Maybe it’s me, but I’m thinking the Bedbug Bible Gang might want to consider rebranding for the urban market. Or, hey, if that’s outside the budget, at least drop the “just itching to” pitch.

The scene above is from Esther Fest, in which the “Bedbugs share the story of Esther in a royalty rousing episode.”

After Bookslut directed my attention to the David Foster Wallace cartoon at pictures for sad children, I read through the archives. Much of the story centers on Paul, who has a crush on a coworker and still shows up to his cubicle even though he’s dead. The call center series is especially good.

Last month the cartoonist, John Campbell, was taking orders for custom comics at $20 each. You were able to request specific characters, and I asked that my comic feature Edgar Allan Poe and Jacques Derrida. Here it is.

In “Nashville’s Other Skyline,” a print-only offering from the current issue of Oxford American, Richard Schweid investigates a different kind of homelessness: living in a motel.

Three-quarters of the kids who attend one elementary school in the neighborhood he surveys have been homeless at some point. Almost 90% who start school there in September end up somewhere else by May. The area is “pocked with liquor stores, used-car lots, and check-cashing storefronts. There are no community centers here, no libraries. Not even the Bookmobile will come around.”
 

The one rule a weekly-rate motel is likely to enforce: “ANYONE EVICTED WILL HAVE THEIR THINGS THROWN AWAY.”

[F]amilies that stay [at the Trinity Inn] — mostly single mothers and their children — are promptly evicted for missing the weekly rent. On the morning after such occasions, kids usually arrive at Schwab Elementary empty-handed, with nothing but the clothes they’ve had on since their eviction. Textbooks need to be replaced. Toys and keepsakes disappear.

It happens frequently enough that teachers at Schwab Elementary School, with well over three hundred students from kindergarten through fourth grade, keep sets of kids’ clothing in various sizes laundered and tucked away in drawers.

Despite its brevity, this may be the best article I’ve ever read in Oxford American. It is definitely the most depressing.

For more on homelessness in Nashville, read the Tennessean article on a march and vacant house takeover held earlier this week. The image at the top of this post is from an August 1998 special section of The Orange County Register.

For the holidays, the design firm Pentagram sent out Decipher, a gorgeous book of cryptographic puzzles now reproduced online for your enjoyment. Solve them here.

In places there’s a patronizing edge to the excerpted account that renders it a little less effective journalistically than something like Jesus Camp. Still, Taibbi’s got a compelling story and some good and unusual insights into how that world works.

Having enjoyed his scathing articles for years, I can’t wait to get my hands on the book.
 

If you’d like a signed copy, and you haven’t won one of my giveaways in the past, email me at maud [at] maudnewton [dot] com before 9 a.m. EST tomorrow (5/7), with “Great Derangement” in the subject line. All entries will be assigned numbers based on the order received, and the randomizer will choose a winner. Jacob M. wins the signed copy.

The plane back from Georgia was delayed, and all the pulled pork, okra, and cake I ate this weekend must have gone to my brain. I can’t concentrate to answer email, much less catch up on reading.

For now, try Wilfred, an Australian TV show being shown in daily installments at IFC.com. Ingredients: one man, one woman, and a bong-smoking dog who thinks he’s human. Says Brooklyn Skeptic:

When I saw clips of Wilfred at the party last night, I pretty much assumed it would be completely retarded. But actually, it is completely delightful. Basically, it’s about a guy who is dating a girl with a dog - and the dog is played by a man in a dog suit. The dog says creepy things, smokes pot, likes to watch DVDs, and gets an itchy butt at night.

An old buddy from my Gainesville days is one of the masterminds behind IFC’s new Web Series lineup, but I point you to Wilfred because it’s funny, not because I need a check on the nepotism scorecard.

Last I checked, the contributors included Kate Christensen, Junot Díaz, Gary Shteyngart, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, Dana Rasso, Tayari Jones, Amanda Stern, Pasha Malla, Wendy McClure, T. Cooper, Jami Attenberg, Katherine Lanpher, Emily Flake, Lynda Barry, Brock Clarke, Jennifer Finley Boylan, and possibly Michael himself (if I have anything to say about it).
 

I mention the piece now because my friends Marie and Alexi have been pushing me to send my work to literary magazines — Marie said I needed to start thinking of myself as a writer, and to learn to stomach rejection, and this would help — and, after years of largely avoiding that process, I have been.

So I entered StoryQuarterly’s Love Story Contest, with the essay that’s going to be anthologized. I submitted and paid my $20 on the last possible day. And yesterday the editors wrote to tell me I won second prize(!). Also, $1,500(!). Astonishing. I’ve admired StoryQuarterly since I first read it back in college. (The most recent issue is here.)

Elizabeth Stuckey-French took first place for “Interview with a Moron,” and Janet Burroway took third, with “Blackout.” Runners-up are Heather Brittain Bergstrom, Mermer Blakeslee, William Borden, Beth O’Gara Connor, Masha Hamilton, Christian Lewis, Ron Tanner, Sarah Towers, Lesley C. Weston, and Yuvi Zalkow. (My piece is called “Conversations You Have at Twenty.”)
 

If you’ve got some good stories sitting in a drawer, pull them out, dust them off, and ship them off to journals you like. Form rejections are no fun, and insulting ones are worse, but you can’t win if you don’t send.

StoryQuarterly’s sister publication, Narrative is running a contest for first-person stories right now. Some of my (and my friends’) other favorite venues are at the bottom left of my links page. Poets & Writers and New Pages have more comprehensive lists.

These images of sculptor Peter Callesen’s paper cuts have been floating around the Internet for a while, but they’re new to me. Many of his smaller works appear to be made from, essentially, single sheets of printer paper.

My friend Kellie is partial to the Día de los Muertos style pieces, and “that crazy Tim Burton tower” (below). Me too, and I also like this poor cowboy (above) and the dead angels (at bottom).