CombatWords September 3, 2010
Sep 03
Reminder: CombatWords has moved to http://combatwords.blogspot.com/
frowns need friends too, it’s true.
Sep 02
Literature, Review, promotion, writing sam pink 63 Comments
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.
Goof Ball Spazz Whack Cheese Yo
Aug 29
Wake up your saints.
I don’t like the recent evacuation of Combat Words. The only problem I ever had with it being hosted here was the way the guy was posting it in every category. Had he knocked that off and simply posted the thing in the category named for it, everything would have been fine as far as I was concerned. But I saw no reason for him to just pick up and go like that.
DROUGHT RESISTANT STRAIN
Aug 28
Free Books, Literature, Review, books, poetry, promotion No Comments
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.
CombatWords! August 27, 2010
Aug 27
This week it’s back home at http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2010/08/combatwords-august-27-2010-hypocrisy.html
ON FRIENDSHIP
Aug 27
Publishing, random 11 Comments
Yesterday I got an email from a guy/poet who I have corresponded with for a year and a half. I’ve never met him in person or talked to him on the telephone but I considered him a friend. I like his poetry, but I do not love it, and have only read maybe 20 poems that I have seen on the internet, because that is all that is available. What I enjoyed about our friendship was the chatting and talking about the small press and life in general.
In the email my friend told me that My Favorite Bullet was on a hiatus, and had returned his submission. I already knew this because my submission had been returned too. My friend was pissed off about it, but this isn’t the point of my story. The point is that my friend was also angry at me for not pushing his poetry onto the editor of My Favorite Bullet earlier. I told my friend that I had indeed mentioned his name to the editor and told him I thought he was a good poet, and was not sure what else I was supposed to do. My friend never answered this and then went on to tell me I’m a piece of shit and a dick and my poetry sucks and has always sucked and I am not a poet no matter who had told me I was. We argued all day over email. I woke up this morning still angry about it, but also saddened.
That My Favorite Bullet is on hiatus makes the whole idea of publishing there a moot point, but still, it makes me wonder about the nature of these literary friendships. The purpose of this post is to ask you: Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever pulled this trick on someone else?
Guest Review by Mikael Covey
Aug 23
Literature, Review, books books, drugs, mikael covey, Review, sick city, tony o'neill 1 Comment
Zach Fishel
Aug 21
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:
CombatWords! August 20, 2010: Evolution
Aug 20
Art, Combat Words, Craft, Literature, TWAK, evolution, guns, humor, memes, philosophy, poetry, politics, promotion, random, richard dawkins, science, web, writing combatwords 27 Comments
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.
