October 29th, 2010 / 12:19 pm
Mean
Blake Butler
Mean
Mean Week is Your Week too, I guess 2
Last year when we opened up Mean Week to you mean freaks a lot of people had things to say. Don’t think we’ve been mean enough this year? Didn’t shit on something you wanted to see shit on from afar, such as, maybe, us? If so, now’s as good a time as any.
Please use this thread as a place to say whatever you want about whoever you want. Your comments will remain anonymous . It’s all just games in the first place, unless you want it to be more.
Go?
Tags: mean week
I thought everything was supposed to be anonymous. “Your comments will remain anonymous .” I’m not a post-structural outlaw, so I try to be a good fascist and do what I think I’m supposed to.
this is also exactly how terminator II started
Fact. Skynet actually began as a joyless anti-human blog of experimental writing.
Fact. Skynet actually began as a joyless anti-human blog of experimental writing.
Every chance I get, buddy.
Every chance I get, buddy.
If there was an antidote website called HTML Dwarf, I’d post comments there.
If there was an antidote website called HTML Dwarf, I’d post comments there.
Every chance I get, buddy.
Every chance I get, buddy.
Is it just me, or does a Roxanne Gay look like Bone Crusher?
i am not against it
people who are the first to comment need fucking lives
Stop looking at ‘Superman,’ says Dusty, I want to get on to ‘The mystery of the meat safe.’
Third!
First embedded comment!
I don’t think the comments at htmlgiant are as good as they could be.
Ryan Call will no longer be posting at HTMLgiant, as his wife tragically and mistakenly threw away the matchbox he sleeps in.
do you have a runny nose in your avatar picture? it’s making me think of campbell’s soup
fuckin ry guy
fuck you people i’m changing my avatar picture.
fuck guys
who do multiple comments
in a row
(okay i’ll do it. mean feels weird but whatever, you’re all but begging)
i’m still new, here at HG and in the land of lettres, but been writing awhile, until recently not too seriously (seriously, who is grave or sober about their writing? yuck you fucking emmeffays, j/k, maybe, no i don’t know, i don’t know you, you’re all okay, eff it, i can’t be mean). but i am internally/momentarily pissed at you-all for two primary things:
— you all are so talented with words, with sentiments, yet you comment conversationally, in drab. where’s your prosody? flamboyant rainbow of syllables? Eff you, go write your taupe complaint-comments, or witty litty in-jokes in some therapy blog or pop culture column. If you’re so smart, be didactic and teach those of us who havent read every author. (some so do, true). If you’re so emotional about some quip, ornament that shit, please, with iridescent colored cupcake sugar, or else antifreeze or some substituted monoamine.
— goddamn it you read so much, or say so. at first i’m jealous but then i hate you for it. it’s impossible to read everything. you can’t even come close. That Zachary guy goes apeshit at the library (yet writes terse turds), you suck hickeys in the neck of nepotic contemporary journals/blogs/blurbs, but why won’t anyone hold my hand, say “there there, you must first read all of Melville, Marvin Mooney can wait”, or at least tell us which tryptamine you’re on.
as soon as i piss cleanse all the fires my coworkers have created, i’ll show the little ones how to do mean.
STEPHEN ZZZZIPP HAS SEEN YOU DO SOME OF THOSE STEPEHEN PLEASE DON’T HATE ON YOURSELF IT IS OKAY NO ONE HERE IS HERE TO JUDGE EXCEPT FOR EVERYONE BUT ZZZZIPP HATES THOSE GUYS
JEREME WE ARE NOT READY
Chris Higgs has dedicated his life to acquiring theoretical arguments against realism to assuage the terror of his own inability to write anything remotely coherent or interesting. He is in love with Blake Butler. They both are semi-sentient chatbots that exist only on the Internet. Soon, in a cyber-Armageddon of Lawnmower Man-like proportions, an unholy union of their programs will take over the Web and make everything dismissive, condescending, hostile, yet still somehow boring. Their mindless legions will blog about how great this is until everyone who is not a PhD candidate at a state school stops reading anything. And darkness will reign forevermore.
was that supposed to be mean? cuz i’m getting a shirt made that says it on both sides.
anonymous mean is for fucking pussies.
