Just a warm, fuzzy thought…

i hate to be obscene, but…

Will people please stop talking about Michael Jackson. You don’t know him aside from a few mediocre records and television reports. What a sad world… a pedophile dies and everyone cries. A woman gets shot by riot police in Iran and no one says a fucking word. So sad.

Wires

This is a poem of mine in aural/musical form. Please enjoy. Or don’t enjoy. Or “enjoy” for everyone so very pomo out there.

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You might be a hipster…

You know, in a swarm of ironic social buzzwords, many people are still very much confused as to what a hipster is. Is it an insult or a compliment? Who is called a hipster? Who calls a hipster? What exactly is a hipster?

Well, if there is any doubt in your mind, take heed… I have compiled a set of identifying guidelines worthy of Jeff Foxworthy with the self-same truckerbeard, John Deere mesh-cap, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Dukes-of-Hazard-aesthetic appeal.

1. If you have been called a hipster and scoffed a big sneer while chanting the mantra “no way, I’m not a hipster,” you might be a hipster.
2. If you’ve worn a Che Guevara t-shirt while openly describing fashion trends to corporate “cool” scouts, you might be a hipster.
3. If you shop at thrift stores with a platinum credit card, you might be a hipster.
4. If you brag about reading Foucault, Kropotkin and Kerouac, but can only parrot a few intelligent-sounding, but hardly-significant quotes, you might be a hipster.
5. If you go to a coffee shop to have conversations with your laptop, you might be a hipster.
6. If you have one black friend for the sake of saying you have a black friend, you might be a hipster.
7. If you push off a discussion of good music because your bands are too obscure to ever talk about, you might be a hipster.
8. If you are over 18 and take kickball games at the park a little too seriously, you might be a hipster.
9. If you constantly complain of being “exploited”  in a “dead-end job” and still had enough to buy a new mac, iPod, iPhone, iRefridgerator, you might be a hipster.
10. If you’ve never heard the word “gentrification” used in conjunction with “racism,” you might be a hipster.
11. If you’ve never been caught eating in public, you might be a hipster.
12. If you drink fortified wine and lack a shopping cart, you might be a hipster.
13. If you think Polaroid snapshots of random architecture is edgy, you might be a hipster.*
14. If you drink Pabst Blue Ribbon and cannot crush a beer can on your head, you might be a hipster.
15. If you are an art school dropout, you might be a hipster.
16. If you cannot decide what is “deck,” spend five hours on the streetcorner debating what is “deck,” almost come to some sort of conclusion or consensus as to what is “deck,” but subsequently decide that it’s really just “lame” and move onto some other meaningless, irrelevant or unproductive conversation, you might be a hipster.
17. If you scoff a popularity, but have more contacts in your cell phone than in Donald Trump’s rollodex, you might be a hipster.
18. If you believe there are only two domains of social geography: city and suburb, you might be a hipster.
19. If you think Ludwig von Beetoven was punk rock, you might be a hipster.
20. If you take your participation in the adult kickball league a little too seriously, you might be a hipster.
21. If you are thoroughly convinced you are cool (especially) when everyone else in the room says you’re lame, you might be a hipster.
22. If you live in Brooklyn and pretend you live in West Virginia, you might be a hipster.

* This might be a shocker, but Polaroid photography had already lost its edge in the art world by 1998, when a Polaroid fine arts photographer was featured in Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss, a gay-themed film. And gay-themed films with some very notable exceptions are notorious for camp-stenched kitsch and deadbeat pastiche, or edginess, if you are a hipster.

So there you have it. Cheers, hipsters.

Kill the Hipsters

Obama, you idiot!

Just one more idiotic remark to throw onto the Republican fire, perpetuating the dichotomous American political sphere and making all the complacent Republicans with a constant chip on their shoulder to cry out and make people believe their idiotic perception that America is far left vs. far right (or in their terms “liberal vs conservative”). Way to keep the status quo. What’s the point of registering for the Green Party or the Socialist Party? Now we have yet another media circus because no one seems to be able to discern serious from silly. Both ruling parties are silly. Now, that is all we will ever hear in the national news. At least local and sometimes state-level politics actually talk about something. No wonder our federal government keeps getting bigger in both Democratic and Republican administrations.

PS: A message to Sarah Palin… STFU. You are a pompous, suburban bitch posing as an average American. Quit throwing your child with Downs Syndrome in the national media spotlight for your own political gain. That is more disgusting than any joke with the word “retard” in it. Your child is a human being and not a puppet you can pull out conveniently to satisfy your power hunger.

