David Fleming

Internet lawlessness, smartphone love triangles, zombie video gamers, gender role ambivalence and the demise of television-these changes infuse our existence. Borrowing from science fiction, fantasy and magic realism, the collected stories of Not from Concentrate take contemporary issues of relationships and technology head-on! Overlooked questions get the spotlight in these absurd parables. The traditional stereotypes imposed on television sets, mysterious fogs and orange juice are challenged! For example, many cling to the belief that a hardworking pigeon cannot rise to great fortune and great fame. "Sqwaaah!" Translation: "Balderdash!" Additionally, well-disciplined droids from Mars are worthy of our respect. Self-esteem is important. When the characters of this collection can't get it through hard work and patience, they turn to magical potions, secret organizations and electronic STD detectors. Take a stand against bland, synthetic stories. Prepare to concentrate on something Not from Concentrate and lean-in to an irreverent bag of literary slipstream.

Not from Concentrate

Every school day seems to bring more trouble to eleven-year-old Derek, whose former best friend bullies him, while at home he deals with the long absence of his father, a Blackhawk helicopter pilot.

Every school day seems to bring more trouble to eleven-year-old Derek, whose former best friend bullies him, while at home he deals with the long absence of his father, a Blackhawk helicopter pilot, and his mother's sudden moodiness.

The Saturday boy

Shaun Chamberlin

Surviving the Future is a story drawn from the fertile ground of the late David Fleming’s extraordinary Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It. That hardback consists of four hundred and seventy-two interlinked dictionary entries, inviting readers to choose their own path through its radical vision. Recognizing that Lean Logic’s sheer size and unusual structure can be daunting, Fleming’s long-time collaborator Shaun Chamberlin has selected and edited one of these potential narratives to create Surviving the Future. The content, rare insights, and uniquely enjoyably writing style remain Fleming’s, but are presented here at a more accessible paperback-length and in conventional read-it-front-to-back format. The subtitle—Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy—hints at Fleming’s vision. He believed that the market economy will not survive its inherent flaws beyond the early decades of this century, and that its failure will bring great challenges, but he did not dwell on this: “We know what we need to do. We need to build the sequel, to draw on inspiration which has lain dormant, like the seed beneath the snow.” Surviving the Future lays out a compelling and powerfully different new economics for a post-growth world. One that relies not on taut competitiveness and eternally increasing productivity—“putting the grim into reality”—but on the play, humor, conversation, and reciprocal obligations of a rich culture. Building on a remarkable breadth of intellectual and cultural heritage—from Keynes to Kumar, Homer to Huxley, Mumford to MacIntyre, Scruton to Shiva, Shakespeare to Schumacher—Fleming describes a world in which, as he says, “there will be time for music.” This is the world that many of us want to live in, yet we are told it is idealistic and unrealistic. With an evident mastery of both economic theory and historical precedent, Fleming shows that it is not only desirable, but actually the only system with a realistic claim to longevity. With friendliness, humor, and charm, Surviving the Future plucks this vision out of our daydreams and shows us how to make it real.

Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy

Surviving the Future

James Steele

Danger Slater

Jon Konrath

David Raffin

Patrick D'Orazio

Eirik Gumeny

Nick Cato

Vincent Sakowski

Douglas Hackle

John McNee

Donald Armfield

Christy Stewart

Justin Grimbol

Tall Tales with Short Cocks returns with 15 new stories from Bizarro Press. Featuring "The Apple of My iPhone" by Danger Slater, "Laser Tits" by Justin Grimbol, "The Interstellar Quest for Snack Cakes" by Patrick D'Orazio, and many more!

A Bizarro Press Anthology

Tall Tales with Short Cocks Vol. 2

Descending the Energy Staircase with Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs)

Energy and the Common Purpose

East of the land of the Elves is the land of Sweet Smellums, lives a family of hedgehogs by the name of Fipple Berry. Charlie Blue Berry Fipple Berry is their only son, and he has three favorite things: eating Blue Berry muffins, fishing, and playing with his best friend, a polar bear named Norry Norris Fruit Bean. On one very special day, Charlie Blue Berry wakes up in celebration, because this day, is the last day of school before the summer! All year long Charlie Blue Berry Fipple Berry tries to listen to his parents and to do the right thing, but it isnt easy always. Thinking that his Mother did not notice, Charlie Blue Berry Fipple Berry does something his Mother asked him not to, and spends the whole day feeling bad about it. How will Charlie Blue Berry Fipple Berry explain what he has done? Charlie Blue Berry Fipple Berry feels so bad about what he has done, he tells his self he will never do anything bad again, but then Charlie Blue Berry Fipple Berry makes another mistake...a big mistake...........Children growing up make a lot of mistakes. Learning from our mistakes and telling the truth about things that we have done is always the right thing to do! We will must never be afraid to tell our parents when we have done something wrong, they love us, and wants to show us the right way.

