We're Back?! Episode 9000

Oh yes. Setting up hand coded websites is SLOW business, at least for Karl, it seems. You remember him, or maybe you don't. It has been almost a year. Do we even have any fans left? Well, it doesn't matter, because we're back, motherfuckers! At least for now. We fully intend to transition our operations to everybodyco.com, but until certain members of our web development team actually finish college, we're just going to have to conduct our business here. So, give us a hug, roll out the welcome mat, and prepare for more of the Everybody Company.

Introducing the brand spanking new, 2011 staff:

El Savel - Overseer, grand poobah, and resident expert in defenestration.

Bjorg Sundance - Second in command, grovel monkey, and avid aquaculturist.

Baguette - Me, the guy who narrates everything and keeps track of the condiments.

Minerva Wallace - Our new editor in chief and 100% resistant to the Gaze.

Yogi Blackheart III - Chief of complaints, writer of letters, and eater of bacon.

John "Go Fuck Yourself" Jones - Chief of anti-complaints; we're not really sure what he does but we're not going to tell him that.

Zhu Yi - Our new creative director; he's kind of shy but we like him.

Bertolt Ipswitch - Director of pie-in-the-sky ideas, which means he gets paid to be ignored.

Various editing temps - They don't earn their names until they slay a level 5 monster.

??? - Embarrassingly, we still don't know his name, but he's the janitor (very important to us).

Karl A. Fischer - Owner of the company and amateur scribbler; he's not around much.

Priscella Gogo - The One Foretold

Okay, well, that's the crew. We'll let you get back to your bongs and beer kegs now. Keep us in your hearts as you troll the internets for pornography and don't forget that we're a real company with real needs. So if you want to send over some food or something or maybe help spruce the office up (which is really more a condemned building by this point) just drop us a line.

everybodyco at gmail dot com

Last Episode: We Refuse To Feel Bad About It

As we began to say, we refuse to feel bad for our long and unannounced absence and we are not even going to offer any excuses because we have none. All in all, we've been far too busy until now and, frankly, have nothing to show for it except for a few lobsters and this mysterious box.

Now, we know we've said this before but we have plans, big ones, including a bit of relocation. That's right, the Everybody Company is moving. Here is where you can eventually find us in all our glory: www.everybodyco.com. Currently, there isn't jack to be found there, but all in good time.

As for what we'll be doing once we get there, expect more comedy, more reviews, and a lot more to do with the writings of Karl A. Fischer. That's right, that one incredibly distant relative has bought out our little company and we will be forced to conceded to his wishes, which means discussing his achievements (few as they are). We hope that all (six of) our fans will be able to cope with this transition, but none of you really have a choice anyway, so deal with it.

In closing, we just wanted to say that it's been a lot of fun and we hope to have even more, even as we attempt to revive our business and get used to a new location. None of us here have ever been good at goodbyes, or hellos for that matter, so we'll just say: "see you on the otherside." We hope that you'll follow us there.

Episode 3: Busting Out

We apologize most sincerely for the long wait. Despite the rigorous advice of African magic and German diplomacy alike, we have done a miserable job of sticking to our schedule. We offer no excuses, unless you'll believe us when we talk about flying squids and machete-wielding fitness instructors. We didn't think so. There is a new schedule in the works but it won't be ready until we've done placebo testing. In the mean time, we'd like to present one of our favorite publications currently out subverting the market. Say hello to: Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens.

Here is our sexy new set up for reviews:

Name: Bust Down the Door and Eat All of the Chickens
Head Honcho: Bradley Sands
Official Genre(s) of Choice: Surrealism, Absurdism, Bizarro
Publication Style: In-Print, with some archiving.
Is It Good?: Hell yeah it is, but you'd better like your fiction weird with a side of bizarre, because you won't get much else.

Praised by a few sources (Horror Scope and The Dream People are all we can think of right now), we've come to add our voice to the growing din of murmuring, approving nods, and hand waving. Printed in a clean and arousing format, BDDEAC offers such wonders as: scuba diver rapists, psychic Jesus blood, chicken monsters, and otherworldly secret shoppers. Some of our favorites include "I am the Dictator" by Sam Pink (Issue 8) and "A Recipe" by Stefani Nellen (Issue 7). So what makes it so good? BDDEAC exists somewhere between the quiet kid in the back of the class and that beautiful drug user slouched over in the front, casting strange glances at the teacher and playing with her nipple. It's Allen Ginsberg meets Flannery O'Connor meets Kafka meets the Internet Hate Machine. It's weird fiction that doesn't settle for being only weird. And why is that valuable? Because these are crazy times we live in and everyone wants to be the interesting weirdo on the box, spouting off-beat-and-all-too-accurate imperatives about today's apocalypse. The trick is to not lose track of your humanity in the process, (academic buzz word) even as you subvert yourself through copious amounts of anthropomorphic waffles. BDDEAC will do just that if you give it half the chance.

Currently, the publication is taking a bit of break. You can still buy issue 9 and check out some of their archives but submissions are closed and news has been scant. We sent a spy to infiltrate Sands' organization and we've been told someone might endorse the publication, wherein, operations will recommence with a new layout and possibly a new direction. While this may put a damper on the unique nature of BDDEAC, it shows that Sands is doing something right.

So if you're on the hunt for something off-the-beaten-path of literature, presented in the form of a neat chapbook and filled to the brim with bite-sized stories, we highly recommend Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens.

That's all for now. Stay tuned for more.

Alert! Alert!