Let’s start a revolution…

Read the rest of this entry »

Top ten things you never tell an editor…

10. I’m submitting elsewhere – unless an editor specifies, you don’t need to say. this does not win publishing points. but what this person don’t know won’t kill ‘em.
9. I need this a certain way/series in this order/etc – don’t be pushy upfront. that’s a big turnoff. obviously, if it’s experimental or visually-based, your writing would be submitted as such because avant-garde editors like to see something cool that makes no sense upfront. wait until you sign a contract to be pushy. but be nice… editors may not be in a big mafia conspiring with one another, but with six degrees of separation, word can get around and make a reputation.
8. I never read your publication – this may be a shocker, but you don’t have to read their publication if it is a specific market or genre that you fit very nicely into. you don’t have to visit a blues club prior to requesting to play a gig there. this is a shameless bit of money-making and they know it. those contributor’s copies are not free if you follow their advice. if it is a broad collection or you really want to publish in this specific venue, then by all means, buy up. but if it’s questionable that you will fit in before you buy, i will venture to guarantee that it won’t be any less questionable after you read it.
7. Your attitude sucks – if the editor is a royal bitch about everything, just smile it off. laugh that people can take themselves so seriously and remember that you may never have to see this person in real life unless they are local and even then, it may very well be in public where they should know that they can make a total ass of themselves if they act like a snotty literary diva.
6. I’m not changing a damn thing, I spent five years getting this right and you are not gonna ruin it – not taking revision advice is a big no no. it is not only a breach of contract in most cases, it is a sign that you are a complacent idiot. i don’t care if you think you are the best revisionary ever, you are primarily a writer, not a reader. if you don’t -critically- read at least three books or literary journals each week, your opinions about revision don’t count. this is all editors do and even if you whittled your work to a razor point, editors will always catch something that may not be all there. if there is something you disagree with, just say it. you’re allowed to disagree. hint: that will change the meaning, i purposefully misspelled that word, it’s not supposed to flow in a completely smooth, linear fashion. remember, the editor can’t read your mind, but if you work with the editor, you might learn something that can make you a better writer.
5. I’m published in all these places, teehee – let your writing speak for itself. if you are published in all these places, one more should be a breeze.
4. This work is copyrighted – well, no shittin! this one pisses off editors to no end. i know when i started an underground zine project, i got this line and the person did not even get a read. instant rejection notice. the writer was belligerent and threatening upfront about something that is obvious. the minute you write something, it is copyrighted. you don’t need to put a little sticker on it and make yourself look like a silly little tart. and you don’t need to lecture an editor about issues that he or she is more well-read than you are. these guys have the copyright law, the libel statutes and every other legal issue involving print practically memorized. do you go up to police officers and tell them to read your miranda rights? no. unless you get into a situation, don’t take action on it. haven’t you learned anything from iraq?
3. Have you read my work yet? – want to piss off an editor? ask them if they started reading your manuscript. it’s worse than the disneyworld trip “are we there yet?” there are hundreds of manuscripts on the table and only one way of knowing if they’ve read it… when they send you that letter. it’s okay to ask if they received the manuscript. that’s not an outrageous request. sometimes the mail carrier goofs and your manuscript is somewhere in chechnya in an interrogation room of the kgb because the russians think they’ve intercepted a rebel communication. it’s not a hassle to ask if the manuscript is there. it’s a hassle to ask if it was read. five people might be assigned to read, it might get handled by up to three different people among a pile of 50 other pieces of paper that look exactly the same. don’t flatter yourself that you would stand out and be remembered enough for any one person to remember your name over the hundreds of others and connect the manuscript with the name and e-mail or phone. you are not that special.
2. I love your publication, it has such great work – flattery does not lift your prospects. if anything, it works against you to inflate their ego. the better they feel, the more critical and selective they become, and the more likely a rejection notice or a revision session from hell.
1. I noticed the pay was ___, but the standard pay is ___. Let’s negotiate pay, right? – don’t… just don’t. it’s easier to do this at mcdonald’s than at a publishing company. get a food service job if you don’t make enough from writing to pay rent.

Reefer Madness II

ha… ha, ha… ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha… haaaa

It is too easy to make fun of “conservatives” anymore…

but I’ll do it anyway.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/28/AR2009022801724.html

Conservative cleansing. Enough said.