KMO was once a winner in the capitalist game. He had high tech dreams and plenty of ambition, but somewhere along the line KMO dropped out, spent what he had, and started over in a simpler way. No longer rich and no longer so enamored with the technocratic fantasies of the prevailing order, he squeaks by in this world while seeking another. More than anything KMO is a broadcaster and interviewer who has a gentle and amiable way of challenging and inspiring interesting conversations with authors, artists, psychedelic gurus, sociologists, NASA scientists, economists, and more on his weekly podcast called the C-Realm. I was lucky enough to turn the tables on KMO and get him to agree to an email interview.

Q: Did you always want to be a broadcaster? When you were a boy did you have dreams of being on the radio or on television? How did you get started podcasting. What led you to create the C-Realm?

A: No, I wanted to be a cartoonist. To the extent that I saw myself participating in television or movies, I imagined myself working in animation.

As for how I got drawn into broadcasting, I would direct you to a recent interview in which C-Realm correspondent AyasminA directed questions to me. You can find that here:

http://www.archive.org/details/AyasminaInterviewsKmo

In short, it seems as though some part of me has been gearing up for this sort of work for a couple of decades. It just didn’t bother to tell my conscious mind, which stayed focused on visual story-telling.

Q: You’ve managed to talk to many fine and interesting people. How do you connect to so many people, and how difficult is it to get people interested in your podcast and willing to be interviewed?

A: I basically just read things that interest me on-line, and when I read something that articulates my own thinking better than I have done, or when I read something that takes my thinking in an interesting new direction, I send an email to the author and invite them to the appear on the show. I don’t keep careful track of invitations and replies, but I would guess that about one in five invitations leads to an interview that appears on the podcast.

While it’s fairly easy to find interesting and articulate people to appear on the show, I have found that it doesn’t serve me well to set my heart on securing an interview with any particular guest. For example, I’ve been trying to get Michael Pollan on the show from the very beginning without success.

On the bright side, some of my best interview subjects arrive on my doorstep with no effort required on my part. Albert K. Bates, who has appeared on numerous episodes of the C-Realm Podcast contacted me after he heard my interviews with Dmitry Orlov and Catherine Austin Fitts. I first became aware of Neil Kramer, a repeat guest who is particularly popular with the psychedelic segment of the audience, when I saw that I was getting regular hits from a link on his website.
He had been listening to the show for a while before he appeared as a guest, so he had a much better understanding of the larger C-Realm project than do most of my interviewees.

A: What are some of the technical challenges to getting your show off the ground?

A: I use Skype and another program to record phone interviews. The audio quality is not always what I would like it to be, and sometimes the timing goes off so that it sounds like I’m talking over the guest when in fact I waited for them to finish speaking before asking the next question. Also, I use a four-year-old laptop to put the show together, and I’m basically operating right at the limits of my machine’s capacity in creating the audio files. Each week I have to delete the temporary files I created the week before and clear out any other podcasts I’ve downloaded in order to free up enough hard drive space to create a new episode.

Q: And what part of the process do you enjoy the most? Editing? Interviewing? Lining up the guests?

A: Lining up the guests is the least interesting part of it, but it’s not onerous. Aside from that, I enjoy every aspect of creating the show.

Q: To what extent does the C-Realm provide you with a living? I believe the show is one of the most interesting podcasts around, and that you deserve to make a comfortable living providing such a fine service. You have a thousand subscribers. Is this your livelihood? How can people donate to the C-Realm. How can people subscribe?

A: I probably have somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand regular listeners, but I have fewer than 30 “subscribers.” In terms of the C-Realm Podcast, a “subscriber” is someone who has set up an automatic recurring payment via PayPal in the amount of $3 a month. In addition to the subscribers, there are several generous benefactors who make one-time contributions. I also have an Amazon store and a Cafe Press store. All told, the C-Realm Podcast pays like a part time job. It does not provide me with “a living.”

For a while it seemed like the podcast was just on the verge of “taking off” and I pursued it full time, but the money never materialized and I ended up in a very bad position financially. I lost my house to foreclosure, and my marriage is in a very bad place as a result of my single-minded pursuit of this project. I’m in debt not only to credit card companies but also to the IRS. I now work a full-time job doing internet tech-support. I drive a ‘91 Ford Ranger that will not pass the safety and emissions inspections required by my new home state of Maryland.

