God Damn The MFA Programme

though this remark is particularly felicitous, the piece is an excellent exercise of mfa bashing:

To my mind, the real cause of shame here is the profession of writing, and it affects McGurl just as much as it does Carver and Oates. Literary writing is inherently elitist and impractical. It doesn’t directly cure disease, combat injustice, or make enough money, usually, to support philanthropic aims. Because writing is suspected to be narcissistic and wasteful, it must be ‘disciplined’ by the programme – as McGurl documents with a 1941 promotional photo of Paul Engle, then director of the Iowa workshop, seated at a desk with a typewriter and a large whip. (Engle’s only novel, McGurl observes, features a bedridden Iowan patriarch ‘surrounded by his collection of “whips of every kind”, including “racing whips”, “stiff buggy whips”, “cattle whips”, “riding crops” and one “endless bullwhip”’.) The workshop’s most famous mantras – ‘Murder your darlings,’ ‘Omit needless words,’ ‘Show, don’t tell’ – also betray a view of writing as self-indulgence, an excess to be painfully curbed in AA-type group sessions. Shame also explains the fetish of ‘craft’: an ostensibly legitimising technique, designed to recast writing as a workmanlike, perhaps even working-class skill, as opposed to something every no-good dilettante already knows how to do. Shame explains the cult of persecutedness, a strategy designed to legitimise literary production as social advocacy, and make White People feel better (Stuff White People Like #21: ‘Writers’ Workshops’).

This Guy Gets It.

"feelin it":

51.

HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)

David

New York

August 18th, 2010

11:13 am

The problem is with the American Dream itself. It's dying. The idea of a great job that paves the way for a happy life is over. Corporations have become gigantic engines of homogenization that destroy creativity. The corporate culture of America is designed to treat workers as cogs in a machine, where they do one or a small series of repetitive motions over and over. That stifles innovation - the fundamental engine of growth for this country.

Most everyone is in a job that requires 9 hours a day which comes to a grand total of half of your adult life (if you sleep for 8 hours a night). And to spend that in a job doing a repetitive motion really belittles ones mind. These kids think, and dream and hope and aren't bound by the ideology of the baby boomer generation "if you can just get a job everything will be fine".

To these kids, a job is just a form of modern day slavery. At best, indentured servitude. You'll earn just enough to pay your debts and if you save every penny, cut corners, clip coupons, don't have children and pack a lunch for 30 years - you might just break even. But in the mean time we'll ask you to contribute a portion of your earnings to something you'll never get a payout from (Social security). We will set your tax rates to a level that just about lets you get by while racking up debt to maintain tax subsidized industries (Oil) and ask you to fight wars on their behalf. We'll have two sets of laws - one for you (middle class) and one for the super rich. But hey, you'll have a job. A job! A good ole job!

That's the current American dream. The kids are smarter than their parents in that they are rejecting the bogus ideology of the opportunity for a fair shot at success. That's not what it is anymore. It's about the have's versus the have nots. And more and more, the have nots are just choosing not to participate in a system where the deck is stacked against them.

 Recommend Recommended by 277 Readers

I Promise you that this book will suck

Never heard of "Jonathan Frazen," and I never read Infinite Jest for the same reason I never read anything written by an American: because they SUCK.  Americans cannot write, and they cannot read.  I would compare the country to modern day Abdera (which was noted for the stupidity of its inhabitants.)

'i write quirky and yet profound books for people who dont really read literature and think that reading the new yorker and enrolling in an mfa program at brown/columbia means u r art forward.'

I promise that the book itself will be as tepid and desperate as the beyond jejune article.  I really hate it when journalists, who are more than likely aspiring to be novelists, try to make some "quirky" observation or comparison, and I knew it was lurking around in the article after reading the opening:

A raft of sea otters are at play in a narrow estuary at Moss Landing, near Santa Cruz, Calif. There are 41 of them, says a guy in a baseball cap. He counted. They dive and surface and float around on their backs with their little paws poking up out of the water, munching sea urchins or thinking about munching sea urchins.

The humans admiring them from the shore don't make them self-conscious. Otters are congenitally happy beasts. They don't worry about their future, even though they're legally a threatened species and their little estuary is literally in the shadow of the massive 500-ft. stacks of a power plant.

One of the humans admiring them is Jonathan Franzen.

Fucking sea otters?  You have a world historical genius looking at fucking sea otters?  And therein lies the absurdity of the "modern" "american" "genius."  This poor journalist really wants Frazen to be unique, to have a radically unique take on "the way-we-live-now."  But the sad fact is that he isn't a genius (those occur mostly in Europe and are later translated into English so American Professors have something to talk about to their panting undergraduates [who will forget everything once they are harvested by corporate america for mundane tasks] for the next 40 years while Europeans are already wrestling with the real pressing issues of the epoch), and the "way-we-live-now" is not worth writing a book on, and even more, smacks of a churlish commitment to presentomania.

(can we even call this an article? just call it a hype piece to sell when the actual article comes out.  Tweet this, don't even bother to write more than 160 characters.)  There was more boring writing about a boring person who writes boring books, and then...

It's his instrument, in the musical and also the scientific sense: a delicate, finely calibrated recording device. 

And there it is.  I feel sick after reading such a horrible line, but luckily I had some La Rochefoucauld sitting close at hand, and after enjoying a few of his golden maxims was able to recover.  Frazen's new "literary" sensation will no doubt be filled with quirky "observations" of this kind.  But as with all artists, there is still the possibility that he or she might commit suicide before the "great work" is completed.


Disclaimer: Americans might be able to write Science Fiction and Fantasy, but even those genres seem to be the domain of the british.

OH MISTER DARCY!!!!!!!!

Over at the guaridan, there is a sprightly conversation regarding the defense of chic-lit.  Your hero impetuously dashed in to the fray, serving up a bodacious commentary:

Science fiction and "literary fiction" (actually Literature itself) has always been accused of not being actively engaged in confronting the current cultural problems, so this sort of objection isnt unique to chic(k)-lit.

Though I think you are rightly locating the ever present problem of art having to be "relevant" to culture, I think the deeper claim is that chic(k)-lit, and the "problems" it addresses are themselves de minimis--inherently nugatory. Moreover, the lightness that chic(k)-lit engages in is not the of the postmodern jouissance that Derrida enacted, but that of the vulgar bourgeois kind.


There is a large amount of ("dirty") humor in Shakespeare and Johnson was critical of his fondness for "quarrels" (ie, puns); but there is also a great amount of sincere human learning. If anything, I think perhaps one of the more substantial criticisms of chic(k)-lit is that it is one sided. Horace, after all, did goldenly write that poetry's purpose is to teach and delight (utile et dulce).


Chic(k)-lit writers basically made the choice to "sell out" which is just a pragmatic choice of living. Artistically, it is wrong, but from a careerist stand point, it is quite acceptable. You get to go to parties, hang out with boring bankers and lawyers (probably even marry one), tell bourgeois people that you are an "author," etc., but you don't get to be considered among the great writers of Literature. Take the money, but you should refrain from defending fad writing as literature.

In light of "bookgirl09"'s comment, I am inspired (perhaps dreadfully so) to take a certain set of Nietzsche's comments much more seriously.


I want to seriously say this, though I doubt it will be understood at all: can women be great artists? All the great philosophers have been male. All the great poets have been male. Almost all of the great philosophers have been poor, oppressed, sick, and weak. Almost all the great poets have been poor, oppressed, sick, and weak. Hardly any of them received PhDs or went to universities to become educated and THEN write great books: they all educated themselves, whenever and however they could.

Where are the women voices? *Do* women have a voice (yet)? Women have been equally shunted, and yet no secret MSS have been found, and no great woman writers have been published. Madam de Stael and Jane Austin, I do not believe, are accurate representations of what a real woman philosopher or literary woman could produce.

I for one, think it is time for a woman poet and woman philosopher on the scale of Plato and Shakespeare, and I think that until such a woman appears, there will be no more philosophical or literary advances. (I am aware, of course, of the “phallusy” of trying to envision a female artistic genius on the grounds of the received male notions.)

At Once: A Wanderer’s Ruminations on the New Space for Storied Travelers (Or, An Essai)

In response to the ever provocative Dan Green, who was himself responding to the "critic" Lee Siegel, I was given an opportunity to do one of my favorite things: scoff at the novel.

Now, I would like to proffer a brief articulation of a "genre" that I think is thriving, and that will constitute the bedrock of postmodern "fiction."

“A new species of philosopher is coming up: I venture to baptize them with a name that is not free of danger. As I unriddle them, insofar as they allow themselves to be unriddled—for it belongs to their nature to want to remain riddles at some point—these philosophers of the future may have a right—it might also be a wrong—to be called attempters.”

Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil

“A new writing must weave and interlace these two motifs of deconstruction. Which amounts to saying that one must speak several languages and produce several texts at once.”

Derrida, Margins of Philosophy

I should apologize to any reader of this essay, for it may sound in the dismellifluous tones of poorly written love poetry; a bit of verse from one who for some time has not been in love, and then on a sunny spring morning, stumbled into the love of his dreams in a bookstore. Until recently I had read little fantasy and less science fiction (though the reader may forgive this, perhaps the author can never forgive himself), spending the plurality of my intellectual journeys in the realms of philosophy and literature—two disciplines which to the minds of many have reached their ends.

Or so it was thought.

To my mind, science fiction and fantasy represent the ideal space in which to pose, examine, and grapple with the dominant philosophical, literary, and cultural issues of our epoch (and a fortiori of those to come), and the ideal place to mix the rich, heterogeneous literary and philosophical materials bequeathed to us postmoderns from our opulent history, something other inherited literary forms are too ossified and hidebound to tolerate within their rigorously delimited boundaries and perhaps tacit, but no less rigid set of tastes. I might add, parenthetically, that while at first glance describing any genre as “hidebound,” “ossified,” and “rigid” might seem abusive, I use such terms to accent an historical inevitability: that in time, all things become sedimented—that rigidity and sedimentation are inevitable historical effects. Finally, throughout the essay I perhaps sacrifice some precision, since I do not distinguish between science fiction and fantasy, but use the term singularly. Below I hope to elaborate, in the space provided, on what I see as the virtues of science fiction and fantasy; ultimately, the five virtues of science fiction and fantasy are what make it so dear to me as a “philosopher” after (temporally and stylistically) Plato and Nietzsche: as a dreamer, as one who has awoken in a dream and yet must go on dreaming.

I would like to dwell, if only momentarily, on the formal aspects of the heading “science fiction,” and to explain why I am enamored of the name itself (indeed, it constitutes the first reason why science fiction and fantasy is important to me) and why it is so palpably postmodern. The term “science fiction” would appear as an untenable notion in any age but our own, since such a pronounced contradiction would be labeled shameful and logically silly, rather than exciting and liberating. (No doubt, the name has clearly been in existence for some time, but it is only in our current age that we are best positioned to fully appreciate it.) But it is precisely this ludic contradiction that makes the genre exciting, makes it a literary advance. The way it presents its name is inextricably linked with the way it uniquely opens up its space within which its ideas can be considered. One hears echoes of the ancient quarrel between philosophy (science) and poetry (fiction), which used to be mutually exclusive, but now the two are allowed to thoughtfully and bountifully dwell in each others presence. What does this dwelling of opposites mean, artistically? that science fiction and fantasy is a new space for intellectuals to dwell in; one particularly hospitable to “homeless” thinkers with heterogeneous histories—all of us who live in postmodernity. Departing from these formal ruminations, I would next like to consider the genre’s second virtue: its implications for style.

Science fiction and fantasy constitute a hair-raising stylistic step forward, one perhaps as difficult as first treading Zelazny’s Pattern. Whereas fiction, poetry, and philosophy can only consider, for example, gender, race, and sexuality in a stylistically mundane manner (in a fashion that is literally human, all-too-human), science fiction and fantasy neatly ornament these postmodern topoi. One encounters uncanny combinations of the real and the fantastic: lesbian elven priestesses, racist, atheist gully dwarves, drug abusing wizards, and self-loathing computers. Additionally, while genres like philosophy, poetry, and the novel all have diverse voices, each voice nevertheless has identifiable traits that are singularly philosophic, poetic, or fictive. The space of science fiction and fantasy however, is pliant enough to comfortably accommodate heterogeneous voices. Science fiction and fantasy can blend all of these voices (philosophic, poetic, scholastic, etc.) simultaneously in one space, and in fact invites the use of a plurality of voices, which makes it the postmodern genre par excellence, and a wonderful, free, and new space to be writing (and reading) in. We postmoderns, existing late in history, have seen a great deal; but we have not seen (or heard) things sited in the context of science fiction and fantasy, and that is something to be excited about.

