Did You Know...

...stormtroopers are jerks?

It's Giller Time!

There's nothing we like more than a good list, especially short ones and the Scotiabank Giller Prize has come up with a doozie. With a fresh batch of Giller short-listers still cooking in the oven that is Canadian literature, stores across the country are selling out of Giller party goodies.

LWOT is ready for the greatest show on turf and will close the office on Wednesday for the staff to recover from their annual Giller related hangovers. But who will walk away with this year's prize? Will it be managing editor Jared Young who picked last year's winner or former intern Betty McGuinn who quit after a sordid affair with one of our graphic designers, only to return for this year's Giller party? Will they rekindle their romance or will she leave in tears, cursing the man who invented the whiskey sour?

Champions of LWOT: Craig Davidson

Craig Davidson, Canada's warrior poet, battles his fiercest opponent yet as he takes on Swedish something store Ikea. In this harrowing tale of suspense Davidson straddles the thin line between affordability and comfort in his search for a place to rest his weary bones.

Stop The Press

Mud Luscious Press, that is.

J.A. Tyler, the mad genius responsible for Someone, Somewhere and the return to popularity of the goatee, brings his latest batch of literary spectacularness to the Internet and the world.

The ninth edition of Mud Luscious features some of the world's most sparkling talents gathered in one shiny electronic place.

As usual Tyler ramps up the excitement to Stephen J. Cannell-esque proportions with a stunning offer on the Mud Luscious chapbook anthology. This stunning volume combines 43 titles in one stunning place for the stunning price of $15.

Did You Know...

...The Willow Reaver has been burned by more Baptists than any other book written by a northern Canadian author?

Did You Know...

...in 1964 the Canadian government began a series of experiments on goats meant to produce fortified milk that would counter the effects of radiation in the event of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. As a result of the experiments 12 so-called "Red Billies" were sent to the provinces and territories to provide protection for the premiers, their cabinets, family members and senior bureaucrats? The last Red Billy died in 1972.

A View From The Mop

Pre-Orders? & I Eat Air (august)

By Jove "Lanky" Lank

I push the trash along the floor, my broom straight and all these goddamn things all over the floor. Paper cuts and holes, these little dots of stupid punched paper, trash from fast food and all the things they eat here, nothing left for me tonight, no half-sandwiches out on the desks for me to bite.

I clean up their own mess because these pigs here, they don’t know what mud is. Roll around in it pigs, Monica and I will keep your pens clean. This is how we make sense of us, Monica and me, pushing brooms and mops around.

And what I am seeing tonight in all the shit and filth, it is more money more money more money. I was seeing checks the other week, weeks ago, all these checks for a contest, for some panty-waist writer reader to read up all this writing, wishing I had the money in my pockets. But tonight, looking for food to swallow down, what I see are all the order sheets for the next big book coming out, for the next book by the next big asshole, the next novel from some kind of kid in new york pretending he is as poor as we are, Monica and me, eating cheese sandwiches by candle-light, pretending it is romance, chewing with our mouths half open.

Money for something that doesn’t exist, money for a book not even made yet. All this money from people who want to wear a concert t-shirt to the goddamn show, prove they knew the band when you could drinks beers back down your throat with them on stools during an intermission, them playing for the whole night booked up for a six-pack off the ice and a square of table to set their CDs on. That kind of thing.

And tell me, how do I get that gig? How do I get people to hand over their few dollars for something that doesn’t even exist, for something I haven’t made yet, just on the thought that I will? How does that work? It would be a goddamn miracle. Like eating air and getting filled up. Jesus H. Christ, mercy on us please, sometime.

Stop The Press

Mud Luscious, the rootenest, tootenest short fiction magazine this side of the Mason-Dixon line has revamped its Interweb site to bring you the heartstring tuggingest tales since the last issue of LWOT.

While you're at it, pick up the latest group of chapbooks from ML Press. At a buck a piece it's the best deal since David Copperfield dated Claudia Schiffer.

