inordinate amount of time picking and choosing each plant fully intending it will live out its full life expectancy with me. It is only after I bring said plant into the house that something seems always to go terribly wrong. And recently things have been going terribly wrong at a staggering rate. There have been four such deaths so far this year (and those are just the suicides). And this latest one, the one that fell (jumped?) tonight, taking a much smaller, healthier plant down along with it, belonged to the newest batch, purchased at Home Depot only a month ago. It would seem, if I am to be honest with myself, Robert, that I have become an example of the worst sort of American, the sort who can’t be bothered to water and feed and fertilize a plant, but who allows it to wither and fade with neglect and mistreatment until it topples headfirst over the balcony where it was sadistically placed in the same spot as the plant that preceded it, then, without sufficient pause, goes and buys another one. It’s wasteful is what it is. And I’m afraid this is just one such example of my wastefulness, a wastefulness that flourished along with my nihilistic tendencies (leanings?) last year as a result of what I self-indulgently refer to as my “year of heartache.” I was bitter, Robert, and in my bitterness waste and wasting seemed not to matter to me. I bought food I knew I would never eat, clothes I would never wear. Plane tickets purchased during periods of lighter moods went wasted as well as I chose to lose money on the unused tickets rather than take the necessary steps (i.e. talk to another human being) to change them (and using them once the lighter moods had lifted seemed inconceivable). And let us not even delve into the area of my squandered talents (i.e. I let another year slip by without producing a book!). All this reminds me of a story my mother once told me about my father (this is another of our American faults – tying everything back to our parents), a man I knew mainly through her stories, most of which were marked by inebriation and violence. It seems that on their honeymoon, which was, I want to say, to Mexico or one of the Caribbean islands, somewhere with a beach, to be sure, my father tucked a twenty dollar bill into his swimming trunks each morning and each morning, without fail, he lost the twenty dollar bill in the ocean. I think at the time she told me this story (I was quite young, six or seven) it was my mother’s intention to teach me something about my father or money or both (previous stories had taught me about violent, alcoholic, mama’s boys, how best to recognize and avoid them). Recently, however, I have been thinking of that story, of my father, and wondering if wastefulness isn’t an inherited quality (the old nature vs. nurture question, Robert). Certainly there are similarities between a man continuing to place a twenty dollar bill in his pocket each morning when history has shown him it will be lost if he does so and a woman continuing to purchase plants and bring them into her house despite a lack of will or knowledge for taking care of them. It’s something to think about, Robert. (Or something for me to think about at least.) You probably think me a dreadful person upon these admittances, and you would be correct in your assessment. I am a dreadful person. I was prepared to say something here about how I want to change or how I will change, how we don’t need to be enslaved to the qualities we may have inherited (or learned) from our parents. But I think such a statement would be misleading. The truth is I likely won’t change. I will likely continue to purchase these plants and continue to tell myself I will be better, that I will remember to water and fertilize and repot them, but who’s kidding who, Robert? I won’t remember shit. I will continue to be dreadful. And the question then is: will you love me anyway? Don’t get hysterical, Robert. That is all I have come here to say. That and this: there is no news today.

elizabeth ellen never really graduated college and thus has no idea when really it is appropriate to use things like "i.e." she does her best with her limited knowledge of the english language. don't hate.

No news today - Guest Post - Douglas A. Martin

New paintings by someone will be at some gallery. I bought new shoes. I was considering the Chewy Adidas and would have gotten them, if not for the sort of silver side-spikes or studs. SoHo Security Guard came in, high. Everything all right in here? You sure? You sure?

When we get home next from some UNIQLO Realism, Bobby gets an e-mail, someone calling him a homo. This after the deterritorializing of housecleaning. The doggie won’t stop peeing in the house. So no more runner in the kitchen. Carpet Men Stretch What They Lay, says one t-shirt not sported today. Rather, Heather Gray: On My Way to Movies & More. He’s pouring red wine. I’m not purring or ready for it yet, being an asshole trying to get this thing writ at kitchen table. Tonight we’ll watch Episode 520 of Dark Shadows--get as far as we can before falling to sleep. By this point, Adam has been taught to speak. (If Adam lives, then B. does too, but if Adam dies...) First, Charlie is coming over for dinner. If that’s OK with me. You know what 10/11 is? I mean, besides Bill Clegg’s birthday.

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Douglas A. Martin is the author most recently of a novel, ONCE YOU GO BACK (Seven Stories Press), and a lyric narrative, YOUR BODY FIGURED (Nightboat Books).