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You Hear Ambulance Sounds And Think They Are For You
"Sam Pink is dictator of the island of the bizarre." - As You Recognize Your Transience
"Reading Sam Pink will make you recognize the reptile smuggler that has always been hiding out inside your brain." - Cameron Pierce, author of Ass Goblins of Auschwitz and The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island
"Reading Sam Pink will make you recognize the reptile smuggler that has always been hiding out inside your brain." - Cameron Pierce, author of Ass Goblins of Auschwitz and The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island
- GenresPoetryBizarro Fiction
48 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2010
About the author
Sam Pink
65 books849 followersSam Pink is the author of The No Hellos Diet, Hurt Others, I Am Going to Clone Myself Then Kill the Clone and Eat It, Frowns Need Friends Too, and the cult hit Person. His writing has been published widely in print and on the internet, and also in other languages. He lives in Chicago, where he plays in the band Depressed Woman.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
June 16, 2017
You read this book and it teases you in a familiar way. You like it.
January 9, 2012
This book made me think about how I've been depressed for (?) years and how I wish it would stop and it doesn't. It makes me sad that a large group of people (readership/author) can identify with these thought patterns. I wish the world (specifically America(specifically America when you're poor(specifically America when you're poor and bad at relating to people and have some form of mental illness (maybe) and no options or prospects out of your socio-economic or mental/behavioral circumstance) was a better place.
I don't like some of the lines, or the aesthetic sensibility they represent - "You are terrrible with three r's, you." I guess that's why I made it four stars.
I like, "...it's time to go to bed already?" "You don't wash yourself often." "You have boring sexual fantasies." "You are objectively pathetic and your sheets are dirty and how can you live like this." "You are a very real person when that is what you wish you weren't most."
I don't like some of the lines, or the aesthetic sensibility they represent - "You are terrrible with three r's, you." I guess that's why I made it four stars.
I like, "...it's time to go to bed already?" "You don't wash yourself often." "You have boring sexual fantasies." "You are objectively pathetic and your sheets are dirty and how can you live like this." "You are a very real person when that is what you wish you weren't most."
April 24, 2021
I would give this book 6 stars if I could. It is by far the best book I’ve read this year and maybe eve. I am not sure I can articulate how much I loved the feel the book gave me; it seemed so genuine and earnest and incredibly relatable, almost intimate. Do I sound so gross and creepy right now? BECAUSE I DONT CARE!
Anyway, this spoke to me a lot. Wow, literature.
Anyway, this spoke to me a lot. Wow, literature.
October 5, 2010
YOU HEAR AMBULANCE SOUNDS AND THINK THEY ARE FOR YOU is a poem about you. It is written in the second person. It’s very hard to write anything in the second person.
This is what it’s like to sit alone in an apartment, during the day, while everyone else is at work—your roommates—and you are looking on the internet for a new job, because you hate your current job, but you don’t know what new job you want, because you don’t want to do any job, and the dog downstairs is barking forever, because the owners are out, and one of them works and the other does not, but both leave in the morning and come back late at night, like they both work, but the dog doesn’t know that and the dog doesn't care. The dog barks anyway. And you are angry because the barking is more annoying than anything you’ve ever known, and you feel like you want to kill the barking by ending the dog, but you know you can’t do that, because that's breaking-and-entering and homicide on the dog. You sit alone and let the rage build, and you think about you.
You have a lot of time so you realize things like:
“You hate other yous.”
“You couldn’t kill me if I had a connect-the-dots over my throat (and you know I mean that as a compliment).”
“You made up a game where the winner is always you.”
“You are the most beautiful motherfucker on the planet forever times the square root of 78,889.”
“You avoid phone calls.”
YOU HEAR AMBULANCE SOUNDS AND THINK THEY ARE FOR YOU is a poem about everything and nothing. It's about your life slowly coming to an end, all the time.
“You hear ambulance sounds and think they are for you and you like it.”
This is what it’s like to sit alone in an apartment, during the day, while everyone else is at work—your roommates—and you are looking on the internet for a new job, because you hate your current job, but you don’t know what new job you want, because you don’t want to do any job, and the dog downstairs is barking forever, because the owners are out, and one of them works and the other does not, but both leave in the morning and come back late at night, like they both work, but the dog doesn’t know that and the dog doesn't care. The dog barks anyway. And you are angry because the barking is more annoying than anything you’ve ever known, and you feel like you want to kill the barking by ending the dog, but you know you can’t do that, because that's breaking-and-entering and homicide on the dog. You sit alone and let the rage build, and you think about you.
You have a lot of time so you realize things like:
“You hate other yous.”
“You couldn’t kill me if I had a connect-the-dots over my throat (and you know I mean that as a compliment).”
“You made up a game where the winner is always you.”
“You are the most beautiful motherfucker on the planet forever times the square root of 78,889.”
