Beach Sloth

The Best Alt Lit Stories of 2012 by Various Artists

                Alt Lit Gossip is more than another alt lit site it is a way of life. Compilations are hitting alt lit in a big way. Why not collect the ‘Best Of’ for 2012? This makes sense as alt lit is enormous. I believe alt lit is the largest, most extensive collection of internet writing. Every release, piece of poetry, short story helps alt lit include yet more and more people. Wish everyone and everything I like could be here. Honestly that may be far larger than anybody could ever collect. Maybe this site is the largest collection of alt lit one could find. ‘The Best Alt Lit Stories of 2012’ is a good beginning, a way to reflect on such a busy, productive year. 

                I introduce it! Go me! Happy I got to ‘expose my heart’ in PDF form. Usually my heart comes out in blog-post, tweet, or Facebook comment form. This is an unusual thing. Please check it out for it gives some insight into how I got interested in alt lit in the first place. 

                Noah Cicero’s story is about a fucked-up sleep-o-holic. When life sucks, sleep it off. Eventually you wake up and it gets a bit better. That doesn’t happen in this story. Anything the character does is to get ‘messed up’. Church shoves sausages and pancakes down her throat. Only nature gives her some kind of peace. Squirrels are the peacekeepers of the mind. 

                Frank Hinton goes through a childhood and adulthood. The in-between years hurt the most. We realize the corruption of our childhood by forces we thought were benign. Video game players are messed up. Pet rocks thrown into the river. Sea smells the best after a nice rain. Clarity is the air at sea once it has rained. 

                Sam Pink works every time of job. Wonder how long his resume must be. He lives a random life. The children grow on him. Hardy expands his joke range, to include things other than ‘wieners’. Most of the time he makes up stuff for the six year olds because it entertains him to spread ignorance among America’s youth. If they are going to be stupid anyway why not have some fun with it? Juliana understands the pointless of life. Dolls in her world defecate and eat their own defecation. Since Juliana was a child nihilist she’d make the dolls jump off the roof and kill themselves. Kids naturally know life is pointless and stupid. Why do we lose this knowledge as we grow older? 

                Guillaume Morissette expands his empty horizons. Look up at the sky. Everything around is unfulfilled. This is life. We fill it ourselves with people, things, food, and Facebook events. Anika is Guillaume’s friend to a degree. Stealing tea from work is easy. What is hard is making hundreds of chapbooks at work without anyone realizing it. Do that and you win! The description of PBR is perhaps the best description ever of it. At least PBR has an identity. National Bohemian is the beer of Baltimore. It barely exists outside of the area. I fail to understand how it can call itself ‘National’ when it is obviously a regional substitute for other weak beers. 

                Justin Carter documents a mild crazy life. Living is tough to do while on drugs. Be a swordfish and stab others. Cook boring casseroles for people disinterested in what they eat. Everything is sad. That happens. It hurts when the world enters shades of grey. We need color to give us hope. She takes Justin’s money, which probably isn’t much because he’s a poet. Poets are not known as vast reservoirs of wealth. 

                Lily Dawn suffers through rehab. This is moving. Rehab apparently sucks. What is weird is the small things make it unbearable. Bad movies of people destroyed through accidents. Various other fellow rehab residents getting through the situation make it more difficult. A vacuum exists in rehab. Little comes in or out. Cell phones are confiscated. TV is terrible. It is a purgatory for the addicted. 

                Frances Dinger gives away her sister. Being an animal is far easier than being a person. People have tough lives. Animals have it easy. No one expects an animal to get into courtship. Sure there can be mating ceremonies but those are considerably less elaborated. 

                Prepare for part II of this lovely collection. No one blog post can contain it all (literally I’m unable to tag everything I want to tag).