Charlie Blue Berry Fipple Berry

Late one evening in March 1924, a tipsy young nun was seen trying to slip into Balliol, an all-male Oxford college, just as the gates were about to close for the night. The nun – subsequently unmasked as the son of the college bursar – was returning after a fancy-dress party at a notorious Oxford social club, one known to the university proctors for its hedonistic ways, heavy drinking and wayward behaviour. This was the final straw; the club was shut down. Described by one habitué as ‘a kind of early twentieth-century Hell Fire Club’, the Hypocrites Club counted some of the brightest of the future ‘Bright Young People’ among its members. The one-time secretary was Evelyn Waugh, who used ten of his fellow Hypocrites as inspiration for his fictional characters – seven of them in Brideshead Revisited alone. The Hypocrites didn’t just lend themselves to Waugh’s fiction. Many went on to prominence themselves, including Anthony Powell, Robert Byron, Henry Green, Claud Cockburn and Tom Driberg. Hellfire is the first full-length portrait of this scandalous club and its famous members, who continued to be thorns in the Establishment’s side – throughout war and austerity – for the next five decades.

Evelyn Waugh and the Hypocrites Club

Hellfire

In 1925, the Pottsville Maroons, a football team from the heart of Pennsylvania coal country, joined the fledgling National Football League. Built by an eccentric owner, molded by a visionary coach and loaded with hardscrabble miners, college All Americans and the sky's the limit ethos of the Roaring Twentys, the Maroons did the unthinkable and dominated the NFL in their rookie season. (Their improbable rise was chronicled each week in the local paper by a rookie Pottsville sportswriter named John OOHara.) Little Pottsville outscored its first seven opponents 162-6. The boys so thoroughly pummeled one opponent, angry fans shot up their train car as the Maroons rode out of town. In the final game of that first season the Maroons traveled to the Midwest to face the league-leading Chicago Cardinals in what was viewed as the championship game for 1925. The Maroons overcame a Windy City snowstorm and an injury to their best player to defeat the Cardinals 21-7. But the fans wanted more. College ball was still king. And as news of PottsvilleOs success was splashed across the news reels and headlines throughout the country, a movement began to have the Maroons face a team of college All-Stars from the University of Notre Dame, featuring the legendary Four Horsemen, the finest collection of talent the game had ever known. Experts believed the NFL was still decades away from competing with college football. But on a neutral field in Philadelphia, in a battle described as The Greatest Football Game Ever Seen, the Maroons shocked the world and turned the football establishment upside-down, defeating Notre Dame 9-7 on a last-second field goal by their captain Charlie Berry who had his kicking cleat bronzed for eternity. The championship was theirs. The NFL was finally on the map. The Maroons victory over Notre Dame had legitimized the league. It also destroyed the town and the team that made it all possible. Claiming the upstart Maroons had violated the territory of another franchise by playing Notre Dame in Philadelphia, the NFL suspended Pottsville and awarded the 1925 NFL championship to the Chicago Cardinals. The Cardinals refused to accept the bogus title and the 1925 crown was never officially awarded. For more than 80 years, fans of the Pottsville MaroonsNthe team Red Grange said was the greatest he ever facedNhave fought to have the 1925 title returned to its rightful owners. With Breaker Boys their remarkable story is told at last.

The Nfl's Greatest Team and the Stolen 1925 Championship

Breaker Boys

Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. Jack discovered something far greater and gave it to a child. Mykl now reigns as king of the gene pool, with a teddy bear by his side. World superpowers engage in their own reckless game to ensure global domination. But playing with fire risks the extinction of everyone. For humanity to survive, there's only one choice... and one outcome... The Prometheus Effect.

The Prometheus Effect

In the spring of 1968, the English faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) voted to remedialize the first semester of its required freshman composition course, English 101. The following year, it eliminated outright the second semester course, English 102. For the next quarter-century, UW had no real campus-wide writing requirement, putting it out of step with its peer institutions and preventing it from fully joining the “composition revolution” of the 1970s. In From Form to Meaning, David Fleming chronicles these events, situating them against the backdrop of late 1960s student radicalism and within the wider changes taking place in U.S. higher education at the time. Fleming begins with the founding of UW in 1848. He examines the rhetorical education provided in the university’s first half-century, the birth of a required, two semester composition course in 1898, faculty experimentation with that course in the 1920s and 1930s, and the rise of a massive “current-traditional” writing program, staffed primarily by graduate teaching assistants (TAs), after World War II. He then reveals how, starting around 1965, tensions between faculty and TAs concerning English 101-102 began to mount. By 1969, as the TAs were trying to take over the committee that supervised the course, the English faculty simply abandoned its long-standing commitment to freshman writing. In telling the story of composition’s demise at UW, Fleming shows how contributing factors—the growing reliance on TAs; the questioning of traditional curricula by young instructors and their students; the disinterest of faculty in teaching and administering general education courses—were part of a larger shift affecting universities nationally. He also connects the events of this period to the long, embattled history of freshman composition in the United States. And he offers his own thoughts on the qualities of the course that have allowed it to survive and regenerate for over 125 years.

