This is stupid. I can now rate books in quarter-star increments on Goodreads, which means I obviously have to go back and rerate every book I’ve ever read. Who has time for this?

This paragraph alone warrants The Mezzanine a five-star rating

"I want to make hate to you in the stairwell. I want it to be out loud and I want it to be our thing and I want it to be in New York City." 2 Stories by Elijah Sparkman / New today at AC

ELIJAH SPARKMAN / 2 STORIES — always crashing

I Wish I Was in New York City I want to make hate to you in the stairwell. I want it to be out loud and I want it to be our thing and I want it to be in New York City. I want to begin again in New Yo...

alwayscrashing.com

“The son has awakened from a dream; his father goes into his room to comfort him. There was a man with a camera, the son says. It is still very early, his father tells him. Go back to sleep. He looked like you, the son says. No, the son says; he didn’t look like you, but I knew he was you. “

A Movie

Fiction: by James Tadd Adcox

open.substack.com

Watching a film that turns out to be your own life: gesture by gesture, room by room. Quiet, uncanny, and deeply unsettling. A piece by James Tadd Adcox.

A Movie

Fiction: by James Tadd Adcox

open.substack.com

This piece looks at how quickly a person can be reinterpreted inside a system built on control and how those shifts don’t easily reverse.  Open for submissions. I’m interested in short, controlled but unstable work. In the meantime, I’ve been posting my own material as things get off the ground.

It Should Have Been There

Nonfiction: by Aaron Boot

open.substack.com

Hope this is the first of many, but Maudlin got there before anyone. “Employee Completely Denies Being a Piece of Shit” is live. Grateful to start here.

Maudlin House@maudlinhouse.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Employee Completely Denies Being a Piece of Shit by Aaron Boot maudlinhouse.net/employee-com...

“‘It is what it is.’ Fluff masquerading as profundity is almost always the apt thing to say.”

Corporations!

I love corporations. When I play video games, I imagine my character as a badass CEO. He’s wearing a suit, mowing down enemies without remorse, sweating from his hard-earned victory. Most people are t...

maudlinhouse.net

Current read

"The man looked up at you and smiled. You look down at your piss stream. Suddenly, Nerves by Silkworm starts to play."

You Asked for This

And it was given precisely

substack.com

Now reading

I had my first rejection for my CNF, "I Did Not Quit Freely." Here's the first sentence: “The judge’s voice arrives as static, the sound of a person attempting to become official.” I look forward to hearing many more.