May 23rd, 2013 / 12:18 pm
Snippets
Snippets
A D Jameson—
Dear everyone,
What would you most like to see at this site? More posts about writing and craft? More posts about Viktor Shklovsky? Jimmy Chen being forced to post something every single day? The violent death of a current contributor? The return of Boobs Friday? The creation of Bollocks Friday? Sandra Bullock Friday? Spout off and maybe by working together, you and I, we can make it happen …
More Kyle Minor!
More Jimmy Chen obviously, he’s the best writer on here.
Maybe like a series called “What is your favorite animal?” where everybody has to say what their favorite animal is and why they like it best. I just think it would be neat because sometimes you read a writer’s posts and you wonder, “What is the writer’s favorite animal?” and the information is unavailable.
i wanna see michael fischer/mfbomb/guest/series of hotels become a contributor. i mean it. HTMLG has had a lotta great substance in its posts over the years, and i think that stuff is important, but for better or worse, arguments to some degree sustain a community like this. i love, say, a jimmy chen post, but it (usually) ain’t gonna generate good arguments and have mufuckas coming back again and again throughout the day. but mfbomb can start an argument about anything. love that shit.
what’s more, though i don’t always agree with him, he knows his shit and tends to talk about different lit than a lotta the names that usually get discussed in this joint. he comes from a little diff angle and it makes shit interesting around here.
i think dude would bring value on both fronts–contributing worthwhile posts of actual substance while also, i dunno, keeping things lively in that more sensational sense. he’d rage every time he saw deadgod’s name in his comments trails. it’d be awesome.
No more book reviews
This is a solid idea.
Need contributors who give a shit
Event coverage
Gossip
For me it’s paramecium, no question. I think they’re pretty!
You obviously don’t know anything about the wonderland of literary realism or the word “experiment” in Charles Dickens’s private correspondence. Ever heard of “Thomas Edison”?
Tombstone of HTMLGiant: Victor Schultz commented here.
I’ll take you seriously after you drop out of your Seth Abramson-approved creative-writing PhD on John Cage’s toilet-seat piss-dribblings, take out a loan to buy 10,000 Cracker Jacks for your MFA, and teach for 20 years in a community college for $200/wk and a laundry-room stipend.
Grow up and read a book.
–NoTellMotelCourtesyTissue
Here you go Gabe, the information is available for me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8vbwBnOdJE xxxxo
More ads for Molly Ringwald books.
i’d welcome deadgod as a contributor too btw.
More Christopher Higgs posts
It’s about time you wrote a coherent comment, deadgod.
It’s about time you understood one of them.
TAG
FINALLY!
Yes, it is possible to write comments without your Roget’s program running in the background.
SOME WAY TO SUBMIT THINGS THAT ARE NOT REVIEWS
IS THIS CURRENTLY POSSIBLE
I’m kicking around a few ideas, Victor…
To be clear, the angle I come from is one suspicious of affected “coolness,” which can be a problem here at times, and a problem Mike Meginnis pointed out in his fantastic post the other day (I’m not the only one who’s noticed this tendency). It’s not so much my desire to exert my interests on others–ask anyone who knows me in real life and they’ll confirm how open-minded I am—more than my annoyance with this habit of striking a cool pose, which often involves erecting foils and straw men to rage against. Here are a few examples that come to mind:
1) Many posts and comments dealing with alt-lit that make uninformed generalizations about academia, realism, “tradition,” etc. See Wallace Baker’s post in the recent Nation Anthology thread.
2) Chris Higgs’s experimental literature posts that almost always erect a boogeyman in order to apologize for experimental literature’s existence.
3) Related to the above: many posts mentioning “realism” and “traditional,” which are pejoratives and dirty words on this site and shorthand for “boring.” If realism’s not your thing–fine–but you don’t need to misrepresent it to make your point. Represent it fairly and accurately.
If I were to become a contributor, my posts would focus on a topic of interest without pitting that interest against an antagonistic opponent, because I can discuss what I’m interested in without becoming a professional wrestling promoter. I would work hard to define my terms and, when disagreeing with someone or something, represent that side fairly. In that regard, you shouldn’t expect my posts to be similar to the kinds of comments you mention above.
I will do this within the week.
I’d like to read all these things.
I believe so. I think you can submit anything.
More posts about Viktor Shklovsky!
The wording on the submissions page implies that only reviews and Sunday Service posts are open for submissions.
My mistake then, apologies. Still, it never hurts to query…
The people have spoken! Who am I to refuse their demands?
my ‘favorite animal’ is lion
my ‘favorite companion’ is dog
i like lists
so why am i not commenting via giving you a list Right Now?
just got home from werk, Too Tired To List
: /
If I send you (or post) a list of writers I like, could you tell me which ones are writing (or wrote) “realism”? (I’m not willing to pay you.) That way I could wonder what they all had in common.
deaders, one of the up-votes is from me
is it ok if i don’t explain?
OMG TJ-Y you are totally adorable i had no idea!
also, love all the info about centipedes
i am a biology nerd
More Shklovsky sounds good. Since I’m trying to write too, any posts that deal with the process usually makes me feel better. I regularly like Jimmy Chen’s stuff. I usually skip the reviews, because I’m weird about reading them before I’ve read the book. Also, I think there are too many…
I would like to see people post about their own work (a sort of “here’s what it was like for me to write this thing”), though I’m sure they’d get made fun of for it. Having other people talk about other people’s work would be really interesting though. Like, AD does a post about Meginnis’s “Navigators.” Or I do a post about “Sky Saw.” And but it’s actual focused on the uh…craaaft…
Looking at the most recent posting reminds me that I’d like to see reviews that are actual reviews, and interviews that are actual interviews. Call me crazy, but I think it’d be awesome to hear about Ken’s experience writing Solip. Like, for real.