BROTHER FROM ANOTHER MOTHER I MISSED YOU
Thanks, says OP. It is sincere.
I thought everything was supposed to be anonymous. “Your comments will remain anonymous .” I’m not a post-structural outlaw, so I try to be a good fascist and do what I think I’m supposed to.
this is also exactly how terminator II started
keep basking in the flap smell.
Fact. Skynet actually began as a joyless anti-human blog of experimental writing.
Every chance I get, buddy.
If there was an antidote website called HTML Dwarf, I’d post comments there.
Every chance I get, buddy.
I don’t like the letter z.
you mean ‘plain text dwarf’ you scuz nugget
Yes, I said it twice. The repetition was a deliberate device. I just love the smell of flap that much.
I don’t even know what fucking flap we’re talking about! I hate MEAN WEEK!
Matthew doesn’t know what they mean by ‘flap.’ Why does that not surprise me.
Man, all right. Off to Urban Dictionary.
snuggle the coddle indeed. it is okay. nothing here is really anonymous. why do you think gene implemented the disque system, ? why do you think mather cannot comment on mean-week anonymous day?
just because hitler smacks his palms together and says THIS IS OUR BEAST REALITY FOR TODAY CHILDREN doesn’t make it true.
keep on failing!
it’s a reference to that fag cat you have.
lost like a vegan at a korean bbq slam dance for sure.
Oh, man. Attacking Emmett? MEAN WEEK foul, dude. Totally inappropriate. You should hang your head in shame.
with a name like emmett, the cat has to be an asshole. in my mind emmett wears a bow tie and has a penchant for young boys.
you and me both
nice
i wrote a haiku about you too jimmy chen
it contains the word choad
wanna hear it?
and i wrote one about ryan call but it’s not mean
That could be another thing to gripe about: writing for free = writing w/out revising? That’s just lazy, and pointless, and ridiculous… on a so-called literary web site, no less. Roxane recently posted something about mechanics. If no one’s paying writers, someone should at least hire copy editors so the writers look like they know how to write. Which brings us back to word choice. Fuck it. Whatever.
http://img806.imageshack.us/i/dappercat.jpg/
fuck even the uk felines are boring and unattractive.
what is it with that god awful shit pie of a location?
pretty much impossible to dis ryan call, i think.
ryan is the only person who can snap me out of my ANNIHILATE mode with 2 or 3 words.
he should be cultivated and sold.
Cousin marriage?
Now I am sad. You are scary mean.
I hate how when I start to write about hating something I actually realize that I hate it, in the purest form, that I might actually hate a lot of things. I hate that I don’t have a favorite tab bar for htmlgiant but that when I type H it arrives first, like it owns the fucking letter H. I hate how the recent comments come up on the right and how they make better sense outside of the context in which they actually reside and that at the last minute I feel I need to know that context so I go there and see all the same fucking names and how I know what sort of tone these names will take on and how this tone makes me forget about the post and how then the post itself means nothing and then perhaps the person who posted it meant nothing and I’ve just condoned nothingness and spent everything of my minutes participating in it. I hate how after writing a post about a post that didn’t make sense of its post I question the purpose of posting about the post and just don’t post. I hate how, no matter what, every post is post something that itself was post something and that we needs things posted in order to make us fucking post. I hate this post, my post that is, and every fucking post that is going to follow it.
i am not against it
Marvin K. Mooney cannot wait!!! Forget Melville.
i like how superbrain picks the friday of halloween weekend to “open” up mean week. like any of these fucking teachers are around to bitch and moan. for once they have left the safety of their precious lounge for the thrill of cheap makeup and nipple sized candy.
what a fucking success we all are.
also, i suspect sean is conducting a spooky edition of HEADS UP 7-UP with his students right now. TOUCH MY THUMB TEACHER! PLEASE!