I’m not in an enviable position financially (except to the majority of the global population living in the Two-thirds World), but I worry a lot less about money now than I did when I was down to my last hundred thousand dollars in the bank. I used to lose sleep worrying about money back then. That seems utterly absurd to me now.

Q: You often describe yourself as a libertarian. To what extent do you feel a kinship with the European and historical schools of libertarianism?

http://www.dietsoap.org/2008/02/03/q-what-is-a-libertarian

A: I describe myself as a “recovering libertarian.” I’m coming from more of a right-wing libertarian position, but I’m not dogmatic about it, and “let them eat cake” Libertarian ideologues irritate me as much as they do anybody.

Q: The C-Realm seems to have three primary ideas at its center, three ideas which are in many ways at odds with each other and which could conceivably be entirely dubious and wrong, but which nonetheless seem to me to be interconnected and obviously correct. The first idea that permeates and influences the C-realm is the notion that we can change society by altering our consciousness, and what’s a corollary to that idea is that the use of psychedelics have a role to play in changing our consciousness. The second idea, as I understand it, is that we are approaching some sort of technological and informational Singularity which will essentially end history and possibly save humanity (or enslave, destroy, alter beyond recognition, etc…). The final idea is that we are headed for an economic, ecological, and cultural collapse because of dwindling oil supplies, climate change, and other factors that spell out doom. Okay, so I’ve spelled out the ideas, here’s the question: How do you think these three ideas work together, and is it possible that all three of these notions or predictions are somehow true at the same time?

A: Those three ideas seem related in that each one holds at its core the hope or fear that business as usual is not a tenable expectation and that we’re in for some sort of intense discontinuity in the human experience in the near future. I think each of them is weighted heavily with a different brand of wishful thinking, and I find each one appealing in spite of their seeming contradictions.

And yes, they could all prove quite compatible with one another in actual fact. We could well suffer a global economic collapse that does little to deter the R&D march toward the Singularity. The Soviet Union put the first artificial satellite in orbit and took an early lead in the space race while simultaneously failing to adequately feed it’s population much less provide them with the level of material comfort that the populations of the United States and other western democracies enjoyed. Today, the majority of people in China still live under pretty austere conditions even though so much of the hardware on which the cyber-world runs is manufactured there. The progression of technology need not be so tightly coupled to economic growth or material abundance as common sense intuition would suggest.

The population of the so-called “First World” could find itself reduced to the standard of living of people in the Two-thirds World with barely a blip in the ongoing progression of Moore’s Law and related exponential trends. The amount of energy needed to carry on research in artificial intelligence is negligible compared to the energy consumed by the practice of petro-chemical agriculture or by having most people commute to work in individually owned automobiles. I can easily imagine a timeline that includes both a Global Great Depression in 2009 and a Technological Singularity in 2040.

As for the psychedelic side of things, a collapse of the US federal government and the apparatus of the Drug War would come as quite a boon to the entheogenic plants and their human allies, as would a diminishing of the distracting and anesthetizing stimulation provided by the corporate media.

Q: I work for the cable company here in Portland, Oregon, in an environment I imagine might be very similar to the environment you work in. Over the last year and half I’ve concluded that the job is less than optimally desirable, and while I’ve had some marginal success in other areas, I often dream of revolution or even collapse as an escape from the conditions I find myself in. I have visions or daydreams where the power goes out and the warehouse of cubicles is suddenly filled with riot as productivity slows to a standstill. I imagine the prozac laden football fanatic in the cubicle next to mine with blood on his face and blue cotton t-shirt. I imagine him bearing down on the supervisor with a stapler.

A: I don’t see things playing out like that. What you’re describing sounds like the effects of the rage virus from the movie 28 Days Later more than it sounds like the effects of economic collapse. I think that if the power went out in your office and didn’t come back on, most people would go home and wait for a call from the company telling them when to come back in to work. Other countries have endured economic melt-down. People generally don’t go berserk. Even food riots tend to be short lived and self-contained.

