November 22nd, 2011 / 2:05 pm
 Snippets
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Hello again after a little bit. Question: what would you say is the best post ever published here at HTMLGIANT? Feel free to nominate more than one post (and include a link if you can).

In a week or two, I’ll post a follow-up tabulating the top choices. Which won’t mean anything, necessarily, but might be fun to look at.

47 Comments

  1. November 22nd, 2011 / 2:08 pm B.—

      A D Jameson’s riveting, penetrating, and–dare I say?–brave investigation into what art means in the 21st century blog. Link: http://htmlgiant.com/snippet/the-best-post/

  2. November 22nd, 2011 / 2:18 pm davidpeak—
  3. November 22nd, 2011 / 2:40 pm Melissa Broder—
  4. November 22nd, 2011 / 2:42 pm Anonymous—
  5. November 22nd, 2011 / 3:11 pm A D Jameson—

      Aw, shucks! Thanks!

  6. November 22nd, 2011 / 4:24 pm Tim Jones-Yelvington—
  7. November 22nd, 2011 / 4:50 pm Malone Kendra—

      Is it tacky to vote for my own boobs?

  8. November 22nd, 2011 / 4:57 pm deadgod—

      go ahead and vote twice

      but don’t get caught spending too much time on either one

  9. November 22nd, 2011 / 5:52 pm alex crowley—

      thought it said “Best Poet”. that could make a great comment war. maybe.

  10. November 22nd, 2011 / 7:42 pm natalie—
  11. November 22nd, 2011 / 8:35 pm deckfight—

      any jimmy chen

  12. November 22nd, 2011 / 9:37 pm Laura Carter—

      I like the Moves in Contemporary Poetry post, but Mean Week scared the shit out of me.

  13. November 22nd, 2011 / 10:07 pm beagles are cute—

      Ryan Call wins Whiting Award.

  14. November 22nd, 2011 / 11:54 pm Bradford—
  15. November 23rd, 2011 / 12:22 am rawbbie—

      There was a Jimmy Chen “Downfall” video about HTMLGIANT that was un-fucking-believably good but I can’t find it anywhere.  

      The two posts by Blake about every place he submitted for like two years and his follow up post about what he learned about it.  So good.

      And of course, the Moves post.  That’s a no brainer.

  16. November 23rd, 2011 / 12:35 am Michael—

      In all seriousness: http://htmlgiant.com/author-spotlight/wigger-chick/

      I think the community really laid out its values in the comments section.

  17. November 23rd, 2011 / 1:58 am werdfert—

      anything with a flow chart

  18. November 23rd, 2011 / 2:31 am A D Jameson—

      No, you have to name specific ones for them to count!

  19. November 23rd, 2011 / 2:32 am A D Jameson—

      Thanks so far! Keep them coming! And links really do help!

  20. November 23rd, 2011 / 4:50 am jmark—

      so many to choose from.

  21. November 23rd, 2011 / 12:01 pm reynard—
  22. November 23rd, 2011 / 12:52 pm Leapsloth14—

      Chen

  23. November 23rd, 2011 / 3:34 pm Tim Jones-Yelvington—
  24. November 23rd, 2011 / 6:09 pm michael—

      blake gushing about mr. squishy

  25. November 23rd, 2011 / 6:09 pm michael—
  26. November 23rd, 2011 / 8:58 pm M. Kitchell—

      I never actually read the comment thread there when that actually happened, but everything said in the comics aside, I don’t even particularly get the interest in Johnny Ryan’s work, so it’s fucking weird that it’s being offered up a million times as something operating at the same level but better?

  27. November 23rd, 2011 / 10:03 pm Webeginbombingin5minutes—

      thsi is cool, not the ranking, but going through good posts, this is good

  28. November 24th, 2011 / 3:36 am Chase—
  29. November 24th, 2011 / 5:32 am M. Kitchell—

      thanks bradford, considering the complete lack of comments, this makes me feel good

  30. November 24th, 2011 / 10:08 pm Chase—
  31. November 24th, 2011 / 10:09 pm Bradford—

       Mike, keep it going!

