I Was Reading This Earlier...
A New Absurdist forum thread from 2006 involving albie, satan165, Phil Overby, and others. Remember Hatrack? We recommend you read The New Absurdist Manifesto before consuming further media.
The New Absurdist: Legacy site is online for your viewing pleasure. Any mistakes, errors, bitter complaints? Let me know. This site is not The New Absurdist, but rather an archive, or showcase for contributors to the original New Absurdist website.
Online: September 14, 2023.
Were YOU a contributor? Why not get involved? Send 5 original pieces, plus a bio and author photo to headsfromspace @ gmail.com
Obook.org
and My History with Polycarp
How did I stumble upon absurdism? It goes back to garageband.com. That site is and has been (for a long time apparently, according to this exhaustive history) a site where you can post you or your bands music and have it rated by other users.
The cool thing about the site is you earn upload credits by reviewing (though now you can buy credits as well). So I got to listen to a lot of good and bad bands. One was Mongoloids in Crayon Suits. They are still up at Garageband.com
I was so intrigued by this “band” and their, well, “music”, that I started googling the names of the members hoping to find out more about them and find more “music.” What I did find was www.absurdist.cc. I was pretty confused at first, I didnt understand what the hell the site was. But i figured it out. And you know the rest.
A couple years ago polycarp was working on www.obook.org. Obooks were a radical way to compile stories from around the net and have a PDF produced automatically. I helped him beta test the site before it came out.
At any rate, it got abandoned when TNA went down. but i still check TNA once in a while, and about a month ago I got bored and remembered obook.org and checked that. it will redirect you to mcs.obook.org. check it out. Apparently polycarp is not dead, and he is lurking somewhere.
Glad to see people are still around like heads. I did talk to Justynn a few months ago. Hope all others are well also.
satan165 | 2008
Originally posted at The Temporary Absurdist website.
A.D. Dawson
I came across The New Absurdist early in the century and I submitted my first story, The Raggedy Man in 2003 – the very first time anything that I had written was read by others. TNA was a wonderful community and tens of interesting writers placed their stories and commented/gave opinion on the work of others – including mine. It was with the support of the other writers that I developed a style as such; I pretentiously called it Neo-Victorian - Jennifer Lawson named me The English Devil.
With what I learned from the community, I moved on and developed my writing as I was included in anthologies in print and on-line – such as Sick, an Anthology of Illness edited by John Lawson and Walrus Tales edited by Kevin L. Donihe.
My passion is theatre and I have gone on to be a successful playwright locally in the East Midlands, UK. I have never forgotten TNA and still use the techniques that I learned/ practised with the community – often I will present characters on stage who have no actual purpose other than conflict if they have any purpose at all.
A.D. Dawson | 2023
