Them Pretentious Basterds - Teal Issue
Presenting the Teal issue of Them Pretentious Basterds magazine.
Loud, uncut and in your face, this edition features a whole new collection of fiction, poetry and art from India.
Issuu:
Dropbox (for slower broadband speeds):
The Gift A Short Story Project
It’s simple man. Just click this link and see what happens. Ok? Ok.
blinklish asked: Is Kaber being a dick by putting his name on the blog sidebar?
Oh, so you noticed. Yes, yes, Kaber does that.
Anonymous asked: Will you send rejections or writers may assume a rejection in case of no reply-silence? -Mira
Dear Mira,
We usually send an acknowledgement mail one week after receiving a submission. Your email slid to the bottom of the pile accidentally, and didn’t get replied to. We will get back to you regarding the status of your submission in the first week of April.
Regards,
The Editors
Them Pretentious Basterds
The Post where Kaber gets Ranty
It’s one of the strange things about blogging, that you have to use the third person to describe yourself sometimes. You just have to. Why? Cause it feels right that way, that’s why.
Anyway. There was no meet Sunday last because Niranjan offered to host it and no one wanted travel that far. Personally I didn’t go because I was too tired after an entire night watching movies at the RTFF (which was really cool by the way) and I spent the entire day sleeping. Not a bad Sunday.
I also made a fascinating discovery on Sunday, and I am very proud of myself for making it. I discovered, with no help from the internets whatsoever, how to relieve yourself of a blocked nose. And I will share my amazing discovery with you.
This is what you do when you have a blocked nose. You lie down on your bed, straight back and staring at the ceiling. Then you stop breathing with your mouth, keep it shut. Make sure your body is relaxed, even though it’s hard to breadth with a blocked nose and a closed mouth, but trust me.
Exhale. Empty you lung and then stop breathing. Don’t inhale. Don’t inhale of your own accord at all, wait for the reflex mechanism to kick in a make you inhale. It’s really not that hard. Just when you’re about to give up, you’ll feel the nose block open. Remember this the next time you have a blocked nose. It’s amazing. Once you’ve gotten rid of the nose block, make sure that you take slow, long and deep breadths. If your breadth too hard, your nose block will return.
Next on our list of important things to discuss is V.S.Ramachandran. I’ve been reading his book Phantoms in the Brain (which has provided me with more plot ideas than anything else I’ve ever read) and then I googled him and found this. Satwik think’s it cool, so I’m not the only one, okay?
Also, Shivankar thinks this is cool. It’s cool.
Meet Summary
We met today evening at my place. Aroah read out his short story about a boy called Theo and Thomas gave him some good advice on how to make it better. Satwik read out the fourth chapter of the novel he’s working on and that was amazing. Thomas wanted to read out something from a book called ‘Lint’. Satwik didn’t let him read it though. Apparently the new rule is you can’t mix published writing and our writing together. Satwik is against it and he’s the reigning kalari champ. Well he keeps saying that anyway.
Then we sat down and made up a masala movie staring Thomas as a out of luck kidnapper lover, Satwik as a bad ass comedian guardian angel and me as a cool as fuck bad guy. Shivankar has a cameo in the movie too. He has a bunch of ‘Hmm’ dialogues, Niranjan has a pretty chilled out cameo and there was a girl in it too, but I can’t remember her name. Aroah drinks some coffee spiked with expired Plutonium, chocolate and orange juice and turns into the Hulk. I’m not even kidding. It’s an amazing movie idea.
So it was four guys at the meet today, and it went pretty well. Thomas and Satwik are of the opinion that the meet was productive. On an unrelated note, Aroah has a cool beard and I want to write a script for that movie. I really really do.
Found this via Amrut
Theophilus Mog
Thomas has stopped writing it for some reason, but this is a very enjoyable series that will keep you giggling at your screen for a good while. I’ve taken the pains to link to all of the existing chapters. Unfortunately it looks like it’ll be a while before Thomas writes a new one. Until then, enjoy.
A extract from the introduction to get you started:
Theophilis Mog is not a man. He is at some points in time and space a man but he is also many other things. He is as much a man as he is a cactus. I repeat, he is not a man. I cannot stress on this enough as I’m acutely aware of humanity’s misconstrued idea that the world was meant for them. They’re not even the most advanced species on their own planet. That would be cockroaches. (Theophilus Mog was a cockroach once. There isn’t really much that he hasn’t been.) So, yes, Theophilus Mog is not a man.
The Scene Changer
Today’s link is a short story by Shivankar. It’s called The Scene Changer. The characters from this piece appear in a few other stories too. He also has a lot of other recurring characters on his blog.
The thing I like the most about Shivankar’s writing is that it sounds so fun. Every time I read something he wrote, it seems to me that he had more fun writing it than I’ve had in my entire life. This man plays with narrative, structure and all those other things that well-read writers talk about and he actually has jolly time with it.
Click the link and read the story, but be warned, his writing style is addictive.
This is one of the songs that I get appreciated for every time I perform it, so I thought I’d do some self publicity and post this link. Also because I performed at The Mad Librarian’s Tea Party and it was awesome.
A few more songs from the same recording session are here.