Related to science fiction and fantasy’s stylistic virtue is its potent allegorical virtue. Dante, in a halcyon passage of the Convivio defined the allegorical sense of literature as “a truth hidden beneath a beautiful fiction.” Science fiction and fantasy, creates a space for a new kind of “beautiful fiction” with fantastic elements equal in strength to the fables of the poets of antiquity, which while fabulous, nevertheless can be simultaneously understood as provocative critiques by the poets of the ages they inhabited. In a similar fashion, science fiction and fantasy is able to question the current epoch and maintain its fictive charm, avoiding simple argumentation, or excoriating polemic. Thus, though one need not read science fiction and fantasy with any social critique in mind, the genre nevertheless offers an exceptional place for mercurial penseurs to conduct a veiled critique of an immediate epoch. The genre is capacious enough to ponder the present through the fantastic but by no means is its sole focus “the present.”

Current fiction bends its discourse largely towards the representation of reality, and one is reminded of Plato’s rebuke of such art—that one might simply carry a mirror around and thus perfectly represent reality. Science fiction and fantasy however, seem to be philosophoteron, that is, more philosophical, in its focus on the fantastic—on wonder; Plato, in fact, says that “Philosophy begins in wonder.” I would think such a motto is written over the door of every science fiction and fantasy author. Science fiction and fantasy richly contemplate time travel, alternate histories, parallel universes, unique species and unique worlds, the role and impact of government, technology, philosophy, and art in the future—both near and far, far away. Science fiction and fantasy thus seem to be closer in spirit with philosophic thought experiments than with representations that seek solely to capture the essence of the present “reality.”

The final reason why science fiction and fantasy is so dear to me is perhaps one that scholars often take for granted: science fiction and fantasy tells good stories. The adventures of Drizzt Do’Urden, Ender’s Game, the Wheel of Time series, Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, The Black Company, the Revelation Space series, The Amber Chronicles, and more recently, the First Law Trilogy and Cyberabad Days, are all, au fond, good stories—much the same way that Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Voltaire’s Candide, Boccaccio’s Decameron, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Tasso’s Orlando Furioso, Lucian’s True Story, and Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, and any one of Plato’s myths are. These are stories with indelible, robust characters and thick, vivid plots; stories that, in often lambent language, nimbly contemplate the human condition, and rather than serve merely as “an amulet against the ennui” (to borrow a phrase from Keats), these stories leave the reader rewardingly perplexed.

Finally, In an epoch where we are seemingly endlessly ensnared in “the now,” in a sort of presentomania, where celebrity infatuation, 24-hour cable news cycles, and “reality” TV dominate the media landscape, I find that it is science fiction and fantasy that serves as a space which is distant and philosophical enough to critically examine the “now,” the present which has become hyperpresent; said another way, it is science fiction and fantasy that places the “now” and the “real” in question, and is the space which is distant and philosophical enough to look beyond the “now,” to look to tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

Science of Pop Culture Dictionary

for Flaubert

New York Times Best Seller:  Complete fucking garbage.  See also, "the novel."

New York Times Best Selling Author:  One who cannot write, read by people who cannot read.

American Reader: a contradiction in terms.

America: highly advanced technological society that exists without art, philosophy, and any general sense of meaning; failed experiment in government to 'flee old europe and its problems.'  All that it left behind was everything that made Europe great: namely, philosophy and art.  Managed to successfully slide down Maslow's pyramid into the cultural swamp.

Blogosphere: populated by would be New York Times Best Selling Authors and American "Readers."

George Bush:  Incompetent.  Widely mocked and widely loved.  What modern, progressive Americans like to call a tyrant, fascist, or Hitler, because they have never seen or felt the true misery and annihilatory powers that a true tyrant or Hitler possesses or can cause.

Barry Obama: A New York Times Best Selling Author.

Teleprompter:  Greatest asset (second only to Ignorance) to would be dictators (though it could never help George Bush).  What Napoleon, Caesar, Cataline, Cicero, Plato, Socrates, Shakespeare, Sulla, Pompey, Hannibal, Wellington, and Nietzsche never needed.

The Rap Game:  More important than the novel.

Attractive women:  the one thing Bill Clinton hasn't done.

Katy Perry:  The greatest singer alive.

Ke$ha:  The greatest singer alive.


Too Big To Fail:  Mentality of Hollywood Advertising Executives, that no matter how shitty the movie, if enough money is poured into the adverts, stupid american teenagers will go see it.  Was later co-opted by Wall Street's investment "The Government of the United States of America" in a demand for more money so that it could make even more absurd gambles and not have to pay for them if they go wrong.

Twitter:  The literary capital of the Internet; one only finds the best of literature here.

oh nose teh monograff/finally a genre worth reading

Davidson has a keenly interesting article in which I highlight some passages of interest below in a cursory fashion:

"Dig out the syllabi for your next English courses and add one or (if you want to get really wild) two scholarly monographs. Ditch the course pack youve planned and go for actual, real, whole books produced by the scholar or scholars whose work you respect most. The clearest evidence of the existing structural misalignment in our field is the hyperbolic, ambivalent, and almost schizophrenic role into which we have cast the scholarly monograph. We require the writing of monographs for advancement in our field. We do not require that our students read them and we dont read them very much ourselves."

Scholarship is really the worst kind of writing (well ok that is not true, that would be journalism) but it is certainly very far away from the kind of writing I would imagine most English or Philosophy (under)graduate students hoped to write upon first viewing some lines from Homer, Shakespeare, Plato, or Nietzsche (to name a few.)

Further below, Davidson writes the most interesting paragraph of the piece:

"By not teaching the monograph as a genre, we are depriving ourselves of the opportunity to teach and therefore to study what this genre can do, what it cannot do, what it does well, and what might be done better in other forms."

Most interesting here is the idea of the monograph "as genre" which, ideally, would lead to a sort of parody of scholarly writing (of course, to my mind, this already occurred significantly in Derrida: copious, overflowing footnotes, endless sentences, tepid word play (at least he was trying) etc;).  Implying that scholarship is yet another genre seems to remove epistemic significance that scholarship critically (that is, philosophically) handles the other genres below it, such as Romanticism, Victorian Studies, Early Modernism etc; however in regrafting scholarship as a genre Davidson performs a double move whereby scholarship becomes literature just like Romanticism and Early Modernism, just like Ode to a Grecian Urn, or King Lear, or Pride and Prejudice.  --That makes scholarship worth reading.

