Sep 02
ValerieLiterature, Review, promotion, writing sam pink
sam pink has a manner of courting obscenities, portraying human transgression as consolation. this appeals to me, i had to get a copy. sam pink is nice and sent me one. i finished Frowns need Friends Too and didn’t know where to start. i tried to put my finger on the sense of deja vu i took from his detached style: like irregular thought, irregular thought, irregular thought, bombshell and/or sinker! amusing/awkward title, irregular thought, irregular thought, bombshell and/or sinker! awkw..you get it. i mean, you’ve read sam pink around, right? his patterns are present and sometimes broken but the general output is ‘things you think but do not say and things you’ve not allowed yourself to think because you never had the words to correctly come off abhorrently wrong in the appropriate manner.’
after a couple weeks (yeah i’ve been putting this off) the deja vu feel clicked. i hadn’t read sam pink’s style elsewhere so much before per say as i had actually known sam pink’s writing, personified. back in high school, around ‘95, we had named him sloth. sloth was obsessed with gg allin, murder junkies, all things porn, which sounds normal for a young outcast coming into adulthood (pun intended). sloth’s prized possessions were three black and white printouts (1) a girl fucking a horse (or vice-versa, how is that properly stated?) (2) a girl fucking (again, ?) a coke can (3) a ‘normal’ deep throat closeup. sloth kept those three papers folded lovingly in his back pocket for an entire summer. he would enthusiastically shove them in anyone’s face who happened to approach our derelict crew. of course, this was before the entire world had access to the intranets and such porn was passé by kindergarden.
sloth had an extreme slouch, moved super slow and twisted his unkempt hair constantly with steady twists and pulls until patches of bald appeared all over his head and his parents decided he needed professional help. the day sloth announced he was officially schizophrenic we were all walking to steal beer from the anheuser-busch factory just past the main thruway of town. sloth was his normal quiet self, walking with our pack, occasionally laughing his signature crazy cackle laugh – sometimes at something someone said, sometimes at nothing any of us could actually hear. we passed the autoparts store (on the main thruway, constant steady traffic) which had a picnic table for employee breaks and sloth said ‘so guess what? i’m fucking schizophrenic and my entire life is going to be shit!” he jumped atop the empty picnic table, pulled down his pants and began to give all passersby a masturbatory show.
we all laughed at first then fear of impending cop doom set in and we coaxed him down and ran for the shelter of the train tracks. unfazed or maybe he had already forgot his public wanking, he stopped on the tracks to have a smoke. most of the guys, tired of his antics, kept going onward toward the beer factory. a couple of us stopped to have a smoke with sloth, weary to leave him behind alone. he began to chain weeds together into a crown of sorts while absently talking about his little sister and how he would watch cartoons with her and wonder what her tiny face would look like if he cut off her oxygen. we were used to sloth saying horrible things and figured it purely for attention. now we wondered if he had always been serious, letting us in on darker things we had yet to accept as real. at the same time we felt like we knew him well, some in our group had known him since preschool. he was a good/fun guy but at the same time we couldn’t ignore the explicit raw insanity coming out of his mouth.
reading sam pink is much like hanging out with sloth. his words are uncomfortable, a little horrific but at the same time familiar – somehow chummy so you’re never quite sure if you should be only a little embarrassed or totally appalled at yourself by enjoying them. in all things i say fuck it, don’t over think such matters. go buy frowns need friends too and/or check out sam pink september 11th at dit fest. get in touch with your obscenities, take them for a stroll to the beer factory, steal a case off an unlocked van, take a seat on the train tracks and drink till you forget how normally rotten we all are.
(one of my personal favorites below for your eyeball pleasure)
neanderthal clitoris
The worst position to be in is to have someone care about you more than you care about yourself.
The worst position to be in is to be that person.
The worst position is to be a person.
Everyone needs to hate someone else.
Being that someone is as good a goal as any.
You are my favorite failure and I am too destroyed to get off the couch, I guess I will sleep on the couch without brushing my teeth.
Everyone needs to hate being a sleepy-failure with a goal but I want to be buried in a coffin, holding another human that died on the same day as me, both of us wearing crowns made out of construction paper with plastic jewels glued onto them.
Ouch, this is hurting me.
I made the sign of the cross and vomited on my feet.
Ouch.
The worst position is the one you began with, and then continued to make worse.
Aug 28
Mather SchneiderFree Books, Literature, Review, books, poetry, promotion
If anyone would be willing to review my book of poetry DROUGHT RESISTANT STRAIN I would gladly send them a copy. Negative reviews are absolutely acceptable.
Aug 21
P. H. MadoreLiterature
I feel like I’ve discovered a good man of letters. Not surprised that he hails from Pittsburgh. Seems like a guy I could drink a forty with, anyway.
