Dear Sugar,

Please oh please help me. I’m so mixed up and in so much pain that I’m beginning to be afraid I might kill myself, …more

Aleksandar Hemon writes about finding a way to play soccer after moving to the States, the characters on his team, and most importantly, this:

“…The moment of transcendence that might be familiar to those who practise sports with other people; the moment, arising from the chaos of the game, when all your team mates occupy the ideal position on the field; the moment when the universe seems to be arranged by a meaningful will that is not yours; the moment that perishes – as moments tend to – when you complete the pass; and all you have left is a vague, physical, orgasmic memory of the instant you were completely connected with the world around you.”

Aleksandar Hemon writes about finding a way to play soccer after moving to the States, the characters on his team, and most importantly, this:

“…The moment of transcendence that might be familiar to those who practise sports with other people; the moment, arising from the chaos of the game, when all your team mates occupy the ideal position on the field; the moment when the universe seems to be arranged by a meaningful will that is not yours; the moment that perishes – as moments tend to – when you complete the pass; and all you have left is a vague, physical, orgasmic memory of the instant you were completely connected with the world around you.”

The Story Prize announced their choices for outstanding and notable story collections of 2011. TSP features Rumpus columnist Steve Almond’s God Bless America, along with a number of Rumpus Book Club selections, including Daniel Orozco’s Orientation and Other Stories and Jim Shepard’s You Think That’s Bad.

At HTML Giant, our own essays editor Roxane Gay celebrates unlikable characters as she reviews December Rumpus Book Club selection, Sara Levine’s Treasure Island!!!.

“Sometimes, I get tired of redemption. I don’t always want to know the moral of the story. In Treasure Island!!!, Levine richly indulges that desire to appreciate a wholly unlikable narrator who is nonetheless likable. Levine makes you love her all the more for doing it.”

The Chimerist, a new website we’re loving, explores the app for Paul Madonna’s Everything Is Its Own Reward.

“The places in these images are suspended in time, and the animations work to slow you down until you’re able to absorb this quality.”

Yesterday, while we were incapacitated, a bunch of dudes in Washington and around the media started debating something called contraception, as if hearing about it for the very first time. While contraception is known to 99% of American women as healthcare, it’s known to one man as a “license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” Reflections on today’s decision by the administration can be found here and here.

In The New York Times, Jason Diamond writes about celebrating having his work published, while the rest of the world still remembers him for his former barista days.

“And while I may always be more recognizable on the city streets for my great steamed milk than for my killer prose, there are worse things than having a legacy, even one so strange and aromatic.”

HORN! REVIEWS:
The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume 1

Another fantastic Rumpus Comic book review by Kevin Thomas.

A collection of short pieces written by Rumpus readers pertaining to the subject of “New Beginnings.” …more

We experienced a few technical difficulties yesterday, but we’re back today and will be updating regularly once again. Thank you all, as always, for reading The Rumpus!

It’s Friday. Here is a shark eating a shark.

True story: your pancreas has taste buds. yep.

Noisolation headphones are a thing.

Everyone loves map art.

It’s still Friday. Here is information on burping asteroids.

I’m in Berlin for the Berlin International Film Festival for the premier of Cherry and since I won’t be on email much I set up an auto-response for my email.

Sugar got one and reminded me that I had forgotten to include her in my auto-response. Here’s what it should say:

Thanks for writing. I’m going to be only intermittently available over email for the next eleven days.

If this is regarding The Rumpus please contact Isaac Fitzgerald.

If this is an enquiry about the movie Cherry please email Jordan Kessler.

If your lover just left you, your parents are dysfunctional, you worry about still being a virgin at 28, you want to cheat on your spouse even though you love him/her, you’re 21 and almost done with college and you STILL have no idea what you’re going to do with your life, you have bizarre sexual desires, you’re gay but afraid to say so, you’re freaked out that you’re 35 and single and all your friends are partnering up, you feel incredibly angry at your toddler and don’t know what to do with your rage, you wonder if it’s okay to ask your professor/therapist/neighbor on a date, please email Sugar, sugar@therumpus.net

The FBI has released a 191-page file on Apple founder Steve Jobs. You can learn more, without sifting through the giant file, here.

