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
ValerieFilm, books, politics, promotion, web, writing
ever since i stumbled across his essays on coldtype i have been a loyal joe bageant promoter. what first caught my attention, aside his hillbilly humor and general common sensibility, is that he hails from the same forgotten asshole of the shenandoah valley as me, winchester veerr-ginn-yah. big ups 540. jeah.
if you don’t know who joe bageant is than you must become acquainted with the great redneck hope. i would suggest ‘Walking at the Doomsday Ball: Capitalism is dead, but we still dance with the corpse’ or “Let’s Drink to the Slobbering Classes : A sordid tale of work release, hyenas and liberal weakness”. if you’re down with a whole damn book of him, my all time favorite: “Deer Hunting with Jesus, Dispatches from America’s Class War”.
joe’s blog announced the following documentary: which sounds inspiring:
“The Kingdom of Survival” circles through themes of utopianism, globalized capitalism, anarchism, intellectual and spiritual self-defense, religion and art in an investigation of physical and psychological survival strategies practiced by groups and individuals in a conflict-ridden and confused post-modern world.
new release this fall, also: “Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir”.
damn, his titles are great. and i promise, i’ve only walked past his house hoping to meet him a handful of times. anyway, i think he moved. goddamn belize. sigh.
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
Jul 02
Valeriepromotion, web, writing
have you ever driven ten hours solo through five states and crossed invisible lines gaurded by arnold schwarzenegger clones with growling french accents all in order to smuggle superb oregon IPAs and fine texas distilled vodka to your one and only for his thirty-second birfday?
if not, i highly recommend the adventure – you’ll discover aches in driving muscles you never knew you had.
only one word of caution, somewhere around mile 242 my nostrils caught wind of something deeply foul. i began to panic. is that rubber burning? is my car on fire? a look at the license plates surrounding me held the key – sorry new jersey, but you fucking stink. for real.
point of this post: negative suck is looking for submissions. get off your ass and write.
Jun 30
Khakjaan WessingtonPublishing, TWAK, evolution, promotion, web
So I admit it’s not so fun to wade through old threads on TWAK looking for answers to questions I don’t care much about. For example, my spies have told me that TWAK was born out of a feud w/ HTML GIANT. Who the fuck are they? So I went there and found a vanity page filled with a bunch of soft, douchey people clearly proud of the way life never afflicted them. The main page has the typical shit-blog fare, but alexa sez they have pretty good traffic. Now that I’m familiar w/ the basics, I’m not really sure why TWAK would want to react in any way against such a mediocre site. Don’t tell me the reactive personalities all congregate here & everybody capable of putting petty grievances aside stay over at HTML GIANT and reprint the litnews from Poets and Writers. That would be sad. Mediocrity knows it has to work together to affect an outcome. Well, if you cats can’t get it together enough to even emulate mediocrity, what does that make you? Below mediocre. Criticism is not my sole agenda here. I would like to be your Doctor Henry Killinger.
Instead of thinking about what HTML GIANT does, think about what TWAK can do that HTMLGIANT doesn’t do already. Well, for starters, they don’t have any writing on there. Nothing I’d call real writing… just some scribbles. Secondly, they are utterly reactionary. Art-media echo-chamber. Is that what you want? Seems like some stupid shit to me. They draw writers & readers w/ the standard 2ndary & tertiary articles. Instead of pointing to the interesting things other people are doing, the trick is to actually DO those interesting things–right here. Writers want companionship, inspiration and audience. This is why so many stop writing & look at a webpage once in a while. TWAK needs to offer some of that.
Offering anything necessitates a commitment. I tried running a site called combatwords (literary deathmatch w/ rules) by myself & can’t be bothered to maintain it. Too much work to come up with the topics & then egg on the contributors. So if TWAK is going to have something to offer, it must first have reliable contributors–not ‘at will’ as it stands now. I’m glad to host combatwords (I’ll explain the rules later) on here to start with–it will serve as a nice vent for the pent up animus some contributors have for the new guy & also contain the petty bullshit to a single thread. I think of combatwords like Facebook Scrabble: it’s a reason to return, but not the reason to return. You need to build up several features like this; one person hosting one feature once a week–for every day of the week. Or at least a couple a week. Only in that way will you be able to create the daily media experience that websurfers want. Reacting to shit will simply create reactive shit, or regurgitated shit (your choice). No, it is better to be the content than just another site pointing to the content.
May 11
Nathan TyreeLiterature, Publishing, promotion, web begging, outsider writers
Outsider Writers is in trouble. You can do your part to save them. Read on:
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May 11
valeriewalter78Art, Comics, web
all this frank frazetta rip reminds me of sistinas. why is that? anyway awesome guy, frazetta, glenn is arguable.
May 08
P. H. Madoreweb blake butler, HTMLGiant, jereme dean, jimmy chen, roxane gay
I am an angry person.
It’s taken me years to put myself together.
It’s taken more years to realize that I’m angry.
I’m working on it.
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Apr 01
P. H. Madoreweb HTMLGiant, mather schneider
Mather Schneider is tearing an asshole into HTMLGiant for some reason. Dig it.
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