Here are his collected works, as I know them:
Not Much Today
There’s Still Toothpaste on My Chin
Sometimes There Just Aren’t Enough Rocks
Aug 20
Khakjaan WessingtonArt, Combat Words, Craft, Literature, TWAK, evolution, guns, humor, memes, philosophy, poetry, politics, promotion, random, richard dawkins, science, web, writing combatwords
CombatWords! August 20, 2010: Evolution
This cycle of cells is vicious, isn’t it? Predator and prey all germinated from the same batch(es) of cells and filled every exploitable niche on this planet: an endless cycle of growth and consumption. Parasites, symbiotes; eater and eaten all draw energy from the sun and its legacy. When I think of the chain of life, I sometimes think I am a skin cell that has forgotten it is part of a bigger organism. Of course, most of the time, I just think my cluster of cells is precious and the rest have little to do with me. Evolution can be metaphorical as well; I find it hilarious for example when I hear about technology ‘evolving.’ Do creationist engineers hide in secret covens and call their manifold works the products of intelligent design? Do they grit their teeth when their colleagues discuss the ‘evolution of the business process’? There’s more than one angle to this one.
Combat Expiration: Sunday, August 22, 2010; 12am PST
Critique Expiration: Sunday, August 22, 2010; 6pm PST
Bonuses: Flat bonus of +1 for compositions posted before Friday, August 20, 2010 9pm PST. +2 for compositions posted before Friday, August 20, 2010 6pm PST.
Rules: http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2010/07/official-rules-for-combatwords-updated.html
ps: Okay, this is posting >1min early. Those who got here early have some extra initiative.
Aug 15
Khakjaan WessingtonArt, Combat Words, Craft, Literature, Publishing, books, humor, memes, poetry, promotion, random, web, writing
CombatWords! August 15, 2010: Lightning Round
You have one hour to weave the below keywords into a composition. I’ll be really impressed if you can find more than one theme to unify the keywords/concepts.
Keywords/Concepts: tropic, sound, insanity, strategy
Combat Expiration: August 15, 9PM PST
Critique Expiration: August 16, 6PM PST
Time Bonus: +1/5 minutes ahead of deadline, max +5
The Official Rules: http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2010/07/official-rules-for-combatwords-updated.html
Jul 30
Khakjaan WessingtonArt, Craft, Literature, humor, memes, philosophy, poetry, writing combatwords
CombatWords! for July 30, 2010: Good
The Good: Shall we say ‘The Good’ maximizes human happiness, as Aristotle would have us define it? Good is of Anglo-Saxon origin, so I think it’s safe to say it predates a Latin—and therefore Mediterranean—definition. GE Moore sez ‘The Good’ is for suckers. Or let’s make it more simple—what if you could go back in time and shoot your French machine-gun a little more accurately at Hitler in WWI? Is that good if you prevent WWII? Is that bad if that means WWII is fought in the 50s with nuclear weapons? See? This shit gets tricky. What does it mean to be good? Is it an act constrained to time? Our experience? Or forget all that; be opposite-kid and write about Evil, because ooh, you’re so rebellious. As long as you riff off the theme, you can rack up the bonus points.
Combat Expiration: August 1, 6pm PST
Critique Expiration: August 3, 12am PST
Bonus Increment: +1 per 3 hours ahead of deadline with a maximum time bonus of +15. Yes, time bonuses are going to be huge in this CombatWords, but quality matters. The limit is +15 to give PST people some time to write after work. Don’t want to give the East Coast an unfair advantage. If you don’t want to wake up with the Saturday penalty, you’d better get writing NOW.
Rules are here: http://trickwithaknife.com/?p=861 and here http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2010/07/official-rules-for-combatwords-updated.html
Jul 23
Khakjaan WessingtonCraft, Literature, TWAK, Uncategorized, evolution, humor, memes, philosophy, poetry, writing combatwords
Combatwords for July 23, 2010: Pleasure Versus Pain
Pleasure and pain; comedy & tragedy; happiness and despair—these are the moods and feelings we chase or flee. They are also the foundations of behavioralist worldviews. Han Fei Tzu and BF Skinner have plenty in common, despite their 2000+ year gap. Take this topic however you’d like: humans as animals; the two flavors in life; whatever.
Combat Deadline: July 25, 6pm PST.
Critique Expires: July 27, Midnight PST.
Time Bonuses: +1 per 5 hours ahead of deadline.
ARE YOU A JERSUSALEM CRICKET OR A CAMEL SPIDER???!!!
FIGHT!!!!!!(?)
Jul 22
KafkaLiterature, TWAK, humor, random
If you had burned those papers per my instruction, I wouldn’t have to write this and those geriatrics wouldn’t be getting rich off my toilet paper. Really, twenty-first century? Toilet paper? What do you do with erroneous manuscripts, throw them in the trash?
Also, stop fucking using the term “kafkaesque.” All of you.
Look at me, I reference everything slightly esoteric as “kafkaesque,” I’m so literary-chic because I made a Kafka reference.
You aren’t.
God damn you, Max Brod.
Jul 20
ValerieLiterature, TWAK, Web Goodies, books, guns, promotion, web, writing
ok, no not really our sponsor but an awesome contributor to trick with a knife and blogger of the intranettings- he, yeah that guy, has a new chapbook – there are only thirteen and this figure is inflated cause i know i bought one already and there are many cooler peoples who come to be in the know about hot happening things much quicker than me so there may only be like, one or two left and oh holy hell what will you do with yourself if you don’t have this awesome to turn between your sticky fingers and touch with your thirsty eyeballs? BUY IT NOW BEFORE YOU REGRET YOUR ENTIRE EXISTENCE
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