“You avoid phone calls.”
YOU HEAR AMBULANCE SOUNDS AND THINK THEY ARE FOR YOU is a poem about everything and nothing. It's about your life slowly coming to an end, all the time.
“You hear ambulance sounds and think they are for you and you like it.”
September 25, 2015
"You perfected a form of silence that is your own ambulance sound and you fall asleep to it".
This was a brilliant little book/poem. I find that this author always puts into words (and sometimes they're more bizarre than I ever could image) these little weird thoughts we have but often don't and sometimes can't share with others. I think that's when you know you've found a good author.
I'm starting to fall in love with you Sam Pink.
This was a brilliant little book/poem. I find that this author always puts into words (and sometimes they're more bizarre than I ever could image) these little weird thoughts we have but often don't and sometimes can't share with others. I think that's when you know you've found a good author.
I'm starting to fall in love with you Sam Pink.
August 30, 2014
Fucking hilarious. Within this poem, if you would call it that, our egos are bluntly ridiculed. Thoughts we all have, but do not dare put into words, are on display. So many of our shortcomings are here. I could not put this down. The lines are classic.
April 29, 2014
I never know what I'm going to get with Sam Pink, but I always know I'm going to like it. This poem (?) is very different from the other Pink I've read, but it has the same essence. Strange, bizarre, awkward, good. It's an odd little book, but (and?) the writing is excellent.
October 7, 2022
You hold the mirror to yourself, so you can see all the other people living inside of you and you like it, and you hate it, and you must admit you keep existing and this is mostly inevitable. A quick read for various stages of self-consciousness.
October 11, 2023
Everyone should read this. When I was 23 years old in San Antonio, my former best friend won this some raffle Sam was doing on tumblr. She gave me a copy and I got drunk outside of the restaurant my boyfriend was working at and sat by the campfire and made strangers listen to me recite passages from the book. I made a couple long term friends on this night, some of them still worry about me a decade later.
Anyway, it's incredible modern poetry, even if it did piss me off a little because I felt like we have a similar writing style and why couldn't I be the one with books published. .Ten years later I realized it's because Sam actually wrote books and I just wallowed. I hope he gets a healthy amount of recognition and material success before the world ends🔶🔸
Anyway, it's incredible modern poetry, even if it did piss me off a little because I felt like we have a similar writing style and why couldn't I be the one with books published. .Ten years later I realized it's because Sam actually wrote books and I just wallowed. I hope he gets a healthy amount of recognition and material success before the world ends🔶🔸
September 30, 2010
Fuck me with that device you built out of broken storm trooper figures.
December 12, 2014
Pink, they're coming to take you away, ha ha, they're coming to take you away.
November 30, 2021
a big, self-loathing trauma dump. just like one of his other books 'rontel' (a book that made me Very Sad when i was 15), it's bleak but has a nice sense of dark humor (actual dark humor not racism).
this book is for you if (quotes from the book incoming):
- "You have never approved of yourself so you bother other people to do it"
- "You only know what to do when no one is watching. You always act like people are watching"
- "You made up a reason to keep breathing and it's working"
very emo book, i liked it
this book is for you if (quotes from the book incoming):
- "You have never approved of yourself so you bother other people to do it"
- "You only know what to do when no one is watching. You always act like people are watching"
- "You made up a reason to keep breathing and it's working"
very emo book, i liked it
November 23, 2017
Por momentos es como leerte la conciencia. Te espabila. Es gracioso también. Y triste. Muy lindo.
March 16, 2021
Nice simple read for a nice simple mind.
August 14, 2022
Dingy poetry for back alleys near the train station.
April 20, 2014
"You aren't sure whether you have feelings or not but that's all part of the shrug you have performed in slow motion for your entire life so far.
You continue the shrug, waiting to hear an ambulance."
You continue the shrug, waiting to hear an ambulance."
January 4, 2015
A lot better than Person
Although stylistically and thematically similar, this short fiction is more developed and intellectually beneficial than Person. It's disturbing, it's insane, it's perfectly relatable yet completely unfamiliar.
Although stylistically and thematically similar, this short fiction is more developed and intellectually beneficial than Person. It's disturbing, it's insane, it's perfectly relatable yet completely unfamiliar.
January 16, 2013
A 48 page poem like no other. Written in the second person with Sam Pink's witty and dry humor will keep those that enjoy his writing more then content.
February 9, 2013
This is about me
June 10, 2013
You Hear Ambulance Sounds and Think They Are For You is a pep talk punch in the face.
Read
September 10, 2013Sam, Sam, Sam ... thank you. Short and lovely. Worth every minute.
September 23, 2013
You're an ugly person and I care about you.
A lot of statements in this books resonated with me.
Very intriguing.
A lot of statements in this books resonated with me.
Very intriguing.
June 15, 2016
i feel naked now.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews