Fast-Awaiting the Release of U2′S “18B-SIDES” OR “18 CUTTING-FLOOR TRACKS FROM ‘ZOOROPA’ AND FEATURING A COVER OF JAMES BROWN’S ‘MOVE ON,’ RECORDED WITH MCA MUSICAL ARTIST MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE, WITH ALL PROCEEDS BENEFITING THE GERALD FORD FOUNDATION, BECAUSE, WELL, THAT’S WHAT MR. BROWN WOULD HAVE WANTED.”

New news on thevagrantquarterly.com

Yes, it is true, evident in fact, that we can be quite redundant somedays.

A few things …

Why, one may ask, does Project Forever only get around to being productive in the winter? We don’t know, but we hope to cure this in 2007. And even if we don’t, there will be good intentions all around.

A few new things about Sharoute:

• A new direct domain, sharoute.com  Of course, it forwards to the original and still-working sharoute.wordpress.com  We just did this because GoDaddy.com had a sale. What can you do?
• A bit of housecleaning. You will notice the sidebar is now on the right rather then the left, I removed the de.lici.ous link (I don’t maintain it), and a few other things here and there.  And of course, a new banner pic, this time of Jerusalem. Suprise.
• I (Will/Nash/Jeff) have decided to turn Sharoute into a catch-all site for all I do, for all I am involved in, rather then just a personal blog. I was going to build a seperate site for all this, but why bother? So we have the following, all accessible from the handy-dandy menu at the top of the site:
• A bio page. About me. Exciting.
• Current Projects page. Here, you can learn about what I do when in the coffee shop, or at home, on the internet, while watching the masterful acting skills of Vincent D’Onofrio on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. I am writing a few things and editing a few things, and that’s where you can keep up to date.
• Project Forever Page. A brief description and a link about the artist’s collective.
• The Vagrant Page. A brief description and a link about the quarterly literary journal I edit, released through Project Forever.

Other Things:

• TheVragrantQuarterly.com is now up and running. Explore. Make an evening of it.
• ProjectForever.com, as promised, has returned. Extend your evening into the wee hours.

Unrelated Things:

• Merry Christmas
• Happy New Year

Before We Knew Smoking Was Bad

Currently Listening: “Don’t Look Back In Anger” from Oasis, “The Black Parade” from My Chemical Romance, “Imagine” from A Perfect Circle.  

Twelve hours past the eigth night of Chanukah and three days before the traditional amass of wrapping paper on the living room before, the city is a cold 25 degrees, American. I stare down the ramp at the skyscrapers of Phoenix, their outline still a hazy Los Angeles gray with lights that briefly poke through the charcoal smog. They say that the light we see today from stars in the sky was actually light created billions of years ago that just now reached us. Using this logic, the lights from the steel towers I am looking at could be light from, say, at least 15 minutes ago.

Awaking this morning with heavy eyes and a cloudy head that continually flashed with images of the dreams from the night before, dreams that were drawn from the well of our late-night viewing of “A Scanner Darkly.” The film was so-so, but watching real-life Anaheim sketched into graphic novel visuals made everything too familiar. Even The Crystal Cathedral and the City Tower and the Irvine Spectrum made it into the film, as backdrops during Keanu Reeve’s high speed drive on the Interstate 5.

And I sit here at the light, above the city, waiting for the green arrow to turn left down onto 24th, and a cement truck pulls up besides me and idles, and the car behind me pulls up too close to my rear bumper. I shift to neutral and let the clutch out just a bit, and he quits idling forward.

This is a long light. Between Panic! At The Disco’s “I Write Sins Not Tradegies” and U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” The Edge rattles off Phoenix-area traffic incidents like lists of the ships lost in the Caspian, and most of them are on the 10, most of them behind me.

I remember when I listened to the Edge one day, a week ago or so, and they listed off a four car pile-up just before the 60 interchange on the eastbound, and I took credit for that incident. My Pontiac having thrown a rod through the engine block and disabled in the middle lane, a random Mexican mechanic and I stop three lanes of rush hour interstate traffic to push the disabled car with the Israeli flag to the shoulder, and as I jump in to hit the break, my car is glanced by a reckless Mustang, I lose my footing, and I am drug fifteen feet or so along this highway. Cars around and behind me only slowed due to the four-car pileup that I created just behind the Broadway curve, but maybe that made them slow enough so as not to run over me.

The light changes, and I remind myself of just eight more hours of work today. Then off to do what I love, the fun of writing and the whatnot. Five freelance assignments from a high-end developer, talks with an agent in San Francisco, the awaiting of this and that Project Forever … project, the teaming-up of a backpacker from Seattle for a Book of Travels, and stacks and stacks of submissions of shorts from New Yorkers, and the first Project Forever hate mail from Boston.

I park the Suzuki behind the warehouse, swipe my badge, and begin today.

The Vagrant

In February 2007, Project Forever will be launching The Vagrant Literary Quarterly.

In turn, Project Forever is looking for short-story writers to submit possible stories of the fiction or non-fiction narrative nature. Any topic will be held up for consideration (except persuasive religious, racist, and poetry), and will be reviewed by a Group of Three.

The Vagrant will be hard cover, black text and bright white paper. It will be thick. It will be edited by William J. Nash-McAdam, author of Churches, Pubs & Hostels and Destruction & Peace from the Ramparts at Damascus Gate. It will have an ISBN number, and will be copyrighted and imprinted under Project Forever.

Contributing writers retain all rights to their story. Compensation for chosen articles will be publication, byline with short bio (one- to two-sentence), and published piece to add to your resume. We are doing this for the love, not for the money.

Please submit short stories via email to jeff.nash@gmail.com or via Project Forever at myspace.com/projectforever. Please paste entire stories in the email body. Attachments will not be opened. Make sure you include your one- or two-sentence bio, first and last name, and contact information. We prefer email. We will respond in two to three weeks. Deadline is January 30th, 2007.

Banner Five

This new banner pic was taken in Summer 2005, on the Interstate 5 Freeway, along the California Aquaducts, somewhere between Los Angeles and Redding. This was the setting sun that had given me a good sunburn on my left arm most of the day. About twenty minutes after I took this picture the scene totally changed when a ton of yellow and green storm clouds from the north descended onto the highway, pouring down wind and rain quite fierce.