Alright, so we said that we would be doing Project Phantasmagoria every Thursday and we totally will. However, you're not going to believe what completely random and entirely unforeseeable event just occurred that prevented us from making our deadline. Even we don't believe in this event, so much that we're not even going to tell you about it because it's simply too unbelievable. You'd think we were fucking crazy if we told you.

So yeah. Stay tuned for Project Phantasmagoria later on and make sure to get plenty of vitamin C while you wait.

The First Day of a New Decade

Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the second decade of the century, the millennium, and the bimillennium. That's right, ten years have now passed since humanity was supposed to suffer computer/zombie apocalypse at the hands of Y2K and it's only another twenty eight years until we have to deal with it again in 2038. We'd like to take this opportunity to remind you of the realities of your universe.



You know how so many movies either pan out or pan into a shot of the Milky Way, as if it were some overpoweringly colossal entity that is supposed to make you feel insignificant? Well forget the Milky Way, let's talk superclusters and filaments. A supercluster contains clouds of thousands of galaxies and we estimate that there are about 10 million superclusters in the observable universe. These superclusters appear to be arranged in sheets or walls that surround massive voids of nothingness (by this point we're dealing with hundreds of megaparsecs, which is 2×10¹⁹ miles a unit) and the collection of the superclusters is called a filament. As far as individuals galaxies are concerned, they're nothing but pinpricks of light in a vast spiderweb. So you think the Milky Way is scary huge, that the stars in the sky are far away? Compare all of that to Bootes Void, and suddenly, the Milky Way seems like an insignificant cloud of dust. Forget about whether or not you matter, wonder about whether our local galactic realm even matters.

With that cheerful little reality check out of the way, we'd just like to say that we plan on continuing our operations (regardless of their cosmic and local insignificance) and that we're looking forward to a new year. We thank the people that have supported us and kept us going all through the year. Honestly, it's for you people that we write, read, and splatter ketchup all over the walls. Happy new decade to all. May your non-frightening dreams come true in one recognizable form or another.

Episode 2: New Age Obscure

After consulting a witch doctor and several clones of Henry Kissinger, we have come to discover that Thursday evening is the optimal time to publish internet reviews, as well as offer sacrifices to Ogun. So, with the recommendations of Ombutu and Henry 3 through 8, Project Phantasmagoria will now be regularly published every Thursday. Some might point out that this current publication is coming to you on a Tuesday, but we're paying them to keep quiet.

In this week's episode, we want to talk about something that Everybody Company is quite familiar with: obscure talent. Think of that finely crafted statue of a goblin fellating itself in your neighbor's garden (look in the weed patch to the right of the tulips, it's there). This is not to say that our subjects do not have their fans (your neighbor is certainly a fan of her goblin) but that their popularity is not vast. Just remember, if any of you are reading this, it means we like what you do. Our subjects are one Neil McCormick (aka LongForm) and the erotic stylings of Steamy Punk.

Anyone familiar with U2 or the music writing scene may immediately ask: "Are you talking about THE Neil McCormick?" The answer is: probably not. The world's a big place and people are known to steal each other's identities, but we're just not sure. The Neil we're talking about goes by the alias LongForm and we've only ever found him in one place: Illiterate Magazine. Illiterate Magazine, by the way, is an endeavour worth its own episode, which we just might give it later on. As for Mr. McCormick, he has submitted only three pieces, which are short, sweet, and somewhat unfathomable. With allusions to things like "If I Had a Hammer" by Peter, Paul, and Mary and the use of hypertext, LongForm is an artist of the new age. His shortest piece, "FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITIES FROM HOME OLD MAN!!!!" seems to be an experimental cross between poetry, prose, and email spam. One might look at it and say, "WTF, I could do that," but we would counter with the question "O rly?" There is a certain magic to LongForm's work that is difficult to identify; it stays in your head even though you're not really sure what it is you just read. We encourage you to look him up and scour the interwebs for more answers.

Our other subject will provide a brief foray into the steampunk subculture, its sex life in particular. Steamy Punk is a small website with only a few authors to its name, but it has very recently published some stories in paper and it seems likely to do so again. Steampunk, for those of you who only ever saw the movie adaptation of "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," is not just about kick-ass retro-futurism. The word 'punk' is a key factor, expressing varying degrees of social discontent and a drive towards counter culture. Steamy Punk makes no bones about punkishness with its anarchistic connections to Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness and its progressive mixture of sexualities and situations. We don't know what turns you on (though you're welcome to share) but we find dominance and sodomy to be very interesting and we wish they were more widely displayed in the garden variety historical romance genre. We're not fools of course and we understand that you can find ANYTHING you want on the interwebs. But Everybody Co. is not interested in fruit porn or Twilight fan fiction. What we are interested in are well-written stories with vibrant settings, encapsulating sexual interactions as they actually occur. Steamy Punks arousing authors do just that. The content may not be for everyone but if you like punks, steam, steampunks, or sodomy, check it out.

Well, that's all for now. Expect more later.

Happy Holidays, Assholes

Merry Christmas to anyone who celebrates Christmas and a happy new year to everyone on the Gregorian Calendar. As for the rest of you, happy whatever, whenever it is.

Presents have been opened, songs have been sung, and disparate family members have gotten drunk and brawled on the porch. There's nothing quite like the holidays, nor is there anything quite like workings during them. Oh, but don't worry, only myself and the janitor have been left here, so misery will be minimal. We plan on defenestrating most of El Savel's office supplies and writing crude memos to Hannah with his signature. Vengeance is sweet.

More important announcements will follow.