Swag the Dog

James Swagney

Mick Swagger

Swagnum P.I.

Hi everybody

I haven't blogged here in a while. Life feels so empty now that the 2011 poet laureate isn't there when I come home at night...

Above you can see my homemade New Wave Vomit shirt. If you write New Wave Vomit on a white t-shirt, take a photo of it, and send it to Ana C., she will feature it on her new hype site, New Wave Vomit Swag. Kewl...

You can see Steve Roggenbuck, Brett Gallagher, and I reading poems and being goofy-ass bros on Ustream this past Sunday here. Features red wine, nuzzling, tongue, tweets, poems, shoutouts, and other things. Thank you to everyone who tuned in. We're hoping some of you will do your own Ustream broadcasts in the future.

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I want to read more. Feel like I should work on my real life more, maybe... Feel like I actually live on the internet and not in the world.

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Adam Robinson published my story "Serious European Art Film" at Everyday Genius. I am happy about that. I wrote the piece to read at the first edition of Cassandra Troyan's reading series, EAR EATER, on September 17th of last year, my 25th birthday. Tao Lin was there, and he was nice and took a video of me reading:

It's taken a while for that piece to be published. The nice thing is, I looked at it again, once it was accepted, recently, and made some changes, and Adam suggested some things, and I like the final version. Hurray

Negative Suck published a poem by me called "This Pretentious Twaddle Sure Sets A New Standard for Sentence-Driven Fiction." I'm not sure what to say about it.

Housefire published a piece by me. My title for it is "ALL CAPS NO PUNCTUATION," but it was written after being given a title or prompt by the editor, Riley Michael Parker, so it's published under that title, "We Are the First, We Are the Last."

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My hair is getting long...

I've got two ebook projects to work on. One is a solo ebook for DJ Berndt's ebook series, Pangur Ban Party. That would be my first-ever collection or long-form thing. My goal is for it to be like an album you like to play a lot, and you have certain favorite songs but you can also sometimes play it all the way through if you're in the mood.

The second ebook project is called I LOVE MUSIC, and that will be a collaborative ebook with Steve Roggenbuck, which I think will use material from our mountains of emails to each other. Should be sillie + sweet...

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I mailed out some more copies of Pop Serial #2 today. If you are owed a copy and haven't gotten one yet, here's why: I received copies at the end of December, just as I started a new job. I started the new job with no savings. I had no money left over from Kickstarter or anything else for mailing. So I've been mailing them in batches, a little at a time, as much as I can given my finances. My finances are improving, slowly, and I will get the magazines to you as fast as I can. I apologize for not communicating better about this, and I thank everyone for their patience and support. My email is stephen.dierks@gmail.com

M. Kitchell is designing an online home for the issue, which I'm happy about, both because I like his site design and because that way a lot more people can check out the magazine.

I plan to continue Pop Serial, both the blog and the magazine. I'm not sure yet what the next edition of the magazine will be like.

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Do yall have any comments, questions, or suggestions for me? How is yalls lives?