  32. November 25th, 2011 / 12:58 am juan pancake—
  33. November 25th, 2011 / 3:10 pm Matthew Simmons—
  34. November 26th, 2011 / 5:26 am deadgod—

      A transparently gobbled fake.

      The writer of Syntactic Structures sneering at “three-syllable words”??  (–and the very first word after this cheaply know-nothing phrase has four syllables, stupid.)

      A “several-hour discussion” with Foucault “in print”?  (No, not even close to “several” hours; the whole thing is on youtube.)  Foucault “generally not very interesting”?  (Chomsky’s view was the opposite.)

      And the hand-wrung tone of intellectual panic, risibly punctuated by clumsily calculated Chomsky-ish protestations of inexpertise . . .

      This thumb-sucking swagger would embarrass a competent high-school bullshitter.

  35. November 26th, 2011 / 9:52 am Grjio342—
  36. November 26th, 2011 / 5:39 pm geist—
  37. November 27th, 2011 / 1:09 am juan pancake—

      damn, I don’t know who to trust Noam Chomsky or an unidentified internet presence fond of unclear rhetoric and overposting in boring threads!! 0.0 — just kidding, deadgod, I like you and you seem smart but you’ll never convince me that postmodern/continental philosophy isn’t a waste of time!! furthermore, I know this is probably the last place to have that idea taken seriously so I am shut up now, yez!

  38. November 27th, 2011 / 1:36 am deadgod's frustrated editor—

      deadgod’s a good dude–just not a writer. 

  39. November 28th, 2011 / 9:40 pm Matt Rowan—

      Isn’t it possible, and I’m taking into consideration only the context offered in the link provided by juan pancake, that this debate ought to be considered in terms of both / and and not either / or? 

      I have no doubt that Chomsky is a genius, but even he conceives of the possibility,  if only dubiously and a smidgen facetiously, that the abstract concepts these postmodernists are presenting might be out of his scope? Isn’t it possible that there are divergent concepts that even a genius might have difficulty with, in the same way it might be difficult for a genius of the more quantifiable sciences, say someone like Stephen Hawking, to think in the same terms as a theologian? 

      I’m saying I don’t think there’s a person yet who can speak masterfully and with full comprehension about every topic, sometimes those that are closely related to his or her area of academic interest. I mean, isn’t dismissal people’s most natural or at least frequent response to something they don’t understand? Why should that be so different in the case of a scholar on the level of a Noam Chomsky? 

      I’m just sayin’ is all. 

  40. November 28th, 2011 / 11:36 pm deadgod—

      Wait–I’m pretty sure my remarks weren’t clear (at least to its subthread correspondents).

      I don’t think Noam Chomsky wrote that piece that juan pancake links to.

      That’s what I meant by “fake” and by quoting those few un-Chomsky-like infelicities.  Here’s a sentence with some more, eh, incredibilities (with the words that I especially doubt are Chomsky’s emboldened):

      I found the scholarship appalling, based on pathetic misreading, and the argument, such as it was, failed to come close to the kinds of standards I’ve been familiar with since virtually childhood.

      This re Derrida’s Of Grammatology; the writer inoculates themself against the charge of ‘casting unsubstantiated accusations’, but I don’t think Chomsky would use such heavy terms without providing examples, and I don’t believe Chomsky would bother to brag about his familiarity with the “standards” of argument since “childhood”–and with that stone-in-the-shoe Wallacian adverb.

      Of course, maybe I’m wrong and can be McLuhan’d – maybe the text is a transcript from one of the many radio interviews Chomsky has done, say.  . . . but I don’t think so.

  41. November 29th, 2011 / 12:09 am Matt Rowan—

      I tend to agree with that assessment, i.e. I’m of the mind that the terms don’t sound like those belonging to Chomsky, especially with respect to his gifts as a topnotch logician and not a peddler of derisive, dismissive aspersions. (Although I have heard him be dismissive in less acerbic ways, viz. his comments after the passing of William F. Buckley.)  

