Against HTML, Giants, and HTMLGiant
The following essay was written last Friday in preperation for Mean Week. Had its author known Blake Butthair would have employed similar rhetoric, he would have posted this earlier.
1. HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, which is a euphemism for ‘gay ass effects for little bitches.’ Most common examples of ‘text markup’ are bold and italics. Whoever wrote it had some major issues, this thing for reciprocity. Every ‘tag’ needs to be closed by an ‘end-tag,’ for example:
<head>
<title>I’m a little geek bitch</title>
</head>
HTML is also homosexual, for example:
<head>
<title>I swallow cum</title>
</head>
2. GIANTS are severely retarded people with gross birth defects. Popular culture tries to render giants who are either likable (Sun Ming Ming) or martyrs (Gulliver, relative scale). Anthropologically speaking, Giants represent the first stages of human devolution. Darwinian theory is as follows (paraphrased for you goddamn plebeians): the more you can survive this hell on earth, the more you can fuck as many people you can, the more kids you’ll have who share your genetic disposition, and the more they can continue suffering and fucking. My point is: don’t fuck giants.
3. HTMLGIANT is the brain (however dense) child of Blake Butler and Gene Morgan, who are both addicted to the internet and their daily attempts to excavate the hard white bumps found on the underside of their penile shafts (which, incidentally, implicates quite well that their conditions were exchanged mutually). All of the contributing writers suffer from some sort of Excavation Fetish:
–Kendra Malone’s nightly refrigerator ‘dairy’ raids (I can’t believe it’s butter).
–Shane Jones’ public library poetry section “ejaculatory duct exodus” (to quote the librarian).
–Matthew Simmons’ nearly fatal nose picks, in which he searches for a clue.
–Justin Taylor’s quarterly Zoetrope rejection letter tear-duct hemorrhaging.
–Josh Maday’s silent-yet-strong (cough, gay) soul, spurted onto his mirror like some over ripe human-sized zit.
–Ryan Call’s eyelash plucking bonanza, in his attempt to render his face even more difficult to look at.
–Mike Young’s ‘dry yet emotional acoustic song’ plopping out of his guitar hole and mouth.
–Last and least, Sam Pink’s annual anal-outcome, in which all the shit that’s been crammed up there by his teenage blogger friends finally leaks out, surely the year’s most translucent and anti-climactic creampie.
And as for you, dear reader. Holy. Fuck.
Everyone That Writes for This Site is Shit
Hi. It’s Mean Week. We are going to be mean to people. We are going to say things. We’re just being honest, and really we’re all a bunch of pieces of shit. We couldn’t write our way out of a paper bag (see, I can’t even make it a few sentences without cliche).. Here’s more reasons why we suck behind the jump:
MEAN WEEK: ‘The Editor/Multi-Book/Duh Named Effect’
I like new journals. I like journals with their own aesthetic and who invent themselves primarily because they want to put words in the world: words that likely would not have found a way to get read if that journal hadn’t existed. There can never be too many high quality journals. A node is a node.
Though not all new journals, or even existing things, seem bent for these reasons. It seems semi-frequent, and perhaps most pointed to the world of poetry publishing, where you see a tendency to publish well-known names and no one else. Scanning the contributor notes of certain journals you can often see what I now will call the EDITOR / MULTI-BOOK / DUH NAMED EFFECT.
When this effect is applied, it means the journal has been infected wherein all the words published in their particular nook are 90-100% consisting of writers who are themselves the editor of a journal, who already have one or several full length books out at indie presses, or are a combo of both, being a name that literally most everybody in the publishing world is already very familiar with. They don’t both with searching for new voices, with including some people as yet unexposed who can then be read as others can to the journal seeking the ‘bigger names,’ no, everyone in the journal is someone who likely would have little to no trouble getting their work in almost any existing poetry journal already out there.
So then the question is: Why do you exist?