Q: It seems to me that perhaps the reason Peak Oil predictions and the prospect of economic collapse holds me rapt is that I long for it. To what extent does your job make you feel the same way?

A: My day job is not that bad. It’s nothing I would do were I not getting a paycheck, but it beats selling insurance, which is how I’ve kept myself afloat (to the extent that I’m not sunk) for the past few years. It’s the predation of banks and other corporate debt-peddlers, the Drug War and other governmental abuses, the highway robbery perpetrated by police, and the corporate media that have me looking forward to just getting the whole messy, painful business of disintegration and renewal underway.

Q: When Daniel Pinchbeck was recently on your program he suggested to Dmitry Orlov that there might be a positive aspect to the coming eschaton. Putting 2012 and the prophecies aside, to what extent do you think the positive side of the collapse relies on people acting in concert and in opposition to the prevailing system?

A: I think part of the positive side of collapse, the so-called “upside of down,” is that “the prevailing system” ceases to function and that no particular opposition to it, concerted or otherwise, is needed. To a large extent, I think our troubles spring from people “acting in concert” on a larger-than-human scale.

Q: You’ve raised chickens in the past and I currently have four chickens. I find the eggs my own chickens produce are far superior to the eggs I can buy from the market. Even organic/free range eggs are simply pale and bleak in comparison to Luna’s eggs. Why are the yolks of store bought eggs such a sickly pale yellow when the eggs from my coup have bright orange yolks?

A: Chickens raised in an industrial setting live on a diet of corn. Backyard chickens eat grass, bugs, and table scraps in addition to whatever chicken feed you give them. You have a much richer assortment of nutrients going into the chickens and a much higher quality of eggs coming out the other end.

Q: And how is it that most people don’t even know what a real egg is supposed to look like or taste like? Okay, so those are rhetorical questions. Here’s a real one. Where do you find good eggs now that you’ve lost your chickens?

A: I don’t eat many eggs these days, but there’s an Amish market in a nearby town, so good eggs are available.

Q: Final question. My internet isn’t connecting ever since I moved my computer. What’s the problem do ya think?

A: The internet gods demand a blood sacrifice.

Her son’s voice quaked on the other end of the phone as he told Sarah about his art school senior thesis, straining under the weight of a level of self-righteous indignation that only a newly politically aware college kid could sustain. “I want to force people to really think about that whole juxtaposition, with what was going on back in the 50’s. All those crew-cut office workers parked at the drive-in’s in Levittown watching cheesy sauerkraut westerns with their racially pure blond housewives and 1.5 children, while Jews and Communists and so-called ‘degenerate’ artists were being forced to dig their own graves 50 miles up-state. I mean, even in the 80’s, long after the German troops left, there were still…”

Sarah sighed and put down her little black cell phone. She’d heard enough of her son’s long-winded white guilt sermons about the 1950’s and how We Are All Responsible to know exactly where this was going. She was on her first cup of coffee that morning, and she generally needed at least three to cope with hearing the “human skin turned into lampshades” part of his rant.

Sarah closed her eyes, picked up the phone and tried to slip a cheerful, supportive tone into her voice before interrupting her son. “That sounds really interesting, Will. Maybe I can actually see it this weekend.”

“I don’t know, mom. Maybe I should just stay in New York this year. I’ve got a lot to…”

“No. Absolutely not. I already bought your monorail ticket, this is the first year since the divorce that we’re all having K-Day together as a family, and it’s your brother’s first time to break the star. You are not missing it.”

Will sighed theatrically into the phone. “Don’t worry. I’ll be there.”

She did, though. Sarah worried all week and she kept on worrying as she drove the hour and half from East Lansing to the Monorail station in Detroit that Friday. She didn’t stop worrying until she actually saw the sleek silver train slide into the station, and her son climbed down onto the filthy platform to meet her. They’d argued for so long about whether he was even coming home for K-Day Break this year. He’d been spewing all that politically correct garbage he’d soaked up in college, what a horrible thing K-Day was and how he didn’t want to participate, and this year he really seemed to mean it.