Did You Know...

...Nicolas Cage is the 23,752,497th greatest actor of his generation?

Fuck Books: Fucking Beattie Fucking Nails It!

In his new article for Canadian Notes & Queries, Steven W. Beattie goes all Samuel L. Jackson and joins Stephen Henighan and Stephen Marche as the third snarling dog-head of the anti-establishment shit-talking Cerberus of CanLit.

"Fugitive Pieces is emblematic of a persistent and virulent strain in CanLit: books that rely for their force and effect upon prose of heightened poeticisms and lyrical trills, language predicated upon an accretion of rococo metaphors and cascading adjectival phrases. The none-too-subtle condescension in such writing is easily identifiable by casual or occasional readers, whose impulse upon encountering it is likely to mirror the vituperative two-word epithet in this essay’s title."

Fuck yeah! Bonus profanity points for "rococo"!

LWOT FUN FACT: The title of the post comes from a passage of Nathan Whitlocks's novel A Week of This, en excerpt of which appeared in the January 2008 issue of LWOT.

A View From the Mop

Contests & My Teeth
By Jove "Lanky" Lank

Monica and me we eat a lot of bread that has been kept in a ball, we have balled it up with our fists, because that keeps it from getting dried out. It is mushy as shit that way, but if the bread gets dried out then we have to crunch through it and Monica and me, we have terrible teeth. Hell, most of my teeth are near gone. My whistle sounds like wind. I need to get them fixed, my teeth, but they cost me too much. Do you know how much they will charge you for one goddamn tooth?

And then I clean this place tonight and what do I see but a stack of checks, a bunch of paper that people have signed and what is it for? So that these idiots here they will read some asshole's story. People pay money to this office, the place Monica and I clean every day, all so that some tight-ass in a suit or a tie or a collared shirt will read their writing and write something back. And I have read what they write back too, like "this needs work, but good effort." Hell, I could write that much and I'm half stupid.

So yeah, send me a check. Goddamn. Send me your pennies and your nickels. I'm not too proud to sit under a tree and put coins into those rolls you get from the bank. I don't mind spending lunch with Monica eating balled up bread and making stacks of pennies. And I will be happy to write you something back. It's not a contest and you can't win anything by paying me, but I will read what you write if you send me a few bucks. I will even say what I think. I am not a good reader but I know about stories and I can say more than just "this needs work, but good effort". And it will maybe be enough to fix my teeth, if everyone sends me a few coins with a paper or two. Send away, because I am tired of chewing just on this one side.

Did You Know...

...Jack Laviolette holds the record for the most times urinating in the Stanley Cup?

LWOT Presents: Free Stuff!

OK, so it's more like Mud Luscious Press presents: free stuff, but we're telling you about it/taking credit for it anyway.

J.A. Tyler, Canada's answer to Stephen Leacock, brings the latest offering by former

heavyweight champion Charles Lennox. A Field of Colours is the riveting tale of something, but best of all it's free from the country's greatest small press.

To get your free copy of this extranormal chapbook send an electronic mail communique to author@aboutjatyler.com. Make sure to include your mailing address and while you're at sign up for a complimentary subscription for the low, low price of $36. The subscription entitles you to 18 volumes of ML Press greatness plus their first novella.

If you get one free chapbook by Charles Lennox this year, make it this one.

Did You Know...

...6 out of 10 anglophones can't spell misanthrope?

Did You Know...

...Chasing Amy is the second highest grossing non-pornographic movie about lesbians and comic books starring Ben Affleck and Jason Lee?

Northern deLights

Truck-cessories
By Ashley Keeble


I’m writing this on my blackberry in the waiting room of Andy’s Auto Glass.

My assignment: to blog on the current explosion of culture in Canada’s fastest growing, Fort McMurray, Alberta. My employers assure me this frontier U-turn will soon rival the likes of Thunder Bay, Sherbrooke, and Brandon as a Canadian cultural epicentre.