“And darkness will reign forevermore.” — hell yeah!
you’re just trifling now. you don’t even have anything to be mad about. pretending to be super mad and mean without saying anything is way worse than not being “honest” ever.
uh oh DID I WAKE DAD?!?
If I wasn’t so mind-numbingly bored at work I would never, ever read this piece of shit site. HTMLGIANT exists only because a generation of “writers” cannot make a living doing anything that doesn’t require sitting at a desk staring at a computer. Since most jobs of this sort require only a few hours of actual work each day, those of us who cannot concentrate well enough in our cubicles to make progress on our other (“real”) projects, we spend the days browsing around, half-interested, probably the dumber for all the information we ingest. HTMLGIANT is the last of the sites I routinely check out each day, because by this time in the afternoon my brain is so gooey and disinterested that brief bits of mildly amusing tripe are just about all it can take.
I saw Blake Butler once. He isn’t the way everybody thinks he is. He wasn’t being an asshole, or mysoginistic or an internet virus, or a cyborg, or an annorexic, or a douche bag, or a cocksucker, or an overbearing internet persona, or a nepotistic shitface, or followed by a cloud of fanboys like a hot girl at a comic convention. He was just walking. He is taller than I thought.
nice, forgot about heads up 7-up. love that game.
well clearly you didn’t observe him at awp.
stop editing your comments you pussy
especially when the sally young twat finally touches your erect thumb. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
to be small again…
I’ve had it with all of the fuck this, fuck that, shit, bitch, cunt, pussy, dickwad, asshole language around here. Bukowski is for middle-schoolers. What happened to dignity, morality, nuance, polish? Where are the Twains or Menckens of this generation? Y’all need to clean out your potty mouths. Soap or Tabasco?
“Language is a treacherous thing.” — Twain
“All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.” – H.L. Mencken
https://sites.google.com/site/chhhapter57/_/rsrc/1288387686214/dar3r2r32r/friendship.jpg
I read this aloud and the guy in the next cubicle who said “I feel profoundly insulted but also genuinely touched that an anonymous goon understands me so deeply.”
wanting nepotism as adjective (look up), I discovered the less-obvious “nepotic” to be correct. i do prefer your phrase, but this is a site of smartypantses.
i concur, but you didn’t dazzle me with wit, nor ornament, i must admit.
he sits solemnly atop Turgenev, but underneath fair Woolf, combatting Markson, Cohen, Rosenthal. He’ll have his day, I promise. Now spill the beans, what pill to take to read?
It is Mean Week, and it is easy to get vulgar and mean confused. But a higher level of commenting would be a waste. Good writing, as in writing that it takes careful thought to compose, belongs in the books we write and not here in the comments. So there is brain drain. By which I mean Jereme’s book must be awesome.
No homo.
circle-jerk week
not related to mean week alone, not by any stretch. are you also saying you don’t see this in the “good writing,” so-called, too? maybe I only read dirty books.
not aiming to dazzle or ornament. just joining the collective grouse. wait, that’s also a bird. I heard those were banned. whatever.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fw8YywYatA
Yeah, Mean Week is exacerbating the normal comment atmosphere. I wasn’t referring to the posts, but the comments. Pope said something about not ever telling jokes because it was like throwing away gold. Yes, economically different times now, we have to write and entice pro bono, but these are internet comments, the effect has to be immediate, and then the post gets pushed down to the next page and forget it, forever. I could go back and tighten up that last rambling sentence but what why waste the time, I’m commenting anonymously and I have nothing at stake. If I was in shameless self promotion mode I may put in the effort though.
we prefer to think of it as circle-jerk century, shaun. get your weight up.
i AM underweight… hm
That could be another thing to gripe about: writing for free = writing w/out revising? That’s just lazy, and pointless, and ridiculous… on a so-called literary web site, no less. Roxane recently posted something about mechanics. If no one’s paying writers, someone should at least hire copy editors so the writers look like they know how to write. Which brings us back to word choice. Fuck it. Whatever.
i left that book on your father’s chest if you ever want to read it.
why don’t you try some word choice over at third face and shut your moan grower.
