title: A Series of Pained Facial Expressions Made While Shredding Air Guitar: Poems, Observations, Lists, Letters, Notes, Bullshit Aphorisms, and General Tales of Ordinary Crabbiness
author:  Brian Alan Ellis 
description: "[This book] is the saddest, most hilarious (sadlarious?) thing [Ellis has] written so far." -<b>Gabino Iglesias</b>, author of<i>Zero Saints</i><b>***</b>"Zen koans mixed with equal amounts of doom and hilarity. Highly recommended..." -<b>David S. Atkinson</b>, author of<i>Not Quite So Stories</i><b>***</b>"[This book is a] bizarre and hilarious inner thought monologue in the form of aborted tweets and pop culture worship poetry and half-cocked rants and dissected movie lines. Breaking structure and form, spanning fiction and creative nonfiction and satire and confession in the same line, utterly deconstructed and subtle to the extreme." -<b>Chelsea Laine Wells</b>, editor of<i>Hypernova Lit</i><b>***</b>"[Ellis] clearly has either a lot [of] issues or a sick sense of humor... [He's] the kind of writer that uses whatever he can to fill pages and those pages are never boring. Just a lot of fun to read." -<b><i>Slap Happy Fun Time</i></b><b>***</b>"Like me (and some other super-chill badass motherfuckers), [Ellis] does not have an MFA or even a BA. He grew up in Florida where my father lived and where I spent a few days every summer so I feel like I 'get' [him]. LOL. Or maybe we're just both full of shit. IDK. Who cares?" -<b>Elizabeth Ellen</b>, author of<i>Bridget Fonda</i><b>***</b>"[This book] is a portrait of a youth built on bits and pieces of popular culture at a time where culture itself is spinning out of control. It could be the beginning of a literary revolution - a powerful and honest depiction of how we've all accepted alienation - or nothing at all. But it's great." - Benoit Lelievre, editor of<b><i>Dead End Follies</i></b><b>***</b>"Super hilarious status update lit... I laughed out loud several times." - <b>Josh Spilker</b>, author of <i>Ambient Florida Position</i> <b>***</b>"[This] collection of tweets, flash, think pieces, and other miscellanea really did it for me... and I'd advise that you read it whether you hate yourself or whether you'd just like a few laughs at the expense of some poor schmuck who ain't afraid to admit what you won't." -<b>Arthur Graham</b>, co-author of<i>Great White House 2: Billary Bites Back</i>
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  PETER GUTTRIDGE
  
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  # First published in the United States by speck press 2005 An imprint of
  Fulcrum Publishing Printed and bound in Canada Book layout and design by
  Margaret McCullough ISBN: 1-933108-00-2, ISBN13: 978-1-933108-00-1
  
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  # For Alan and Jude,  
  
  
  without whom South America would have been a  
  
  
  very different experience.
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![](page0005_0000.svg)
  
  He wore mud-splattered workman's trousers and a hostile expression. I wore
  Armani and a cheesy grin. He probably wondered
  
  
  what this guy was doing dressed up to the nines balanced on a
  
  
  slippery, rickety plank above a foul-smelling latrine on the banks
  
  
  of the Amazon.
  
  I might have been wondering the same but my mind was on
  
  
  other things. Specifically on the long knife in his extended right
  
  
  hand. My smile faded. Three hours in the Amazon and already
  
  
  the trip was a disaster.
  
  T