thefingermag

I Wrote This Story to Prove My Best Friend Wrong

By thefingermag | 04.10.201904.10.2019 by thefingermag

by Mathew Serback “Everyone is awful.” That’s a powerful statement. Think about all the possible things my best friend could’ve said instead: A specific person was awful; there was an established (or, possibly, unestablished) reason for the person’s awfulness (depending on your perspective), or no one was actually awful (which is still dependent upon your perspective), and we just misrepresent other people’s emotional states as an assumption of guilt instead of an assumption of innocence.…

Bitter Pill

By thefingermag | 04.10.201904.10.2019 by thefingermag

by Witney Dupree I regurgitate beliefs I was fed as a childand dangle them before the wide-open mind of my son.Not the fried chicken values and potato salad principlesI ate from checkered tablecloths on sunny afternoons.These kernels of untruth were wrapped in cheeseof stuffed inside the sticky center of a marshmallow.I wish my lips would swell shut from the bee stingwords swarming from the hive of my subconscious.Those cyanide phrases I don’t crack a tooth…

What Doesn’t Belong

By thefingermag | 04.10.201904.10.2019 by thefingermag

by Damon McLaughlin That sunrise there, what used to bethe Collombs’ corrals, another dump,this vague pasture of dawn-stubbleand bulb-of-my-nose, kitchen lightvirga over my flannel’s beige fields,this shirt older, softer than our marriage.Those darknesses of mesquite,our acacia, which weeps overgoldfish, Betta, hamster entombedin a toilet paper tube by little hands,the dogs I took someplace else.The Rincons rising moreslowly than you or I have come to know,Cowhead Saddle sagging like a deadhead horse, moon blind,ringboned, incapable of walking…

The Story of Gamera, Another Japanese Monster of Renown

By thefingermag | 04.30.2015 by thefingermag

Here’s a new story by Michael Callari! Toho Studios is indisputably the name most associated with giant monsters in Japan. After twenty-eight Godzilla movies and fifteen other kaiju epics over fifty years, it’s easy to see why. That’s not to say that Toho has a monopoly on people in rubber costumes stomping through miniature sets, however. Their most enduring cinematic competition has been in the form of a character strange even by the standards of…

New Interview Available

By thefingermag | 04.15.201504.15.2015 by thefingermag

Cantalouper Sex and Rock ‘n Roll have been lumped together so long that many now assume they’re two sides of the same coin. For those with more extreme inclinations its not unfair to argue that Rock ‘n Roll was created solely for the purpose of sex. In spite of these associations, Cantalouper’s newest release, “Reproduction,” somehow avoids cliche. “Reproduction”–beyond the obvious mention of sex as reproduction–conjures the ultimate purpose of coitus by featuring a lone…

The Generally Unstoppable Giant Monster

By thefingermag | 05.24.201403.19.2015 by thefingermag

Written by Michael Callari On the surface, a giant monster isn’t terribly hard to figure out. It sinks ships, swats planes, tramples cities and armies, and until the last reel is generally unstoppable. Yet throughout the history of the genre, even as the tone and quality of the movies vary wildly, certain commonalities emerge which are impossible to ignore. When these creatures rampage, the blame often lies with the hubris of capitalism, science, or both.…

A Short History of Giant Monster Movies

By thefingermag | 05.12.201403.19.2015 by thefingermag

Written by Michael Callari After years of box office domination by zombies, vampires, werewolves, and other less-than-normal creatures of manageable size, a different kind of monster – this one so large as to scoff at the parameters of reality – seems poised to make a comeback. Godzilla, the 30th entry in cinema’s longest-running series, is due in U.S. theaters on May 16th. Populated with a surprisingly prolific cast, its previews have presented Japan’s most famous…

American Schools (The Assembly-Line Method Of Educating)

By thefingermag | 05.12.201403.19.2015 by thefingermag

By Devin Burgess American schools are currently struggling. High school dropout rates are alarmingly high and our literacy rates are lower than they were a century ago. Once at the top of the “educational food chain” we have now fallen drastically behind. In polls done over the past few years we have barely made it into the ‘top twenty’ countries. How have we allowed this to happen? How can a country that was at the…