Fresh Literary Magazine Reviews at NewPages
It’s that time again, kids. New literary magazine reviews are filleting eyelids at NewPages. You’ll find reviews of many fine lit mags. I am glad to see that the online venues are reviewed with the print mags, instead of at the bottom of the page. Also, leading off this batch is a review of Abyss & Apex, an online quarterly focusing on speculative fiction and poetry. (Is there such a thing as speculative non-fiction? Would that be science? Philosophy? I’d like to see some slipstream personal essays and such.) Anyway, these magazines are reviewed:
Abyss & Apex :: Arsenic Lobster :: The Colorado Review :: Cutbank :: The Deronda Review :: Dirty Goat :: Fulcrum :: Hanging Loose :: Juked :: The Louisville Review :: Monkey Bicycle :: Ninth Letter :: Paterson Literary Review :: Upstreet
And don’t forget the latest book reviews, too, if you haven’t gotten to them since Blake mentioned those. Good stuff all over the place.
One of my aims with this post was the shameless overuse of the word “review”.
Is it technically Mean Week today? This is a pretty nice post.
Well, that’s too bad. Fuck off.
Uncategorized / 15 Comments
October 12th, 2008 / 5:12 pm
October 12th, 2008 / 5:12 pm
The Sunnyoutside Expanding Empire
One small press I don’t hear much about but is very very good is Sunnyoutside, run by David McNamara in Buffalo, New York. David does an amazing job – producing beautiful little chapbooks from writers you may haven’t heard of.
Recently, David’s been doing paperbacks, which he plans to do more of in 2009. For next year, in paperback, we can expect books from: Tim Horvath, Nathan Graziano, William Taylor Jr., Chelsea Martin, Curtis Smith, Brian McGettrick, and Rebecca Schumejda. Also, a plan to get solid distribution to get more of these great books in people’s hands.
David keeps everyone up-to-date on Sunnyoutside happenings at the website.
David Gates on Lolita as a Banned Book
Uncategorized / 8 Comments
October 12th, 2008 / 11:44 am
October 12th, 2008 / 11:44 am
Peter Markus is a monk I think
Brother Markus’s interview on Detroit radio WDET is now posted in its entirely with a backup photo montage have now been posted on Youtube for our enjoyment.
Peter talks a lot about writing his new novel BOB, OR MAN ON BOAT from Dzanc Books, including inspiration, rejection, and an excerpt read in Peter’s highly incantatory speech.
“Nothing’s conscious for me, Greg.”
I really enjoy listening to Peter talk, on paper on from the mouth, I think he would be capable of hypnotizing babies in a way that made them smarter, if I ever have a baby I will ask Peter to come down and make the child’s head fattened in the good way.
Chapbook Publishers E-Panel at EWN
Dan Wickett is getting it done over at the Emerging Writers Network.
He’s just posted a great Chapbook E-Panel, participants in which include Kevin Sampsell of Future Tense Press, Ander Monson of New Michigan Press, C.M. Mayo of Tameme, Kristy Bowen of Dancing Girl Press, Carl Annarummo of Greying Ghost Press, and Justin Marks of Kitchen Press.
It’s a lengthy post, but worth the read. Dan asks the particpants questions about the history of each small press, production details (business and design), submissions policies, the chapbook as a form, etc.
New Poetry Journal – Rooms Outlast Us
Rooms Outlast Us is a new poetry journal run by a couple of people I worked with back when I edited fiction at Phoebe. Earlier today, I emailed/gchatted with one of the editors, Danika Stegeman, about it, and she said the journal is modeled after some of the smaller poetry zines that were out in the 50s, 60s, 70s, like the Evergreen Review, which was originally published by Grove Press (before the journal moved online in the 90s, I guess).
Here’s what she said officially:
Rooms Outlast Us will be a small print journal, approximately 40 pages per issue, and will include poetry and poetic criticism. Our emphasis is on showcasing writing from more established poets alongside emerging poets. We are hoping to accommodate writers working on longer works and sequences as well (so the journal will generally favor fewer poets with more pages per poet, rather than many poets with fewer pages). The first issue will be coming out in early January and the journal will be published bi-annually after that.
Rumor has it that they’ve got Matthew Savoca and Laura Sims to contribute to the first issue.
Submissions should be sent to roomsoutlastus[at]gmail.com.
Editors: Danika Stegeman, Ethan Edwards, and Justin Kielsgard.
I got tits too motherfuckers
Sorry, just gearin’ up for Mean Week