Also, if deadgod isn’t already, deadgod should be a contributor.
Sure! Where does someone like myself with nothing better to do pick up his application to be Jeremy Hopkins’s unpaid secretary?
i appreciate the quality of jimmy chen’s output. anything greater than the number 0 of things written by jimmy chen i appreciate.
less and possibly no comments/conversation based on speculation of an author’s motivation/intent.
the navy seals have something called ‘hell week’ where they try the commitment of the trainees by depriving them of sleep and making them do drills.
contributor ‘hell week’ where every contributor has to post 1 thing per 6 hours with a 2000 word minimum not including quotations or 1 7500 word minimum thing per 24 hours.
testicle thursday.
Trick question part1: Universal mimesis is impossible.
Trick question part 2: I don’t like any writers.
Trick question part 3: You don’t exist.
Mimesis is the representation of reality–it doesn’t claim to be anything other than its definition. Not sure I get your question…
This is a good idea.
If someone finds a way to email one of the contributors (not hard) and sends them an amazing post I am pretty sure that amazing post will end up on here one way or another.
That’s not possible–I upvoted the comment three times.
That’s ‘The people has spoken!’.
Battle of Wits!
…oh, wait.
Y’all need to coax Roxane Gay back so she can do those round-up posts. Those were some of the best posts on this site and she’s the best person for the job. In terms of hits, they offer 5-7 topics for commenters to address–the odds are increased that a comment thread will get hot because numerous topics are dangled for discussion. She has her pulse on a lot of the hot literary news items and is good at synthesizing those items.
but deaders, that’s not so! i know it!
and how do i know it? because i myself have tried to up-vote mine own comments, and i know it cain’t happen like that! (multiple self-up-voting, that is!) because i’m pretty sure you can’t up-vote your own comments more than once, and actually i’m not even sure that you can up-vote your own comment even once
ima test this directly after i post This Comment (since i can’t say for sure enough)…
hold on a minute…
…test shows that you can only up-vote your own comment once
so there
use your toes
or different computers
has her pulse on
The idiomatic phrase should be, “finger on the pulse.”
Thanks for the correction and for replying to my commenticle.
not sure a truer democratization will be beneficial in this case. but i guess i would like it to be possible for someone who wants to care to find meaning in the majority of things being said.
also, i would like less thinking of what other people want to see. bc that s what got us(/you) to this “trouble.” and it might be funny this week, but it could feel cheap next month.
Not sure I get your nongetting…
i’m not that flexible
Oh… I thought it was a neometaphoricism! ‘Her systole/diastole harmonizes with’, or ‘has her bean [‘head’, mind] tuned in to’.
There’s so much sloppy writing here, on a sentence level–it’s why the place is obviously dying. Everybody should take Comp 101 again–or teach it for 20 years at a state u, along with ‘Realism’ is a Word for Everything Else.
And the place is also obviously dying because of all the apple-polishing: situations like Ken Baumann using intelligent remarks to disguise buttering up his ‘buddy’ Higgs, or deadgod jailhouse-lawyering for the self-evidently indefensible Oelbaum by calling attention to the content of Oelbaum’s blogicles.
Ew!
So thanks for the occasional calling of attention to your missing Roxane (Gay).
And thanks, as always, for your instaresponsicle.
You’re trying too hard. I think I’ve made one comment about “sloppy writing” and it was directed at Seth. My point wasn’t to cherry-pick his writing more than to comment on the relationship between his style and content (assumed that would be rather obvious). You’ve made similar observations about his style.
[testing]
It went away.
i had to google john fowles to see if he was still alive. because i was starting to suspect that deadgod was he.
would read
more shakespeare
good idea for a post:
a d jameson asks ‘who do you think is deadgod?’
people speculate in comments
mad hits
dancing
Andrea Coates! She’s so exhilarating and funny and crazy and energetic and unique. She’s deeply engaged with the concept of Alt Lit, but with a strongly different flavor that might contrast nicely here & add some spice. She seems to be very friendly and she consistently makes me laugh. And you know she’d love the invite.
Also, a while back there was a link to Poets on Film that made me get addicted to Poets on Film. Hire them, too, and make them review trashy new movies again in their thrillingly beautiful way.
I also really enjoy recommendations here, whether they’re indie or not, or even whether their literary or not. Literary minded people interact with the world in a way I enjoy and I like to hear what others are looking at / laughing at and listening to, etc.
Those are my votes.
aw hell yeah
I’d like to see more tacit admissions of guilt, both here and everywhere.
then you should read MY blog
What’s that blurry pink thing that looks like an eraser?
erm, that’s a hand-written list of tacit admissions of guilt, of course, lying on a big red pillow, in my living room, blurred to protect the innocent
here, i’ve added an un-blurred version of the image, photo taken at same time as image originally posted, tacit admissions of guilt color-coded (obvs), tabulated on peach-colored post-it notes, green tallied twice for some reason i no longer recall, innocent remain protected, i hope
http://williamblakethoughtcollision.blogspot.com/2013/05/blog-post_24.html
I was kind of hoping you’d written out some notes on an actual eraser cuz that would be totally surreal.
it’s not actually my hand-writing, it’s someone else’s, and she is so mentally unstable as to make interacting with her surreal
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