The looming and significant question this article poses is, can scholars become literary, can they become artists, can they enjoy play along with seriousness?

w/e

summary of postmodern life:  log on, stream, update status, drop dead.

fRidAy 3xpirim3/\/tewL fIcTiOn!111

You Can’t Make a Silk Purse from a Sow’s Ear

By W, O, R, and T

The Flocks News Building—“We are here now in our studio to talk about a pressing issue in journalism these days, something that seems to be causing quite a stir: Mr. Ethics and journalism. Many critics, lead by Mr. Ethics, have issued scathing reports on our ethical standards and today we are going to read between the lines of what these critics are saying, we are going to deconstruct their statements—analyze them up one side and down the other—and come hell or high water we are going to figure out if journalism is up the creek without a paddle, if the critics are green with envy, or maybe if they are just out in left field.

“Joining us today are several well known journalists: W from the N.Y. Slimes, O from the Washington Compost, R, a prolific author whose three most recent books have all appeared on the N.Y. Slimes and Compost best seller lists. And finally, I’m T, and this is Flocks News: We Report It, You Believe It! Before we begin, I just have to say its good to have you all here,” she said.

“It’s a full house, that’s for sure,” said O.

“I’d like to begin with you W. You are an editor and a well-respected writer. What do you think about all the recent criticism?” she said. “Is this Ethics guy going to take the world by storm or is all of this just a tempest in a teapot that’s going to blow over, sooner rather than later?”

“Well…where to begin? Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. You know, I wasn’t born yesterday, and I really think most of the criticism amounts to shots in the dark.” He continued: “I mean, who does this Ethics guy think he is anyway? All I have to say is what goes around comes around and that journalism still has a respected place among the lives of many Americans. What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, and Journalism is going to come out of this much stronger I think, for better or for worse,” W said.

“This Ethics guy and people like him are a dime a dozen; today Ethics, tomorrow…well who knows? Ethics will matter to us when pigs fly” said O.

He continued, saying, “I for one am at a loss for words. I mean this Ethics guy has just come out of nowhere. Just absolutely nobody has even heard of him before—at least in our offices. I mean have you ever heard of him before W?”

“Nope, never.”

“What about you R?” said O.

“I have a B.A., J.D., MBA, MFA, and a J-School Degree all from Veritas…”

“Have you had your fill of Veritas R?” said the hostess.

“I’m full of it” said R. “So as I was saying, I’ve never once heard about this Ethics guy. I really never even knew Ethics existed before all this commotion. Much of his criticism seems to me to be just knee-jerk reactions and I think he’s just trying to ride Journalism’s coattails for some publicity to jump-start a career.”

“See that takes the cake! None of us know him!” exclaimed W.

“Just for a second I want to congratulate you on your most recently published books R. Your MFA from Veritas really made you into a great writer. I mean your prose is like music to my ears. A writer of your caliber only comes along once in a blue moon—and the images you paint! They are a sight for sore eyes!” said T.

“I’m flattered” said R. “Before I got my MFA I couldn’t write a sentence to save my life. My writing before and after my MFA is separated by a world of –ance. Funny how often good writing and an MFA go hand in hand.”

The hostess continued, “From the way some people talk about Ethics, you’d think he was the greatest thing since sliced bread, like he was the Messiah or something.”

O said, “Which is something I refuse to believe. All that glitters is not gold—”

“Every rose has its thorn,” said the hostess.

“Exactly. Look, the bottom line is that something stinks; its like Shakespeare says, ‘something is rotten in Denmark.’ something is amiss here; I just can’t put my finger on it. I guess every dog has its day, but all I know is that this Ethics guy has to have an Achilles Heel, he’s just too squeaky clean, and I bet he’s got some skeletons in his closet. So it’s only a matter of time before it all comes crashing down around him,” said O.

“Lets switch gears for a moment. R, what is with these accusations of plagiarism that have been leveled at you and both the Slimes and Compost, that you copied, verbatim, this young girl’s work from her blog, and submitted it to both the Slimes and Compost, both of which, I might add, printed the article? I just can’t believe there is any truth to them, but I want to hear it from your mouth” said the hostess.

“You want it from the horses mouth huh? Well, to begin with, it was a shrewd piece of analysis; well written, well

THIS PAGE SPONSORED BY HYPE , THE MOVIE.

Go see what everyone is talking about!

thought out—you know—straight to the point… not a long drawn out piece of writing. I mean the whole time I was reading it I was thinking in the back of my mind, ‘Wow, she’s really got something here. She’s a good writer,’” said R.

“I agree with you—she’s sharp as a tack. But that’s neither here nor there; stop trying to dodge the bullet and answer my question: what’s with the plagiarism accusations?”

“Ok! Ok! Stop giving me the third degree! Man, you’re tough as nails!” he said. “I’m afraid if I give an inch you’ll take a mile.”

“Better late than never though, don’t you think?” said the hostess.

“Well now wait just a second. You can’t blame him for not wanting to shoot himself in the foot. I know when I sit down to type an article, my words are flying like a bat outta Hell. Its life in the fast lane baby and you can’t be as slow as molasses and make it in this profession. I don’t check sources, or facts, or any of that nonsense, that stuff is for the birds,” O said.

“You have to be ready at the drop of a hat because the early bird gets the worm,” said W. “And if you can’t take the heat, get outta the kitchen.”

“Tempus fugit” said R.

“Isn’t reporting like that just an accident waiting to happen? Aren’t you all walking on thin ice?” T asked the group.

“Well its risky business, but no pain no gain,” said R.

“Can’t win them all,” said W.

“So how are you doing now that these charges have been made public?” said the hostess.

“I just try to take it one day at a time and try to learn from my mistakes” R said. “I plan to write a book about it, already got a deal set up with another publisher. They think it’s going to sell big.”

“Its good to see you making the most from a difficult situation” T said.

“Well you know what they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty,” said W.

“Ok lets move on. I want to get some of your thoughts on the most devastating war mankind has ever faced—the war in Iraq” the Hostess said. “W, do you think it’s a lost cause? Should we jump ship?”

“Its another Vietnam. We’ve got to get out of there as soon as possible.”

“The war is drawing terrorists like moths to a flame and our troops are dropping like flies! I think we have bitten off more than we can chew and we have to get out of there as fast as lightning” said O.

“I agree,” said R. “This war is a wake up call for the American people: now they can see for themselves that the government has been lying through its teeth. The administration should have looked before it leaped, and it’s time to cut our losses and get out.”

“What do you all think of the Republican Party’s latest attraction and her recent stunts at the Republican debate? She’s making a name for herself isn’t she? O I know you want to take a swing at this one,” said the hostess.

“Well, if she is the conservative cream of the crop, the crème de la crème, then there’s still hope for the Democrats—even with their fiasco. I guess what I think, about both candidates really, is that tomorrow is a new day, and they both need to hit the ground running if either of them is going to stand a chance at becoming the next leader of the free world,” O said.