Freshman Composition and the Long Sixties, 1957–1974

From Form to Meaning

If there's one thing I've learned from comic books, it's that everybody has a weakness—something that can totally ruin their day without fail. For the wolfman it's a silver bullet. For Superman it's Kryptonite. For me it was a letter. With one letter, my dad was sent back to Afghanistan to fly Apache helicopters for the U.S. army. Now all I have are his letters. Ninety-one of them to be exact. I keep them in his old plastic lunchbox—the one with the cool black car on it that says Knight Rider underneath. Apart from my comic books, Dad's letters are the only things I read more than once. I know which ones to read when I'm down and need a pick-me-up. I know which ones will make me feel like I can conquer the world. I also know exactly where to go when I forget Mom's birthday. No matter what, each letter always says exactly what I need to hear. But what I want to hear the most is that my dad is coming home.

Saturday Boy

No one pulls this puppet's strings...Felty Fuzzpalace isn't your average puppet. Brought to life by a combination of love and magic, Felty is forced to navigate the treacherous problems of the real world. And right off the bat, he finds himself tangled in a treacherous corporate conspiracy. What's a good-hearted puppet to do?When his maker dies in a freak genetically engineered snack accident, Fel- ty takes on the old man's debt to the mafia. And it's up to him to pay it off... fast! His puppet girlfriend masquerades as a human executive at the Power Chemicals company, and hires him on as an engineer. But when he uncovers a secret plan to produce a deadly new drug with sinister side effects, Felty faces a moral crisis.Torn between doing the right thing, and helping his fellow puppets escape the mob, Felty must find a way to make things right. It will take guts, courage, and a few spontaneous musical numbers to defeat the corporate forces standing against him. But this puppet is ready to clip his strings and save the day.Puppets win today! is a humorous romp that will have you in stitches. If you like magical realism with a dark twist, then you'll love this cut- ting edge satire.

Puppets Win Today

Lean Logic is David Fleming's masterpiece, the product of more than thirty years' work and a testament to the creative brilliance of one of Britain's most important intellectuals. A dictionary unlike any other, it leads readers through Fleming's stimulating exploration of fields as diverse as culture, history, science, art, logic, ethics, myth, economics, and anthropology, being made up of four hundred and four engaging essay-entries covering topics such as Boredom, Community, Debt, Growth, Harmless Lunatics, Land, Lean Thinking, Nanotechnology, Play, Religion, Spirit, Trust, and Utopia. The threads running through every entry are Fleming's deft and original analysis of how our present market-based economy is destroying the very foundations--ecological, economic, and cultural-- on which it depends, and his core focus: a compelling, grounded vision for a cohesive society that might weather the consequences. A society that provides a satisfying, culturally-rich context for lives well lived, in an economy not reliant on the impossible promise of eternal economic growth. A society worth living in. Worth fighting for. Worth contributing to. The beauty of the dictionary format is that it allows Fleming to draw connections without detracting from his in-depth exploration of each topic. Each entry carries intriguing links to other entries, inviting the enchanted reader to break free of the imposed order of a conventional book, starting where she will and following the links in the order of her choosing. In combination with Fleming's refreshing writing style and good-natured humor, it also creates a book perfectly suited to dipping in and out. The decades Fleming spent honing his life's work are evident in the lightness and mastery with which Lean Logic draws on an incredible wealth of cultural and historical learning--from Whitman to Whitefield, Dickens to Daly, Kropotkin to Kafka, Keats to Kuhn, Oakeshott to Ostrom, Jung to Jensen, Machiavelli to Mumford, Mauss to Mandelbrot, Leopold to Lakatos, Polanyi to Putnam, Nietzsche to Næss, Keynes to Kumar, Scruton to Shiva, Thoreau to Toynbee, Rabelais to Rogers, Shakespeare to Schumacher, Locke to Lovelock, Homer to Homer-Dixon--in demonstrating that many of the principles it commends have a track-record of success long pre-dating our current society. Fleming acknowledges, with honesty, the challenges ahead, but rather than inducing despair, Lean Logic is rare in its ability to inspire optimism in the creativity and intelligence of humans to nurse our ecology back to health; to rediscover the importance of place and play, of reciprocity and resilience, and of community and culture. ------ Recognizing that Lean Logic's sheer size and unusual structure could be daunting, Fleming's long-time collaborator Shaun Chamberlin has also selected and edited one of the potential pathways through the dictionary to create a second, stand-alone volume, Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy. The content, rare insights, and uniquely enjoyable writing style remain Fleming's, but presented at a more accessible paperback-length and in conventional read-it-front-to-back format.

Mark Pascale

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