After a frantic week of mixing cranberry sauce, getting the pies–pumpkin and pecan this year–ready to go into the oven, and buying the pork and the hat and everything, not to even mention stopping Joey Jr. from trying to ride the dog, forcing herself to be civil to that blond bitch Joey Sr. had married after the divorce, and, well…

…after everything, the last thing Sarah needed was for Will to refuse to even show up. Like she told him during the ride back to East Lansing, Sarah didn’t believe this was about the poor oppressed Yids anyway. (“Jewish Americans,” Will corrected her between clenched teeth.) Will must know that K-Day wasn’t really about that anymore. She’d explained it to him so many times. The history was just that, history. K-Day was about family. It was an excuse to stuff your face and watch football. What on earth was wrong with that?

Sarah knew perfectly well that the real reason was that Will hadn’t wanted to come home for K-Day–

(“Kristallnachtia,” he muttered, but that was just stupid, seeing as how they’d changed the name when her son was all of four years old.)

–was because he didn’t want to see his father. It was obvious.

Will rolled his eyes in the backseat–the strap was broken, so no one sat in the front passenger seat anymore– but she knew that she was right.

“Look, believe me, I understand.” Sarah kept one hand on the steering wheel, clutching her travel mug of black coffee in the other as she tried to make eye contact with Will in the rear view mirror. “But what happened between us has nothing to do with you. Your father loves you just as much as I do, and I want you two to bury the hatchet.”

Will stopped arguing for a while, and Sarah let herself hope that some of this was sinking in, but when they got home, Will barely shook Joey Sr.’s hand before stalking off to his room to work on his art project. He’d given the golden retriever, Lizzy, a warmer greeting than he had his own father.

When everyone else was gone–even little miss bimbo, who’d offered to put Joey Jr. to bed–Sarah and Joey Sr. sat by the fireplace and drank port.

Sarah sighed in contentment and sipped at her glass. Things had been so nasty after the divorce, it taken years for her and Joey to get to the point where they could enjoy a companionable moment like this, as friends. She almost hated to ruin it by bringing up Will, but she knew that she had to. “You really should talk to him.”

Joey squirmed on the couch, dislodging Lizzy’s head from his leg. “I don’t know. All he wants to talk about these days is all that communist shit from arts school. If it had been up to me…”

Sarah sighed. “…he’d be going to Michigan State. It was good enough for us; it should be good enough for him. We’ve talked about this, but seeing as how he’s going to graduate in seven months, I think it’s kind of moot.”

“OK, OK.” Joey smiled and leaned over to pet Lizzy, who’d once again positioned her head on his leg. “I’ll see if I can talk to him tomorrow afternoon before dinner.”

And he did, for a long while, but Sarah was guessing it hadn’t gone well, judging by what Will told her when she saw him next. He’d wandered downstairs to pour himself a cup of coffee just before the pig came out of the oven. “Hey, I’m really not hungry right now, and I’m almost finished with the rough draft of my project. I might just stay in my room and work until it’s time for dessert.”

Sarah swiveled around to face him, hoping the look in her eyes would inspire terror. Or, failing that, at least pity. “William Sanders O’Connor, you will do no such thing. This is your younger brother’s first year with the star, and you are not skipping it.”

Will sipped his coffee like he always did when he was stalling for time, and she continued. “Come on, honey. Was your talk with your father really that bad?”

“For God’s sake, mom. It’s not about that. Seriously.”

“You’re eating dinner,” she told him, and that was that.

And, thank God, it was. Will even put his hand on his father’s shoulder before they all sat down to eat. Sarah could hardly contain her relief as she ran around setting all the traditional dishes on the table. The pies. The stuffing. The roasted pig with the broad-rimmed black hat, the cranberry-sauce “side-curls” and the candy Star of David in its mouth.

By tradition, the youngest member of the family took care of the star, but this was the first year that Joey Jr. was old enough to do it himself. Joey Sr. said grace, Will handed Joey Jr. the wooden pestle and the big moment came at last. Sarah suppressed tears at the memory of the first time Will had done this, how proud he’d been, as she watched Joey Jr. lean over the table and systematically mash up the star until Joey Sr., laughing, took the pestle back. Then everyone took turns giving him hugs, and they all sat down. Telling jokes and stories, eating far more than they should, they had the meal as a family.