“I think she’s got two things going for her: one, she is filthy rich; two, her opponent is dirt poor. But because of this latest stunt, every Tom, Dick, and Harry is going to come out of the woodwork to get a piece of her. She has a slim chance, but I don’t think she should throw in the towel just because, politically speaking, she’s a little wet behind the ears” said W.

“And we all saw it coming, saw it coming a mile away. She was a ticking time bomb, just waiting to explode. But conservatives are just going to turn the other cheek, ignore the truth, and hope this whole thing just fades away,” said R.

“Ok, ok give it a rest” said the hostess.

“Whatever floats your boat, but you are just digging your own grave,” said W.

“You reap what you sow,” said O.

“I think they are both treading water, but I’ve heard the Republican has good numbers with the people and can beat any Democrat if she wins the primary. Anyone think she’s toast?” T asked.

“Toast of the town in some parts I’m sure. She threw The Book at him! You Republicans are nutcases! Honestly though, its never wise to put all your eggs in one basket; I don’t think it is the end of the line for her, but she certainly has to watch her step from this point on,” said W.

“Did you see how fast he hit the floor? He dropped like a bag of bricks,” said the hostess. “I say more power to her! It was such a spectacular debate—I will be tuning in for more, that’s for sure.”

“Yea, he dropped like a sack of potatoes. There has been a lot of bad blood between the two though. Again It’s a shame that after all her hard work she finally earned herself a seat at the table, but in lieu of that stunt, I think she will be going the way of the dodo” said O.

“So she’s in for a rude awakening?”

“Certainly is” said O.

“Without a doubt. The writing is on the wall” said W.

“It’s the Democrat’s dream come true. On the one hand it looks like the blind leading the blind if the Republicans choose her, and on the other hand if they leave her out in the cold, then her career is as dead as a doornail, and a major threat to the Democratic party has been K.O.’d” said R.

“I’d like to jump in here if I could, and this may be backtracking a little, but let me just say this: when the going gets tough, the tough get going. This high and mighty ‘Ethics’ can criticize us from the crack of dawn to when the cows come home, or until he’s blue in the face…and…and its on the tip of my tongue; well, a word to the wise: at the end of the day, the public still needs journalism for enlightened discussions and opinions in order to make informed decisions. And I think we’ve clearly demonstrated here—”


“I’m sorry, O, but we gotta run. And that’s all the time we have for today, I guess time flies when you’re having fun. You get the picture folks: it doesn’t look like journalists are going to throw in the towel anytime soon, so this Ethics guy is in for quite an uphill battle. I guess only time will tell what the end result will be,” she said.

Then they all beat their faces to a bloody pulp.


Critic’s Corner

Featured Author: Today we take a look at some of the work of the prolific author, R, whose newest book “Michelangelo’s Curse,” is set to take home one of the very prestigious and coveted Pinhead awards.

 Michelangelo’s Curse—A new pioneering and thrilling book by R. A Catholic nun, lost in the library of a law firm, stumbles upon old scrolls that turn out to be research about Michelangelo and his painting in the Sistine Chapel. The librarians there help the nun do more research which leads her to remote, exotic cities like Paris and Venice and even into Eastern Europe to piece together and eventually uncover a sinister plot buried in the Song of Solomon slowly being carried out by occult orders that boast of past members like the Pope, Napoleon, and even members of the Medici family. Overall, it’s a pleasurable blend of mystique, myth, folklore, and fact.

 9/11—The magisterial analysis of the most devastating attack ever launched on American soil. The critically acclaimed author eschews

jargonism for clear and cogent argumentation and the book is overflowing with critical insight on the events surrounding 9/11 and its aftermath.  This book is a must read for anyone looking to gain a better understanding of 9/11 and will undoubtedly find a place on the bookshelves of all terrorism scholars.

 A Better Life Now: 10 Steps to a Better Life—An alternate title might be “A Better Life in 30 Minutes.” In a short yet thorough presentation, R ties together a wide range of information from disparate fields like Brazilian kickboxing, wedding cake design, Superman comic books, and the Kama Sutra to form a unifying, entertaining, and reliable guide to self-improvement in our fast-paced, professionalism driven, modern world.

Towards a Wallstreetian Ethics

Student loans should be repaid through drug dealing.

Some Heroic Couplets

(For...For No Reason!
Faux Real...!
HERE WE GO!)

I want to be a famous author
but blogging and college was all modernity could offer

I want to get an MFA from trendy Swathmore
but my parents dont own a global law firm

I want to do some opium like Samuel Taylor Coleridge
or just do a bunch of chicks like Sartre and Baudelaire did

I want to go to grad school and write a sick dissertation
but Nietzsche told me not to, so I aced the wal mart application

btw ur congressman's a terrorist
your citizens are anal cists
and if you resist my fists and awful fits I'll post nude pics of fat chick feminists from plenty of fish

BUT THATS NOT IT

Rest in peace Plato and Socrates
but they're still killin philosophy in modern Democracies

logophiliac, read William Wordsworth
but studied Keats, so now my words are worth more

Election parties, solidarity, and faith in Barry Obama
vote him in faggots but dont tell your Republican father

Whats it like to go to Harvard
When all the real work is done by French and German students who dont even know about Jordan Farmar

It's cool to talk soccer to prove your cosmopolitan
but dont learn a second language 'coz thats unamerican

I'm an american, I dont have a life, I have a career
And there's nothing more to life than cable news and the blogosphere

(word.)

Shop Urban Outfitters and American Apparel
with credit lines as big as their company payroll

I never knew that writers could afford such clothes lines

These are the only lines I've got
but I say 'em to closed minds

I've got no pop culture, so how the hell am I supposed to become an author?
I guess I'll be l'autre, just not as hot as Taylor Lautner

If I make a rap without a beat--is that poetry?
If I think without a degree--is that philosophy?

If I use special txt effects does that place me in aesthetic hipster sets with hot chix who wear glasses and give extra bathetic sex?

deep breaths

Levinas and Barbara Walters
Could never make a rhyme awesome
Could never write "here lies one whose name is writ in water"

And Analytic philosophy please get these nutz
and dont drag your teeth or expect me to clean up

your face, you twerp journalists
fuck I lost it

I know, this could have been a lot angrier
but last night I watched the Bachelorette with percocet
and went to bed with Vienna, Alley, and a lusty anarchist
who looked just like Courtney Cox Arquette

And her buxom friend from Cougar Town
Ratings are up as long as chicks shirts stay down

I wonder how Helene Cixous feels now?

