Opium Online
Opium Magazine
Literary Humor For The Deleriously Captivated
(Cover displayed is from the print version)
Opium magazine is different from any other online journal I've ever encountered. Instead of whipping up an issue every month or season, Opium just slaps up a few pieces each week, mainly whenever something tasty plops into the editor's lap. I like this. It draws me back to the website with far greater frequency than the traditionally scheduled journal.
There's a linkbox on the page that displays the five most recent stories or poems. I took a little while this morning to read the current fiction content.
All three stories share two things in common: weirdness and humor. With a name like Opium, I'm not surprised to see the content tends towards the bizarre. Let's take a look.
Day To Day by David Conway
Of all three I read, I liked this the least. I like juvenile goofyness, but nothing this formulaic. I felt like I was reading a fourteen year old's self-satisfied attempt at study hall wit. Simple formula: Take a celebrity, have him behave out of character, narrate the anecdote like a kid's diary entry, repeat three times. I got the feeling very little effort went into this. So you fed bread to birds with a pro wrestler. Not that funny. Sorry. For instance:
Yesterday was the most important day of my life. I skipped stones at a filthy beach with Sandra Bullock for about 13 or 14 hours until she passed out and then me and this local teenager named Skippy buried her in the sand. I miss her sometimes. Then me and Skippy went to Canada and on the way I asked Skippy how we became friends and he said he had no clue who I was and asked if he could get out of the car.
How To Bury A Cat by Ryan Havely
This is one of those rare second person point of view stories. As the title suggests, it's about feline funerals. Although it gets off a couple good one liners, I found it read like a silly joke that'd be better spoken aloud, rant-style, by a coked up teenager. Still, it's short enough that the deliberate foulness doesn't wear out its welcome. A sample:
You are now ready to bury your cat. Be sure to wear boots with good traction, as there will most likely be a hill you'll need to descend to get to the creek. On your way down the hill, you'll most likely encounter a dead raccoon or squirrel. Don't discriminate, pick this animal up and carry it with you, it will keep the mangled cat you never should have let outside in the first place company as it spends eternity rotting in a creek somewhere being eaten by grubs and baby birds. After picking up the raccoon or squirrel--or armadillo if you're an asshole from Texas--be careful to get a good foothold with every downhill step you take.
Fake Fish by Dave Lott
This flash piece is about a guy interested in a whacked out bohemian girl with fake fish. Like the other two I've capsuled, it relies on humor.
So when she called one Monday and asked if I'd feed her fish while she was away at some arts festival the coming weekend, I took it as a step forward. She knew I knew the fish were fake, she knew I'd seen her feeding them turtle eggs as if the fish were real, and she wanted to find out if I was willing to play along. No problem. I was willing. She would leave the keys under the mat.
Of the three stories I read, this is the best. I love the punchline at the end. I don't want to spoil the nice touches that make each line a pleasure to read, so I'll just implore you to go read it. It'll take three minutes of your time. Your life will be enriched by the experience. Go. Now.
There's no place on the web quite like Opium. I bookmarked it months ago. You should too.
posted by Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm @ 10:55 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Will you please email me at bitterwithbaggage@gmail.com. I have a question to ask you.
Done. -Steve
Shitty Neighborhood Rallies Against Asshole Developer
CHICAGO—Residents of the Carney Gardens neighborhood on Chicago's South Side are opposing an effort by asshole real-estate developer Royce Messner to build a godawful $45 million strip mall and condominium complex in the crime-ridden shithole they call home.
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Residents march to protect their beloved, execrable squalor.
The Save Carney Neighborhood Foundation, the most organized non-criminal group in this part of town, has filed a lawsuit in federal court to block the scheduled April 2008 groundbreaking. While halting the project would surely prevent a tragic urban-planning nightmare, it would also mean keeping the run-down, economically depressed community exactly as it is.
"Carney is where I was born and raised, and it remains a tight-knit community," said Foundation chairman Althea Hynes at a fundraising block party held Monday on a broken bottle- and condom-strewn stretch of Carney Avenue where the money-grubbing Messner wants to put a soulless indoor food court. "Lots of young kids still play in the empty lots around here."
Messner, 54, a three-time Chicagoland "Builder of the Year" and all-time unbelievable scumbag who made his fortune in the 1990s converting public parks and cheap, blighted properties into high-rise luxury residences, is seeking to "revitalize" Carney Gardens by razing it and replacing it with a damned cookie-cutter mixed commercial-residential development that would benefit no one who lives there now.
Unrepentant prick Messner.
"What people like this can never get through their heads is the fact that progress isn't always painless," the rapacious bastard said, as if he were not talking about driving thousands of poor benighted fucks out of the place that, pestilential hellhole or not, is the only home they've ever been able to afford. "They complained about the expressway over their heads too, but its easy-on, easy-off access makes Carney Gardens a prime area for development. Once we get a few more chain restaurants in that area, the whole economy will turn around."
A hellish 16-block stretch of burned-out buildings and howling poverty, Carney Gardens has never recovered from its economic slide in the late 1960s. However, many of those who live in the human sewer say they can't just allow Messner to squat his bloated fat-cat ass over their neighborhood and dump a big concrete-and-glass yuppie turd onto everything they've ever known.
"There's no way this city can allow some developer to just come in here and ruin our community," said liquor store owner Carlos Jimenez, demonstrating willful ignorance of Chicago history, the conditions immediately outside his door, and even his role in Carney Gardens' downfall.
"Where are all these people supposed to go if they put up that mall here—Gary, Indiana?" said Hynes, as if living in a filthy, dangerous joke of an ass wipe city was some kind of affront to her standards.
Urban planning experts say that any opposition to the colossal asshole faces an uphill battle, as Carney Gardens has been a wart on the ass of Chicago for too long. Despite this, it seems that the determined Save Carney group will not abandon its hope of rejecting the only development proposal their hopeless pit will see in the next two decades.
"Poor communities are at a disadvantage against this type of developer, who speaks the language of City Hall," said Jackson Eisenberg, an architecture professor at Loyola University who has studied the effects of short-sighted, profit-oriented renewal and gentrification on dozens of crap areas. "It's the same dilemma faced by the working-class [losers] in [rotten-ass] urban neighborhoods across America. As a [shrivel-dicked] businessman looking for a lucrative investment, [evil] Messner sees a ripe opportunity here."
Mayor Richard M. Daley has yet to speak publicly about whether he will oppose Messner's human hamster cage, or allow the vile prick to wipe the bleeding hemorrhoid that is Carney Gardens from existence.
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