      My argument was particularly for juan, inasmuch as I’m willing to, at least for the sake of argument, concede the source he’s cited does in fact come from Chomsky. I’ve heard, or I recall coming across, somewhere, some evidence myself of Chomsky’s skepticism with respect to the validity and / or value of Derrida’s work. Even so, we cannot discount the possibility that postmodernity or whatever you wish to label the particular assortment of largely French scholars the commentary / article mentions, we shouldn’t discount the possibility that Chomsky was wrong. That his assessments were, for lack of a better term, faulty and his conclusions unfair. Even a man of Chomsky’s stature is potentially fallible intellectually. Certainly, based on the article by itself, there is reasonable likelihood of that. 

  42. November 29th, 2011 / 4:22 am deadgod—

      Well, it’s not the disagreement itself with postmodernity that strikes me as most unlike Chomsky–it’s the logic of ‘because I don’t get it, it’s all bullshit, man’. 

      Chomsky is no Paglia-like vulgarian; in the transcript of his debate with Foucault, Chomsky understands Foucault’s position and takes it seriously in order to disagree with it sharply.  The frustrated, irrational dismissal in the thing juan pancake links to is nothing like Chomsky’s persona in his conversation with Foucault–or, in my view, how he’s interacted under pretty great pressure in other, less, eh, intellectual controversies.  Could be wrong, of course – but someone’ll have to show me so.

  43. November 29th, 2011 / 10:32 am Matt Rowan—

      Yeah, I’ve never known Chomsky to be the kind of provocateur who’s only looking to start a fight, without carefully crafting an argument that defends his stance. Even if / when I disagree with Chomsky, I’ve always respected that about his methods. He’s certainly not someone I’d reduce to the philosopher’s equivalent of a glib but obsessive malcontent in some politically-oriented internet chatroom. I absolutely hope this article wasn’t written by him.

  44. November 30th, 2011 / 12:06 am juan pancake—

      oh! I thought you were saying Chomsky was faking his way through PoMo!! your comment is way more clear now and I feel kinda dumb. I think it was the word gobbled that threw me. think maybe you meant cobbled? gobbled made me think you were saying chomsky was gobbling (like a turkey?) in his argument and that framed my reading of your comment thereafter!! haha!
      as for your argument that it’s a fake, I disagree. I have read lots and lots of chomsky and I think it sounds just like him, even the glib dismissiveness. the context seems to be that someone was trying to drag personal opinions out of him and once out he just let fly!! chomsky is kind of a clam when it comes to personal opining outside his regular expertise/commentary but if pressed he’ll give answers, often interesting ones. Being a personal opinion on a topic that is basically inconsequential he just let the bullshitters have it – or that’s what I think anyway.
      also, his opinion on the subject is pretty well known and it isn’t hard to find him saying similar albeit somewhat softer things.
      as for chomsky vs foucault I remember thinking they were both consciously talking past each other.
      Now that being said I don’t care if chomsky disagrees or isn’t totally dismissive of PoMoism (can I even call it that? maybe I should just call it … fake philosophy) I would have the same opinion and that’s more or less why i linked it. Sure, I wouldnt mind having one of our greatest minds (he is!!!!!) back me up on it but what the hay!
      Anyway we’re all entitled to our own opinions because hey it’s a free country man!!! hahaha but on a more honest note it’s fake and it’s embarrassing to see someone taking it seriously especially in public even though once I checked out a thousand plateaus and tried to read it at a coffee shop.

  45. November 30th, 2011 / 12:37 am Matt Rowan—

      Love the twist at the end, Juan. Though to be clear, and I’m going to assume you’re referring to me as the individual who ought to be embarrassed, that I was only giving you the benefit of the doubt, and for the sake of argument. I’m not sure you understand what that means, but then, a lot of what you’ve attempted to say here leads me to question the strength of your ability to decipher random bits of information to cultivate a logical argument of your own. You’re a bit, well, jejune. THERE, I SAID IT! I SAID HE WAS JEJUNE, AND I MEANT IT. Every word. 

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