I want to get a really cool tattoo
of Lyotard, Derrida, and Baudrillard too
And be v. cool w alt chicks in grad school
"But post-structuralism was just a fad dude."
FML, but that's already past too.

Monday Misery

Some pessimism from Joe Abercrombie's Before They Are Hanged:

"One corpse looks much like another." 
      The Dogman

Friday Expirimental Fiction!! (Part X) The Blogger Chick!!

~*~BLOGGER CHIC(K): OMGWTFPWNDBBQ~*~

Omg hi 2 u!! =P lol lst wknd r0xd (hehe nate u kno wut i mean) ogod I ws sooo duirnk olol. We HAVE 2 do it agin sum time :> IMHO pres. bush is a fuktard + is ewwsing Flox Nooz as HIS pwn PUPPIT!  wtf? thats like SO LAME GUSY! I mean common.  btw, O’Rightly is kinda a qtee am i rite??  OMG and that articlesd in the N.Y. Slimes?? I was SO liek tl;dr!!1!1  The MSM is ghei. No1 listbnes to them 4nym0r3  fgets they r the dead.  Bloggers ftw irl~ lolz, 2day is the day ;p im so xcited lolerskates.  SEE GUYS I TOLD YUO I WAS GOIN 2 DO IT. LMAO!!!!  Now ill be =)))) and not >< all the time imo~  I will post pics l8r.  (. Y .)

ps HotEmoGlasses37 needs to stfu you fuqing nub!  idc wut u say about me b/c i will deconstruct ur fase!

            »hotbloggerpunditbabe99[1]

“Honey are you talking on that ridiculous…what do you call it again?”

zomg its called a blog mom u ghei newb.

“Blog—yes!  What a silly name.  Aren’t you getting too old for that thing?”

w/e! im a citizen[2] journalist mom!

N[3] sighed and said, “Our little petit récit.  You wouldn’t know what to talk about without us.  You will work for us one day anyways dear.  Lets go get in the car.”

w/e

ghei_newb01 said:

Ok honey we are going to leave the soccer game at half time to get lunch before you go to the golf tournament so we can be at the band competition later.  I have a note here for you to give to your teacher so that he’ll let you out of the band competition 20 minutes early so we can make it to the College Forum on time, and we absolutely must spend only five minutes there, because we need to be at that new BUGS charity or whatever its called later today.  Oh and we need call the academic-councilor and consult with her about where you are going to spend the next six summers abroad and what you will be doing to put on your College apps.  I think you should spend some time in South America personally, but then again, Europe is very beautiful.  Especially Paris and Venice.  Oh and then we have to stop by the bookstore and get all your books to study for the SAT…Oh! Don’t forget to sign up tonight online for a SAT class—the deadline is only six months away so you have to hurry.  And we have to make sure to get to the pharmacy to get your Adderall[4] prescription refilled.

i dont wnat to do gay charity work, I h8 that crap.  i donut even care about eet.

“I know honey, no one does, but it looks good to the colleges.  Have you chosen your major yet?”

Eco…eeecco…how do u say it?  its the 1 tht makes u lots of $$$.

“Economics?”

yah. Econ > all. College is going to r00l with all the parteez and football gamse ^^

“Good choice, you can come to work for Flox News after you finish that major, just like your mother and I did.  Well, get an MBA first it will add to your power to command more money,” said Y. 

o rly?

“Yes really.  But be sure to take a few English classes, the ability to write is very important in the business world,” said Y.[5]

kk

olol I don’t kno wht else 2 take atm ;p

“I think you should be sure to take French, it will make you very sophisticated and in our globalized world it is very important for you to know more than one language” said N.

Y continued: “Like I said, be sure to take some English courses.  And Shakespeare is very witty—it comes in handy at cocktail[6] parties.  I’ve dazzled lots of people with this one: ‘Hell has hath no furry like a woman scorned.’  Oh! Oh! Another good one is ‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen lend me your ears!’  Quotes like that come in handy, say if you wanted to propose a toast or something.  People love stuff like that.”

thx info~

he  soujnds  rly smrat.

“You’ve always been very eloquent dear,” said N.

 

“Now you know where I got it from—oh, there is also an epic you absolutely must read…if only I could remember what it’s called.  I think it is called the……Deiliad, yes, that’s it.  I remember reading that book back in my college days; it nobly portrays Roman life and there is much in it that is still of value today.  You can learn a lot from books like that, it’s a shame people don’t read much anymore.  And none of them can write; good God, colleges these days, they just let anyone in anymore.  College is the new high school.”

 (\/)

 ( ‘;’ )

(‘’)(‘’)

“Don’t you have a big report due soon Y?[7]  How many pages is it up to at this point?” N asked.

Y grimaced as he answered: “Nah, I passed that damn thing off; it was taking too much time and was such a bore.  I’ll let someone else write all that bullshit.  I have no idea how I would even go about organizing it.  I wasn’t even sure how to start it; shouldn’t matter too much, it’s just a bunch of stupid graphs and captions. I haven’t written anything my entire career except for some memos, headings, and captions for pie charts and they still promoted me right on up the corporate ladder.”

btw im hungary.

“Eat one of those energy bars,” her mother said as she looked into the rear-view mirror.

No i want sum real breakfast.

“You didn’t eat this morning??”

…DUH? i had piano practice frO my recital tomorrow and im not supposed to eat anything b4 the surgery today, which sux. butts afaik a little snack wont hurt ;p

“What do you want to eat then?”

idk, nvm

/shrug

“We can stop by somewhere after we leave at half time.”

woot!

“Wait, what surgery?” said Y.

“The implants Y.  Remember I told you about it last week?”

“Yea right, while I was in the middle of video phone conferences with firms in New York, London, India, and Hong Kong, spending sixteen hours a night at the firm, and eating my meals sitting on the toilet, watching my watch, hoping to digest fast enough so that I wouldn’t have to force my crap back up my quivering ass-cheeks?  You told me during that week?” he paused, shaking his head and grimaced.  He looked at his daughter in the rear-view mirror.  “You’re only eleven years old, you aren’t even supposed to have those yet.  My God.”

Dad! aLL  ThE *s aNd FaMoUs WimiN hAvE tHeM d0n3. tHeN im GeTTinG mY nOsE AnD butt DoNe t00.  aLL tHe GuYs WiLl WaNt 4 pI3Ce 0f ThIs.  I’m in to havin sex I ain in to makin love/ so come give me a hug/Oooohhh yeah!  (>'-')> <(")> <('-'<)<(")> (>'-')>

“Oh God.  No way.  I’m canceling that surgery, you can forget about that.”