And, really, wasn’t that what K-Day was all about?

‘Zine World Reviews Diet Soap

Diet Soap #1: Surveillance is the theme of this issue of what the editorial collective calls “a new surrealist/anarchist ‘zine” with the “goal of promoting ‘the literature of dissent’.” It is nicely laid out with adequate white space and only slightly fuzzy clip art. The writing seems to be a mix of fact and fiction, with no indication of what is what. I particularly liked the piece about English women imprisoned for agitating for suffrage who resisted photographic surveillance.

Diet Soap #2: An anthology of mostly fiction, with a little poetry and some essays. The theme of this issue is ’sex and gender’ (the next issue will be on ’sabotage’). For the most part the fiction and poetry were really good, especially considering what a cliche magnet the topic can be. Some stuff was too science-fictiony for my taste (’The Growns’). The editor’s witty introduction leads me to believe the next issue will be equally good.

-Yoram

In Diet Soap #2 we published Ginetta Correli’s funny and gritty story “Peach,” a story which received good notices in the few reviews that came after publication, and it turned out the story was Correlli’s debut. She emailed me after, sent me her self-published novella, and has apparently been publishing fairly prolifically in small journals online and in print. A review of her novella appeared today on the blog You Are What You Read, and the appearance of the review is what is prompting this post. Correli apparently faced derision from participants in the Zoetrope writers workshop, but when Ginetta sent the story out for publication she found that every editor wanted to publish her story. Luckily Diet Soap was the first to respond. At the outset I was quick to get back to people who sent in their work, alas that is no longer the case.

One of the workshop participants called “Peach” ‘the lowest form of writing.’ Well, here’s to the lowest form of writing.

This video is Correli’s short film adaptation of her novella.

Dennis Perrin is a comedy writer who has written jokes for Bill Maher and many others. He is also the author of The Life and Work of Michael O’Donoghue, The Man Who Made Comedy Dangerous, and SAVAGE MULES: The Democrats and Endless War. His blog at blogspot is worth reading on a daily basis. I was glad Dennis agreed to answer a few questions for Diet Soap.

Q: You’ve written jokes for Bill Maher and “countless other comics,” you wrote a biography of the comic screenwriter Michael O’Donoghue, and you were a friend to the late George Carlin.  You are, in afashion, a comic.  You are also a political blogger and far left critic of the Democratic Party.  Your book “Savage Mules” was released this year and is seeming more and more relevant as we approach election day.  Which is more important to you, dissent or comedy?  Is there something radical about comedy, or are you and your ilk just here to make life a little more bearable, like a Pluto cartoon in a Preston Sturgess Motion Picture?

A: First, I never knew George Carlin. I wish I had, but we never met. I have tremendous love for his brand of humor, and I’m sorry that he’s no longer around. Still, considering our present state, Carlin’s probably better off.

At bottom, I’m a comedy writer. That’s my main engine. Politics came after that, and to a degree I’ve merged them, but I’d rather get a laugh than an appreciative nod of the head. Though being called names is fine, too. That usually makes me laugh.
 
Comedy is only as radical as the times will permit, and given how things presently are, the gates are wide open to pretty much anything. In theory, anyway. In practice, there isn’t much of a market for serious, cutting satire. “The Daily Show” is about as good as it gets, which for many people is more than enough. For me, I wish there was something harder, darker. The times certainly demand it. But that type of humor has been marginalized and watered down to such a degree that today’s audiences believe that the softer brand is the real deal. Humorists and their corporate bosses have colluded in that dumbing down. How else can you explain a middlebrow like Tina Fey being feted as this great satirist? If she was truly that, she wouldn’t be celebrated by the mainstream.

 
Q: Blogger Mike Gerber criticized the late George Carlin as a cynic who perpetuated passivity and you defended Carlin by pointing out that while other social comics push participation in the bankrupt political system, Carlin aimed at destroying that system.  Recently, however, you expressed extreme doubt about the capacity of Americans to unite collectively to change the political order.  At what point does attacking the system turn into fatalism, cynicism, and despair?

