Category Archives: Literary

Linkie o’ the Day: Brazilians in, Pube-fro’s out, WHY?

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Sim-ply PubicFrom Nerve. And I'm proud to say I was on Nerve back when the Internet was only a twinkle in some nerd's eyes. Of course, I'm lying, but I'm still proud to say it. I really should work in Hollywood, you know.

True, there's a lot to be said for depilation. Besides the controlling-BO argument and the no-picking-hairs-out-of-your-teeth argument, one could also argue that it's the ultimate in nudity: You're never more naked than when you're shorn of your natural covering. Finally, there's the market value: Sex has become more than a matter of desire — it's also a commodity and a signifier of sophistication. When we take our clothes off, we're performing — and we want to look good on stage. By manscaping the growth whose appearance first marked the change to adulthood, the body is civilized and controlled. Ironically, though, if "body Forestiera pubes. PUBES! PUBES! PUBES!hair" equates to "sex," the smoother we are, the less sexual we are, too. Behind the current fashion for smoothness is the fact that even at our most liberated, we remain fundamentally frightened of our animal natures.

Speak for yourself. Anyone who interviews Norman Mailer and doesn't punch that bitch out is obviously a born feeb.

PSA: “Sloppy Seconds With Opal Mehta” Fake Writing Contest

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Via Gawker. Ruth Shalit, Old Skool Cut 'n Paster!

Inspired by the need for quality plagiarism, the Morning News announces its “Sloppy Seconds With Opal Mehta” contest. This is not for the recreational copy-cat: using no less than five different books, your entry must total 750 words, none of which are your own. You may not plagiarize single words, but actual phrases, sentences, or passages, and all your material must be cited.

To remind them that this was “the moment ethics in writing died,” winners will have their story published on TMN and will receive a TMN mug, t-shirt, and a $500,000 two-book deal.

Steal This Book, and That Book, and That Book [TMN]

Classical Criticism: Football Edition

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The OdysseyThere are some few things in this world that remind me of the late Hunter S. Thompson. There are very few things indeed in this world that remind me both of Hunter S. Thompson and Homer's Odyssey. There is only ONE thing in this world that reminds me of Hunter S. Thompson, Homer's Odyssey, and that 300-pound bundle of muscle, fat, tattoos and leather who got on the bus and sat his wide, Harley-ridin' ass down beside my English professor, who happened to be reading The Iliad at the time and expecting the worst from his new seatmate, poked a chubby, dirty finger into my prof's Penguin paperback and chuckled, "Da Iliad! I love dat book! Rumble in Troy! Ah, man, war's all about chicks, eh? Fuckin' chicks, man."

This is that thing.

Carroll apologizes to Poseidon with burnt offering, three flocks of cattle, Reggie Bush shaped golden idol
May 1st, 2006

Los Angeles, Calif. – Taking his cue from Homer's Odyssey, University of Southern California head football coach Pete Carroll attempted to appease the legendary anger of Poseidon with an offer of burnt lamb, approximately seventy heads of cattle and an 8 ft. high statue of USC running back Reggie Bush made entirely from gold…

Few critics, however, are willing to predict what will happen even if Poseidon is satisfied.

"I am of the opinion that Carroll will eventually succeed in metaphorically returning home and triumphing over adversary," Addison said. "Much like [Alfred Lord] Tennyson's Ulysses, I see in him a man whose passion for life and exploration will never allow him full rest – and though he may now appear to be 'an idle king' he will inevitably seek to 'sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western stars' by recruiting a class of twenty Scout and Rivals rated five star players. It seems obvious even to these British eyes that [Carroll] is a man determined 'to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.'"

"Then again, much like Odysseus, he could opt to shoot everyone who so much as looked at Penelope the wrong way. I would probably expect a mixture of 'one equal temper of heroic hearts' and good old fashioned fairly indiscriminate slaying."

Homer...standup

PSA: May Day

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May Day! May Day! I'm Not Sure What Constitutes a Proper Celebration of Beltane Anymore!In memory of John Kenneth Galbraith, I suggest that everyone wear black on May 1, May Day, International Worker's Day.

If you want to hold ribbons and dance around a maypole too I suppose that's okay, but try to look dour while doing it, all right? And make them black ribbons, grosgrain if you have it, something matte. I'm really feeling the matte. And maybe you could sing something from the Bruce Cockburn songbook? "they call it democracy" would be perfect!

Here are the lyrics, ideal for happy, full-mourning maypole dancing on International Worker's Day, to commemorate the death of John Kenneth Galbraith:

Padded with power here they come
International loan sharks backed by the guns
Of market hungry military profiteers
Whose word is a swamp and whose brow is smeared
With the blood of the poorWho rob life of its quality
Who render rage a necessity
By turning countries into labour camps
Modern slavers in drag as champions of freedom

Sinister cynical instrument
Who makes the gun into a sacrament —
The only response to the deification
Of tyranny by so-called "developed" nations'
Idolatry of ideology

North South East West
Kill the best and buy the rest
It's just spend a buck to make a buck
You don't really give a flying fuck
About the people in misery

IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there's one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt

See the paid-off local bottom feeders
Passing themselves off as leaders
Kiss the ladies shake hands with the fellows
Open for business like a cheap bordello

And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy

See the loaded eyes of the children too
Trying to make the best of it the way kids do
One day you're going to rise from your habitual feast
To find yourself staring down the throat of the beast
They call the revolution

IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there's one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt

Hunter S. Thompson on Richard Nixon: the greatest obituary ever written!

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HST, the flag, and the convertibleReally, there's nothing like a writer who knows his stuff inside and out, has made the English language his bitch, and refuses to hold back in the name of "impartiality." More evil has been done in the name of impartiality than in the name of passion; just ask Hannah Arendt.

Hunter Thompson never pretended to be anything other than a razor-fanged partisan anarchist. Neither leftist nor rightist, simply Gonzo, he was as horrified by his own fondess for Jimmy Carter as he was by the tame White House press corps that gave Nixon a free ride for so many years. And he opens his coverage of Nixon's funeral with a passage from Revelation, as is only right and proper.

Read it and weep, both for the savagery and for the loss…nobody writes like this anymore. Selah.

HST makes sure Nixon gets on the chopper

Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism–which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful…

These are harsh words for a man only recently canonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern–but I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.

Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man–evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him–except maybe the Stalinist Chinese, and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship…

At the stroke of midnight in Washington, a drooling red-eyed beast with the legs of a man and head of a giant hyena crawls out of its bedroom window in the South Wing of the White House and leaps 50 feet down to the lawn … pauses briefly to strangle the chow watchdog, then races off into the darkness…toward the Watergate, snarling with lust, loping through the alleys behind Pennsylvania Avenue and trying desperately to remember which one of those 400 iron balconies is the one outside Martha Mitchell's apartment.

Ah…nightmares, nightmares. But I was only kidding. The President of the United States would never act that weird. At least not during football season.