What!!?  ,,|,, o_O ,,|,,

“Oh Jesus Christ Y. It’s not a big deal; most of the girls are doing this now and its perfectly safe.  Stop being so inconsiderate—if she wants them she can have them.  You’re so out of touch with reality these days.”

u r old + out of touch

“Are you fucking kidding me?—”

:O

“Y!  Don’t cuss like that around your own daughter!”

“Don’t cu…she’s doing a pole dance in the backseat and I’m supposed to be concerned with my language?” He paused, shocked.  He lowered his head and released a heavy sigh, knuckled his eye then pressed hand to head and dragged it down his face, trying to wipe the weight off. “We’re here at the field.  We’ll continue this discussion after the game.”

idc fag~   T_T

The large SUV pulled into the parking lot and devoured two spaces.  The family tumbled out of the car onto the barren gravel parking lot, each member gazing about the new, strange, landscape.

“Odd, there’s no one here.” 

Just as Y completed the phrase, an old car pulled slowly into the parking lot, upsetting the gravel.  The car pulled into a spot just a space away from the hulking SUV and came to rest as a white cloud of dust slowly stretched up and around the car.

Coach!

A woman in windpants pulled herself out of the seat.  “Gee Y, was one space not enough for ya?” The coach cracked an uncomfortable smile to ease the nudge.

Y snickered: “Just taking what’s rightfully mine.” Y returned both the jab and the fake smile.  He continued: “Pretty hot out today isn’t it?”

“Yea, I think its supposed to get up into the upper 80s and maybe even the low nineties.”

“Kids better drink lots of water and stay hydrated then.”

“Yep.  Hey did you see the last couple minutes of that game last night?  It was incredible.”

/yawn

“Yea I wanted to watch most of the game but I was busy with work.  I was able to catch some of the highlights this morning though.  I couldn’t believe the comeback the other team made towards the close of the game.  That one player was on fire.”

“Yea I hope some of our players can catch fire today,” said N.

The Coach placed her hands on her hips, turned to N, and asked, “So what’s new with you toady?”

“Breast lift, permanent eyeliner, tummy tuck, facial implants in my cheeks and chin, injectables, buttock augmentation, rhinoplasty—a nose job—and implants.”

Mommy I want a rhinoplasticikily!

“I can’t believe this!” Y exclaimed.  “Is there anything left in you that’s not plastic? I mean my God N.”

“Yea you’re one to talk Mr. I drive my new Porsche to get my Viagra and Cialis prescriptions refilled before I rendezvous with our pool boy Edguardo.   Or should I call you ‘Dr. Hotstuff’ like you’re iHarmony profile says.  You’re not the only one who knows who to use the Internet.  Oh, and by the way, this mommasita loves to eat spicy Mexican.”

lol u got served.

As Y stood stunned, Coach spoke quickly: “Well, I guess she needs to stay pretty for the camera.” She tugged up on the waist of her wind pants and loosed an uneasy laugh.  “Look folks, I’m sorry but we’ve had to cancel the game—too many kids couldn’t make it.  Too many other things going on this Saturday it seems.  So I’ll see you all Monday for practice.”

My tits wont be healed by then coach~

The woman paused, quietly thanking God that she was wearing sunglasses.  “Well OK, you rest up then. See ya.” And with a brief wave to the trio, she jumped in her car and sped out to the exit of the lot, stopping the car briefly enough to smack open her glove compartment.  Fucked up parents and their fucked up kids.  The syringe rattled out of the box, coming to a rest slanted across the unlatched plastic tray.  What the…She had been clean since college, thought she had gotten rid of this dirty past.  Fuck it.  Its better this way.  Without further hesitation she snatched the needle and slammed it into her veins.  Coach slouched in a rediscovered euphoria and careened into traffic.

“I’ve had it, I’m leaving,” cried N.

D:

“Oh fine go ahead, I’ll just have a company limo come out here.”

Wtf gusy

/cry

but what about the surgery????

“What surgery?”

…my implants DUH. =/

“Uhh yea, do whatever.  I’ve got to get going, so you should grab a cab; better get some lunch and dinner too.  I’m not sure I’ll be home at all tonight, but I’ll try to check in with you later…maybe…”

---

[1] This name and the others in the mock entry above are widely regarded as slips; there is no reason that this name should have been left in place.  Another notion that is currently popular in some circles is that it was left on purpose, and that the text contains no “universal laws” but is rather a hodge-podge collection of small narratives arranged like a frayed or decaying tapestry.  A radical few have even gone as far as proposing that in some spots even the sentences and words have no universal laws either, and that the text in these sections touches on the “infinite possibilities of the abyss” though such readings are spurious at best.

[2] Citizen…more like, Sit-izen lolz~

[3] The MS has the name “Mrs. Loud” marked out.

[4] The greatest study aid of the 21^st century!

[5] In the MS, the name “Mr. Loud” has been crossed out.

[6] A cocktail, a cock and a tail

With cocks telling tales to tails

To get cocks in tails,

And tails telling cocks to cock their cocks for their tails,

A tell-tell sign of a tail telling a cocktale.

All tell tales at cocktails.

[7] The MS has “Trimalchio-Lite” crossed out, rather violently if the marks have anything to say about it.  Elsewhere in the MS the same character from this section is dubbed “Mr. Loud” as in the note above.

Lector Benevole! (Fictive Index)

I.  Title Page, Kind of.
II.  Dedication
III.  Translator's Introduction/Note from S. Lingua
IV.  Aphasia
V.  Philosophical Poetics
VI. Spectacular! (Ode to Debord and Boardrooms)
VII.  Male Subvertisement
VIII.  Phil--
IX.  Notes on "[s]upreme" "[c]ourt" "[j]ustices."
X.  ~*~Blogger Chic(k)~*~

Whorible Poetry (Even Nietzsche Nods)

This is from Nietzsche's Gay Science, translated by the illustrious Walter Kaufmann.

Rimus remedium

Or: How sick poets console themselves

   From your old lips
O Time, you drooling ghoul,
Hour upon hour drips.
   My nausea cries to no avail:
"Damn, damn the grip
Of your eternal rule!"

   World--hard as stones:
A glowing bull--he hears no crying.
Pain writes with daggers that are flying
Into my bones:
   "World has no heart;
The fool bears her grudge and groans."

   Pour poppies, pour,
O fever! poison in my brain!
You test my brow too long with pain.
Why do you ask, "For what--reward?"
   --Hah! Damn the whore
And her disdain!