A: Again, it depends on social/political conditions. Americans are told from birth that voting is the highest and most noblest expression of democratic citizenship. But under this system, voting, especially at the presidential level, is mere ratification, saying yes or no to decisions and positions formed without their participation or input. Of course our owners urge us to VOTE VOTE VOTE. It’s an effective means of control, which demands little of the individual. To get beyond that obstacle would take tremendous effort and sacrifice, and frankly, countless Americans have no interest in such struggle. We’re too atomized to put together a serious grassroots political effort. Plus, the corporate parties and their apologists would attack such independent actions as “selfish,” “myopic,” even “anti-democratic.” It would not be easy. It’s far easier and safer to project our desires on someone like Obama. His marketing people came up with the “CHANGE” and “HOPE” angles, which is truly cynical, since Obama, in reality, serves private power. Many people I know acknowledge this reality, but it frightens them, so they go along with the propaganda and pretty phrases. I wouldn’t say that makes me despair, but it is extremely frustrating.

Q: Naomi Wolf has recently announced that the recent 700 billion dollar bailout amounts to a coup, and she has warned that we are entering into the last phase in a transition to fascism.  Is she being hysterical?  Is she incorrect?

A: Wolf’s a little late to the party, but better late than never, I suppose. I confess I’m not really a fan of hers, so that definitely colors my perception of her alarm. It’s true that Americans are marginalized and that the country, or what’s left of it, is in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Is that fascism? I don’t know. It’s certainly not democratic, at least based my understanding of that word. It is true that average people are being robbed by the upper one percent, and while that’s nothing new, it is getting worse. Obama’s prescription is essentially, don’t rob average people so blatantly. That’s counterproductive and could undermine elite rule. This is why savvy elitists back Obama — he’ll be a sensible imperial manager, and should help our owners restore some stability to their system. That Obama has dark skin also helps US propaganda, especially abroad. I heard Ted Koppel say exactly this the other day. So, if we have “fascism” under Obama, it will be a feel-good variety, much like Reagan’s and Clinton’s — until the next crisis, and so on.

Q: Both John McCain and Barack Obama supported this 700 billion dollar bailout for Wall Street despite the fact that the bailout was an incredibly unpopular bill.  Why did neither candidate choose to hitch his wagon to popular resentment and oppose the bailout?

A: For the very reasons I outlined above. Had McCain opposed the bailout, his dreadful campaign may have taken on new life. He could’ve played the populist card at a moment when such a move would be extremely welcome, but again, both McCain and Obama serve those who own the country, not those getting soaked to pay off the owners’ bad bets and investments.

Q: I’m sure a number of the readers of Diet Soap are considering voting for Barack Obama in the upcoming election.  Do you think this is a good idea? Would people change their minds about the democrats if they knew the true history of the party?  Make a plug for your book Savage Mules here:
 

A: The Obama Express is unstoppable at this point. After eight years of neocon management, the national mood has shifted to — here’s that word again — “change.” Facts don’t matter. History does not matter. All that matters is feeling good about the upcoming administration. I get emails all the time from readers who tell me, “Yeah, what you say about the Dems is true. But I don’t care. I want to win.” So that’s that, at least for now. We’re locked into this system. As for “Savage Mules,” it has sold well online, much better than I expected. But after I wrestled with Salon’s Glenn Greenwald over the true nature of the Democrats, readings and discussions that were in the offing dried up immediately. A lot of liberals, even lefties, wanted no part of my critique, for fear, as a few suggested to me, that it would hurt Obama’s campaign. I don’t know how someone as marginal as me could do that, but liberals were taking no chances. At bottom, they simply don’t want to deal with someone like me. Still, Obama’s victory should be good for my career. With the Dems running every branch, there’ll be no shortage of ripe, deserving targets.

Yes, it’s true, we’ve decided to move all printing of Diet Soap to Lulu from now on. Why? Because it’s just damn convenient, for one, and also people can download free PDFs, which will result in less administrative hassle.

