[matchup #59 in Tournament of Bookshit]

This being my first venture into sports writing, I think what I’ll do is recap alcoholism’s inevitable rise to power before tonight’s  “game,” then we can all pop some High Lifes and pull them hot wings out of the freezer.

Alcoholism was on a tear until HTML decided to drop Tournament of Bookshits and review books. Shame, because there were some real gems in there. Take these gems from the Giancarlo Ditrapano-moderated Facebook status updates re: present MS word count vs. Alcoholism:

If you write 5,000 words, chances are that 4,950 of them are shit

I miss workshops already.

…and chances are even greater that the 50 you have left over are in the wrong order or something, and when you finally get those lined up right you will probably be able to lose half of those as well, so the word count of your status update itself turns out to have a higher word count than what you’ve really actually word doc-written.

Then there’s Ditrapano on Alcoholism:

Drinking rules, and I don’t believe in God.

Sweet.

Aside from the obviously kickass photo of a cat kicking a dog in the face, Reynard Seifert’s “‘magic realism’ vs. alcoholism” was, predictably, tilted toward alcoholism:

If you didn’t spend so much time playing Final Fantasy on your iPhone you would realize [that “depression is the only thing that’s real”] and nag a script for Zoloft

Poppers work too, but point taken.

…Alcoholism laughed and tried to pull his arm from Gabriel [Garcia Marquez]’s face, but it was stuck.

Alcoholism, be it a destroyer of lives, definitely kicks the ass of some of life’s “frillier”hobbies, like making Final Fantasy weaponry out of matchsticks.

Now. I like the good online journals. There’s a bunch of them, everyone knows who they are, and they often seem to be more willing to publish a good mix of interesting work and take more risks than a lot of print mags. Some of these journals have editors-in-chief and some have editors. If you edit an online journal, good for you. You are the future, and you should shove it in everyone’s face when they talk down to you. I don’t give two shits what you call yourself, but I do care if you pass out at the bar, knock my drinks over, and call me at 5 am on a Tuesday when your pancreatitis flares up/you can’t get back to sleep without another two shots from that empty gallon of Popov. Alcoholism is not cool. Online mags are way cool.  Since I don’t edit one, and because I do “curate” a reading series, one might think I’d be tempted to end alcoholism’s reign of terror and declare being the editor-in-chief of an online journal the winner.

But the outcome of this bookshit should have been clear just from reading the title. Yeah, alcoholism may not be cool, but it always wins (see aforementioned pancreas). The only editor of anything I know that isn’t a fucking ethanol dispensary is the person who asked me to write this, and her title is “chief editor,” not “editor-in-chief,” and really I think that’s more like a nickname, you know, like when the guy at the bodega calls you “Chief” when you slap down $20 for seven more 40s of Cobra (yeah, he gives you a deal because he likes your style) that you pour into a frosted mug you keep in the freezer to make it classy. There’s a reason Cobra doesn’t do drafts, and the reason you can’t afford a $6 pint tonight is because YOU EDIT AN ONLINE JOURNAL AND $6 x 21 = $120 MORE THAN YOUR SUBMISHMASH RAKES IN IN A MONTH.

– Mike Lala

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WINNER: Alcoholism