   No! Come back! Hold!
I hear the rain, outside its cold--
I should be gentler?  You want a caress?
--Take this! It glistens; it is gold.--
   You--"happiness"?
You, fever, I should bless?--

   A gust--the door
Flies open--rain--my bed gets wet--
The lights blown out--mishaps galore.
--Without a hundred rhymes, a wight--
   I bet, I bet--
Would be done for!

The greatest Tee the Internet will ever see

dun dun DUN

Friday Expirimental Fiction (BONUS ROUND!!!)

“We are here live at the Democratic National Headquarters where Presidential Candidate E, who has recently retired from a lucrative acting career to act in politics, and her strategist, M, are expected to announce their campaign strategy any moment now as they set their eyes on the White House.”


She turned around, disappearing in the host of reporters and cameramen, heads all wrapped in bandages in the shape of towering dunce hats. The mass of reporters was packed between the fence at the end of the lawn and white chairs surrounding the podium. All attention was focused on the door where the candidate would emerge from and walk to a podium set halfway down a path cut through the middle of the lawn. Around the podium were special reserved seats for very important and honorable members of government like family members, civil servants[1] (whose very title is a blatant mock and testament to the stupidité of their plebian “masters”), and friends who were owed favors for their unwavering loyalty.[2] One man came striding along the sidewalk outside the assembled mass, quite different from the rest, for he had no swelling and no diadem of white wrappings on his head. Those packed against the fence—the fringe of the scene—were the only to notice him. They pressed their faces up against the high black iron fence:


“Hey!—hey you! Why don’t you have any bandages? Did the doctors find a cure?”


“Yea I thought everyone was afflicted with this thing now.”


“What do you do?”


“What’s your name?”


“Phil—” he began.


“Looks like a scientist. What science do you study?”


“Well that’s nice Phil but did the doctors find a cure or what?”


“No, the doctors did not find a cure, but I can help you with that problem—and others…” he began.


“Scientists, these guys know it all. Can you tell us the meaning of life yet?”


“Sure—”said Phil.


“What?”


“What is it?”


“Yea tell us!”


“Come on now, out with it!”


“What do we need to do to get cured? Tell us, Jesus Christ!”


“W——” Just as Phil opened his mouth, a reporter shouted, “OH MY GOD! There they are! They even brought out A[3] the Democratic Donkey for this!”


The reporter fixed her blue-shaded contact iris on what could be the story of her career. “Screw his stupid little answer!” She reared her head back, threw her dyed blonde locks over her shoulder and marched toward the trio at the podium with a Stair Master gait. She was followed by all the other reporters and cameramen; they swarmed forward in a swell of bouncing silicon and rattling plastic Viagra bottles.


The trio came to a rest at the podium. The two women smiled at each other and waved to the cameras, faced one another, and with a steamy look in their eyes they opened their mouths and swatted tongue with tongue. They paused for a moment, illuminated in flashes and camera lights, then knelt down and set to work on A the ass with equal zeal.


There were cheers and whistles zipping out from the crowd of reporters. One man looked back to his cameraman saying, “Are you getting this? Its spectacular!” while another woman shrieked, “OH GOD! Its like being back at my old Sorority House! I LOVE COLLEGE!!” She threw her shirt off, darted past the podium, and joined in.


Another cheer went up accompanied by whistles and shouting. A reporter looked into his camera, tucked his two middle most fingers under his thumb so that his pinky and index finger stood straight up and roared into
the camera: “YEA BABY! FLOCKS NEWS!!” The reporter’s face flushed with blood and as his neck veins
swelled and throbbed the bandages bulged and he began to nod uncontrollably. His stitches ripped down the center of his head and his brain blasted out in a spray of crimson dots and wavy white bandages. Thin folds of scalp-skin fell in where his brain had been, leaving a collapsed crater in his head. The reporter’s eyes rolled back in his head so that only the white showed, and he began blinking so fast that his eyelids could be heard smacking together. His jaw dropped and his tongue fell out over his lips and shook all about the sides of his mouth as his frame was wracked. The reporter crashed to his knees, then fell on his face into the grass.

Everywhere reporters were hurling themselves face first to the ground. As the Hebetudinous Head-banging struck again, one man, standing too near the fence, impaled himself on it; as his head was racing toward the pointed iron post he opened his mouth to scream but was not sure which one to use, for now he had two: the mouth in the back of his neck drooled blood in place of spit, and his life left through it instead of words. Such is the fate of all reporters, speaking enough for two mouths yet never thinking enough for even one brain. Another reporter bashed his face through the post: his initial scream dropped to a gurgling groan as the post erupted out of the back of his neck accompanied by tomato-skin-red spray that drenched the nearby corpses. Chin sunk to chest, body shuddered, and then was still; his eyelids rested half down across his eyes, gazing lazily into the abyss.


The ass, startled by the sudden outbreak of the Hebetudinous Head-banging, began to stomp and kick in a paroxysm of panic. Just as it stomped E’s face she tried to pull away, and lost her head. The ass stomped the head once more, and shook its leg as though it had a bucket stuck on one foot and was trying to kick it off. M was on the upward swing returning to a kneeling position when the donkey flung its two hind legs back and up, hitting M in the face with E’s head, which should have snapped her neck and even back, but M was a talented politician, so her neck and spine merely bent a little more than usual. She landed on her back, with arms and legs spread wide, ready to negotiate.


Though the collision had jarred E’s head loose, it was now being dragged and tumbled on the ground by A’s legacy, as the ass kicked wildly and ran in circles. A finally gave up and stood idle with a bewildered ass-stare among the field of bleeding bodies.


Phil turned his back on the chaos and gore, and slowly walked away.







[1] Civil servants, who have more houses, cars, and luxury in general that they masters they “serve”; civil servants, whose record over the course of history is anything but civil, and is rather a catalogue of vice in general and sexual deviance in particular that even the Marquis de Sade would find twisted and nauseous. One must ask—are civil servants anything but convenient jokes for satirists and philosophers?


[2] Political Loyalty—Not revealing all the nefarious deeds that a member of government is involved in until it becomes profitable; that is, where such a revealing might yield an increase in votes, notoriety, or money.


[3] Bill. Apparently names were a last minute addition and subsequent subtraction (Cf. note 1 from the “Blogger Chic(k)” section below), along with the gender of characters which seems to have been kept, though certainly uncomfortably. Many places in the MS are littered with “he/she” preceding actions or following dialogue and nearly unintelligible railings concerning d’Lingua’s all-out assault on their lack of identity.