The big day approaches. Sugar’s Coming Out Party is on Tuesday, February 14th (Valentine’s Day) at The Verdi Club in San Francisco (2424 Mariposa Street), 7pm.

Come out to meet Sugar live and in person as he/she reveals his/her secret identity!

Music by Pocket Full of Rye and The Yellow Dress. And comedy by the amazing Janine Brito!

Plus fantastic deals on Sugar mugs and posters, chances to win great prizes in our monthly porn raffle, and many other rad surprises.

$10, cheap! You can’t afford not to go!

Click here to purchase (we highly recommend purchasing tickets in advance).

Hesperus Press collected four long-neglected critical essays for their new collection, Virginia Woolf’s On Fiction. Her criticism, like her fiction, is an utter delight. …more

The Enchanted Forest and North Brother Island will provide your ruin porn for the week.

If I’m reading this correctly, tarsiers are super sonic spies.

Vulture restaurant is this weeks space tugboat.

The Magic Underground Castle (is delightful).

In those days, the only way to see David Lynch’s early, short films was to start or join a film club, pool resources, and rent them from some place like Facets in Chicago. …more

The Chimerist, a website created by Maud Newton and Salon’s Laura Miller, launched this week, uniting “two iPad lovers at the intersection of art, stories, and technology.”

Docsorrow got a bad-ass Sugar tattoo, inspired by Dear Sugar #41: Like an Iron Bell. Who else has a tattoo to show off at next week’s coming out party?

At The New Republic, Ruth Franklin celebrates the work of the late Wislawa Szymborska, and explores the brilliance of Polish poetry throughout the last half-century.

“Assuming that there weren’t any mind-altering chemicals in the run-off from Nowa Huta, the notoriously polluted steelworks outside Krakow (where Szymborska spent nearly her entire life), we can only conclude that Poland’s postwar poetic greatness was largely a historical accident—the collision of a deep and enduring literary culture with Europe’s ghastliest battleground.”

(Via The Book Bench)

Conversation Hearts

Two Words. Infinite Meanings. True Love. Missed Connections. 50% Divorce. First Date. Happy Nights. Sad Days. Star Crossed. Wedded Bliss. Bad Breakup. Holding Hands. Making Out. Great Sex. Poly Love. …more

Silent films, like theater, require their audience members to suspend a sense of reality, investing instead in wonder, imagination, and sensory titillation. The greatest films of the silent era were able to transform the dart of an eye, the contortion of a dimple, or the mournful whine of a violin into entirely new vernaculars. …more

I arrive at Books and Books in Coral Gables at about 8:05pm, Tuesday evening. The place is buzzing with energetic conversation and there is a small table with sandwiches and a half empty bottle of Quinta de Aveleda. I sit down and place my Moleskine on the chair beside me, surveying the room. Everyone is well-dressed and cordial. I see what looks like a group of college students, a man with a hair piece, a handful of literary types, two camera men. But no sign of the writer I came to hear. …more

This weekend, Anthony Horton died in a fire in a New York subway tunnel. Horton, who had made a home in the tunnels, was the co-author of Pitch Black, a graphic novel “based on his life underground.” The New York Times reflects on his life and shares an excerpt of the novel, co-written by Youme Landowne.

At Book Riot, Wallace Yovetich writes in anticipation of Sugar’s coming out, imploring those who have not yet experienced Sugarland to do so during this final week of anonymity.

“Go meet Sugar now, and enjoy the huzzah of the revealing, and tell your children that you once ‘knew’ (soon-to-be-revealed-writer), who once wrote as Sugar and you remember the rush of learning her true identity. I’m telling you, she’s that good.”

Ariana Reines’ Coeur De Lion makes me want to drink and have sex. Not frilly drinks but hard strong liquor, and not just any sex, but the stuff of human explosions. …more

MAAKIES: CROSSING

Another fantastic Rumpus Comic from Tony Millionaire!