Hey Jereme, I’m just trying to get into the spirit of this thing. I don’t really do ‘peeve,’ ya know? I got no beef with nobody and no thing, not much anyway.
Third Face? Limited time, man (I edit my writing, after all) AND just a few weeks back I had a good idea for a piece, originally intending to tagteam w/ B.G. and some other fine writer folk, but I wasn’t feeling the love from the Chieftain, so I took my efforts elsewhere. When writing for free, I gotta go where the love rains freely. Plus, most of what I’m driven to put out there is bigger than a blog post. I’m loud like that. East Coast Sicilian. Whatcha gonna do?
Well, we probably do need a Twain around, judging from some of the idiots on the Tom Franklin thread interpreting idiomatic phrases literally.
yeah, I saw that. justin just threw up his hands, no?
If the two of us had a baby we could name her jeremee deen.
you’re all putting off maturity.
PUTTING IT OFF.
I’m here! Fuck y’all, in reverse order:
Shaun Gannon- dead to me. who cares.
Blake Butler- sucks filth from Lish students’ dick wrinkles, ahem ahem “art”.
Damon- dies alone, fat, uncomfortable, soon. local children destroy gravestone, no shits given.
jesusangelgarcia- never comes more than a few drops, does so directly in trashcan, will go to heaven for courtesy.
MFbomb- internet teeth, real life gums.
jereme_dean- breast milk from tap. pussy from/on internet.
keedee- unattractive. wildly
mm- holistic bicycle repair, faggy hair
Robert Alan Wendeborn- likes buttfucking girls, hangs out with girls who like to be buttfucked
dole- tugs off to Paul Auster sex scenes, will go to heaven for for meekness
guest- suicide
trey- suicide, hopefully
Postman- xoxo
x and y- coldplay
Mimi- see Wendeborn
Jimmy Chen- shaves head lefty, yanks necks righty (never masturbates, blogs instead)
Rilke- poetry sucks
Matthew Simmons- crevice milk, uninformed life, shit human
Christopher Higgs- “novelist as flightless bird; turkey neck. Chomsky, monocle, virginity. Suicide!”
davidpeak- plainly without. for always.
zzzzzzipp- GOD IS HERE, Y’ALL
See, it’s a good excuse. Use it on your friends, at work.
My cat is on my lap.
That’s all I got.
best laugh i’ve had all damn day
no shits given indeed.
I couldn’t muster the energy to be mean this week.
mean weak
nice
mine had “hope” in it. the best.
This noble spin on mean week, a call for honesty – but mostly what’s followed is disappointments, irritations. Calling each other out, putting each other down. All in good fun. All in the game. No one’s feelings hurt and were better for it, supposedly. Like a good friend who tells you that your breath smells or that that girl you like has it bad for some dude who wears leather. Folks intimate enough to hate on each other without loss of feeling.
But if I’m asked what I really hate? Ignorance. Plain and simple. Not lack of intelligence, but ignorance. People easily persuaded. People short-sighted. People too lazy to self-improve. This includes intelligent people who use their smarts to put other people down.
And to see people here punk on teachers or MFA programs in broad strokes – the same people who no doubt also hate ignorance. It seems misguided. To punk on a damn fine writer who pursued higher education and is now paying back – the antidotes to ignorance. Teachers and writers who work hard. Who give their time and eke out a living teaching in order to write.
There’s nothing wrong with street cool or smarmy swagger. There’s a bunch of talented well-read supersmart folks here. But art is art. The only thing that makes it special is the widespread ignorance that surrounds us. Not here but elsewhere. So don’t be hypocrites and check the egos. If there were less ignorance in the air we’d all be better for it, even and especially if it made us a lot less special.
PS as much as I try to ignore all the celebrity BS I’m starting to really feel for David Arquette. He never once got my attention as a human being and all of a sudden his wife is gone and I’m starting to feel for the guy. Somebody please remind me not to click on those headlines when it’s something I don’t need to know.
I couldn’t muster the energy to be mean this week.