Will this result in a price increase? Alas, it will. But then, Issues #3 and #4 will be much bigger, fatter, juicier issues — perfect bound, with full color covers. So the extra cost will be worth it. And of course, current subscribers will be getting the new gorgeousness without any extra cost whatsoever, because they signed up in advance. Smart people, they!

We’re going to start by getting the back issues up. And as a matter of fact, Issue #1, “Surveillance” is available for immediate purchase or download! Go here and have a look!

http://stores.lulu.com/dietsoap

Lehman Brothers, an innovator in global finance, serves the financial needs of corporations, governments and municipalities, institutional clients, and high net worth individuals worldwide. We maintain leadership positions in equity and fixed income sales, trading and research, investment banking and investment management.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

“How To Write Stories About Writers” Submission Guidelines

Christopher Lasch, the author of “The Agony of the American Left,” and “The Culture of Narcissism” condemned modern and postmodern narrative techniques, especially metafictional approaches to literature. He wrote:

“Novelists and playwrights call attention to the artificiality of their own creations and discourage the reader from identifying with their characters. By means of irony and eclecticism, the writer withdraws from his subject but at the same time becomes so conscious of these distancing techniques that he finds it more and more difficult to write about anything except the difficulty of writing.” He went on to note that in a Narcissistic Culture “even the rich lose the sense of place and historical continuity, the subjective feeling of ‘entitlement’, which takes inherited advantages for granted. This gives way to what clinicians call ‘narcissistic entitlement’ — grandoise illusions, inner emptiness.”

At “How to Write Stories About Writers” we aim to take this moralist’s objections seriously even as we continue to employ ironic, subjective, and metafictional techniques in order to expose not only the literary devices that are employed in our own short stories but also those employed at work, in the family, in the shopping mall, in schools, and finally in society at large that reinforce our passivity and perpetuate what is ultimately a corrupt social order.

We are seeking stories about stories, literature about literature, and writers writing about writers. This is this the publication for your narcissism, this is the publication for your alienation, this is the publication for your skepticism, for your fiction that is self-reflexive, ironic, dissociative, and wild.

“How to Write Stories about Writers” is an online publication at dietsoap.org. We seek stories ranging between 500-4000 words. We pay a flat $5 honorarium.

“How To Write Stories About Writers” Submission Guidelines

Christopher Lasch, the author of “The Agony of the American Left,” and “The Culture of Narcissism” condemned modern and postmodern narrative techniques, especially metafictional approaches to literature. He wrote:

“Novelists and playwrights call attention to the artificiality of their own creations and discourage the reader from identifying with their characters. By means of irony and eclecticism, the writer withdraws from his subject but at the same time becomes so conscious of these distancing techniques that he finds it more and more difficult to write about anything except the difficulty of writing.” He went on to note that in a Narcissistic Culture “even the rich lose the sense of place and historical continuity, the subjective feeling of ‘entitlement’, which takes inherited advantages for granted. This gives way to what clinicians call ‘narcissistic entitlement’ — grandoise illusions, inner emptiness.”

At “How to Write Stories About Writers” we aim to take this moralist’s objections seriously even as we continue to employ ironic, subjective, and metafictional techniques in order to expose not only the literary devices that are employed in our own short stories but also those employed at work, in the family, in the shopping mall, in schools, and finally in society at large that reinforce our passivity and perpetuate what is ultimately a corrupt social order.

We are seeking stories about stories, literature about literature, and writers writing about writers. This is this the publication for your narcissism, this is the publication for your alienation, this is the publication for your skepticism, for your fiction that is self-reflexive, ironic, dissociative, and wild.

“How to Write Stories about Writers” is an online publication at dietsoap.org. We seek stories ranging between 500-4000 words. We pay a flat $5 honorarium.

The Second Edition of Diet Soap Online is up with 3 new stories.

The excerpt from Ross Lockhart’s Chick Bassist entitled “Leper Messiah” features a phallic female, analysis of the Kinks, and a rock opera based on Oedipus Rex. Julie Shapiro’s “3am Whistle” is the story of the coming of the Reddot People and the appearance of a McDonald’s employee at a taco stand. And B.L. Gifford’s “Murder Mystery Block Party” redefines community action.

Please Enjoy!