Highway 63, connecting Fort Mac with Edmonton, is a veritable runway whereupon the latest trends in truck fashion are flaunted. On this runway, it’s all about accessories. I compare it to dressing up a suit: A man needs the right tie; the right pocket square; the right shoes and cufflinks, because every suit is essentially the same (I’d be going to fashion hell for making that statement if I weren’t already here). Likewise, when outfitting his truck, a man needs the accessories that best express who he is because he has such a limited choice in body style – Chevrolet or Ford only! Foreign trucks are so gauche here.

The current hot trend in truck accessories: Truck Nutz, because there’s no better way to express manliness than a set of metal testicles hanging off your trailer hitch. Andy here at the shop says Truck Nutz are uber chic this season (my words, not his). He goes on to say that while such things are not his bag (his words; I would never make that joke) it is not at all overkill to attach a giant set of copper cajones to a truck with sixty inch tires, two snowmobiles in the bed, and a cowcatcher/winch on the front bumper.

Do they look good? I admit I was so entranced by the shiny set of stones adorning the monster Ford in front of me that when it came to an abrupt stop, they tea-bagged the windshield of my Prius. The damage was considerable, because as the website touts, Truck Nutz are guaranteed not to break under the lifetime “Takes a licking” guarantee.

Andy predicts that next season’s discriminating truck-cessorizers will opt for semi-truck-style exhaust stacks.

Did You Know...

...Ron James is terrible?

LWOT Condemns...

...the CBC for giving more air time to Ron James. 

In what can only be an attempt by the public broadcaster to show how devastating theit latest attempts to save money have been, the CBC will include James' latest offering in the their fall lineup.

The man Gradey Alexander once referred to as "about as funny as my latest prostate issues, if my prostate grated on the nerves with inane chatter and an imbecilick accent. How his meager talents have managed to propel him onto the national stage boggles the mind, much in the same way my enlarged prostate has boggled my ability to get an accurate read on my urinary needs," has somehow finagled his way onto TV for another chance to dig a deeper pit in which to bury Canadian television. 

While it is still unclear how James' unique brand of comedic hackery will save the struggling network, the LWOT editors assume it won't be good.

A View From the Mop

Bookmarks & Jesus
By Jove "Lanky" Lank

I am eating half of a sandwich that one of these the guys who work here left on his desk when he took off in his BMW or his fancy-pants car that probably has seats that warm themselves of some other goddamn thing. I drive an American eagle. Tan. Hell of a car. Chugs gas like a champ and takes all those hills like it was dying. A car I can relate to, my car, old and built to last like me and my Monica, the way we keep going on no matter what.

This thing is roast beef and with some kind of dipping thing that was left in one of those Styrofoam containers, and it was still warm when I touched it and I’m not picky anyway, because Monica her cooking is sh_t. She cleans good and makes half our money so I eat nice and try not to say anything bad about her. Monica, always in the kitchen bent over the stove. Je__s.

But I spill which isn’t that big of a thing anyway because here I am with half a half-eaten sandwich in my mouth and holding in my hands the rags and a bottle of cleaner so really a spill here is nothing, especially like now, when no one is around and you can eat their leftover food and whatnot. But of course like it would it spills out and onto their paperwork which tonight is all of these g__d_mn bookmarks. Bookmarks for everything, stamped and written on and with all kinds of drawings and pictures. Like anyone cares about marking a book anyway. H_ll, I don’t even read that much, what in god’s name do they need so many bookmarks for?

So some make it into the trash, they won’t miss them. Must be a dozen or more bookmarks on this one desk alone. Like they read that much, these a__holes that work here. They don’t read, they eat sandwiches. That’s what they do, all these people here before they leave in their slick little cars going home to their mansions. Bookmark me here, how about that, otherwise I have to go home to Monica’s green chile again. J__us.

Did You Know...

...the diaphragm is the only birth control method approved by the Catholic church?