'shitstorm alberto' (the first shitstorm of the 2010 season)
has developed into a category 5 shitstorm (320+ comments) with a 'fully-formed' epilogue & what some in the industry are calling 'a happy ending' & an auxiliary system that failed to develop into what would have been 'shitstorm bernard' (in anticipation of a 'very active' season, or perhaps simply to promote itself, 'the weather channel' last week emailed me an exclusive list of the would-be names of the first 8 shitstorms of the 2010-2011 season: 'alberto,' 'bernard,' 'carmichael,' 'damien,' 'farrod,' 'garrett,' 'harold,' 'ignatio')
relevant links: 'comprehensive, footnoted, quote-laden' history of 'shitstorm alberto' / giant comment by 'tao' with an 'egregious' typo in the first sentence / notably 'faultlessly punctuated' (for its 'length'/'sentence variety') comment by 'rebecca' / 'essay-comment' by 'l. fontana' originally posted as a comment within 'alberto,' reposted as its own system
relevant links: 'comprehensive, footnoted, quote-laden' history of 'shitstorm alberto' / giant comment by 'tao' with an 'egregious' typo in the first sentence / notably 'faultlessly punctuated' (for its 'length'/'sentence variety') comment by 'rebecca' / 'essay-comment' by 'l. fontana' originally posted as a comment within 'alberto,' reposted as its own system
36 Comments:
proud of you tao, in a very disconnected sort of way. glad to have seen, like, a year of your life unfold, as opposed to none of it
damn. do feel kind of goofy writing such highfalutin stuff, esp. on a blog. guess i don't have to go grad school after all, my work is on the interwebs.
interesting how nobody appreciates yr 'gimmicks,' even ron silliman kind of scoffed at that aspect of your work, i remember
people think that using 'gimmicks' (seems like a defensible/precise definition of this word would be difficult to find) invalidates the art, i never understood this; in high school i listened to 'slipknot' and people said the same things about them; then i read ee cummings all the time and people said the same things about him
i kind of understand your 'gimmicks' to be a form of installment/performance art most of the time; the britney spears stickers, that was like an 'art in the world' sort of thing (refer to hannah weiner's "street works" in the 60s i think, or 'happenings' or 'doings,' or 'events' by fluxus artists i think; also consider contemporary things like 'flash mob'); selling your myspace was like art, too, it was really funny and seemed like a 'powerful statement' about non-attachment; i have done things like this kind of, posting fliers of individual words on bulletin boards like the word 'corn,' also posting advertisements for the sky; i really think there is value in making art that 'engages so directly with the world,' like i think it is boring just to publish in journals and put out a book; i think you are 'definitely onto something' when you do things that 'actually confront people' like this
i think your work is probs the most exciting thing i know of in contemporary literature (maybe flarfists like brandon downing and k silem mohammad are close when it comes to the work itself but, 'even then,' the project as a whole doesnt have the constant 'vitality' that surrounds yours via yr blog/online presence) and it seems funny for reviewers to challenge the validity of what you're doing (altho i guess it is healthy for people to disagree) because it just seems pretty obvious that what you are doing is relevant and 'of its time' and will only get bigger 'in some form or another'
Interesting how similar some reviews of, e.g., SFAA are in comparison to some reviews of Gertrude Stein's stuff. Huh.
shitstorm isabella
lol....
damn tao that's intense
tony o'neil seems like a very polite young man.
nolite te bastardes carborundorum
i really liked reading what other people had to say about you. i really liked reading what you had to say about yourself. i kind of hope "writing" like this gets preserved at some point by someone.
I love htmlgiant. I've annoyed ramick again by spelling his name wrong.
glad to see someone else correct their own typos on a comment. I was bugged by a use of "plain" when I meant "plane" (like a geometric plane, though I guess a plain has geometry to it, flatness, something to stand on, so it's really the same thing) in a recent comment, as I was thinking phonetically, or not thinking and typing at that point in the sentence. But I didn't. But you did, so kudos. Ride the shitstorm, it's fun, and hey the Times picked up on it.
I’ve e-mailed Tao. He hasn’t responded. I wondered why (“why?”)—he seems cool and accessible as an author. This is rare. Raymond Carver short-profound-sentence rare (“I could hear the human noise we sat there making [. . .]”). I mentioned how I was writing a paper [to present at a conference next week] on Heidegger vis-à-vis hermeneutic phenomenology as fundamental ontology and wanted to find a way to insert a discussion of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! somehow. I consulted Tao for advice. But I think this kind of discussion alienated him. (I also mentioned Proust.) Yet Noah Cicero talks about “bad faith” a lot (see: footnote). Tao likes Cicero (I think). So I thought maybe Tao would appreciate these references. I thought maybe he was philosophically inclined. I tried to make a human connection in this way. I failed.
Maybe if Tao e-mailed me back this shit-storm would have never happened. He would have been too busy crafting a response to my e-mail. It would have been helpful to me, I bet. However, I———————————————think it’s good that this medium-to-large-shit-storm happened. Because I needed to procrastinate. And I did so by reading shit-storm messages with a sort of detached fascism. “Detached Fascism” would be a good band name. I encourage everyone here to start a new band using that name—but while doing so not being detached or fascist. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye.
___________________________
Footnote: Any philosophy major—like myself—knows that Sartre rips off of Heidegger and misunderstands “Dasein” in the process (which seriously jeopardizes the integrity of Sartre's concept of "bad faith") Hence it’s hard for me to take Cicero’s commitment to the concept of “bad faith” seriously. Indeed, Hubert L. Dreyfus notes that—contra Sartre's reading of Heidegger—Dasein is not a conscious subject:
[Pretend this is a block quote:]
“’Dasein’ in colloquial German can mean ‘everyday human existence,’ and so Heidegger uses the term to refer to human being. But we are not to think of Dasein as a conscious subject. Many interpreters make just this mistake. They see Heidegger as an
'existential phenomenologist,' which means to them an edifying elaboration of Husserl. The most famous version of this mistake is Sartre's brilliant but misguided reformulation of Being and Time into a theory of consciousness in Being and Nothingness” [Boldness mine]. See Dreyfus’ Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I [Sein und Zeit] (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), pp. 11-12.
Hence it might be wise for young-up-and-coming-philosophically-inclined authors to get this right. I forgive Cicero though; he’s a political science major (I think). They get a lot of Machiavelli, Rousseau, Hobbes, [et al.]. And not so much Sartre or Heidegger (much less Husserl).
Saw you in Bobst today and you were gulping down a kombucha. Felt awestruck/sad. Thought about tweeting it but then decided not to. Feel good that the rumors are true. They were never rumors.
I actually never eliminate my pronouns but I did it because I was commenting on your blog and I thought that it was appropriate. Fuck. I feel kind of good that I didn't use quotation marks though. This comment was not at all topical.
have been listening to "successful" by drake on repeat for ~30 minutes
ate a clementine
ingested 10 mg adderall via 'parachuting'
drank 1x water
going to kent state university for a 'walking tour' of the campus with my parents
yesterday i said, 'i want to jump off of a bridge'
~20 min later mallory said, 'are you okay'
and i said, 'yeah'
and she said, 'but you said you wanted to jump off of a bridge'
i said, 'and land. i wanted to front flip off of a bridge and land,' in a really 'cutesy' tone...
(re "successful") i guess weezy is in it too... seems weird though, like a weird ending...
@Justin
I have my undergrad in Philosophy, read/studied Sartre and Heidegger under Jerome Miller, who was himself a "Lonergan'ian".
Can't say I ever came across or ever found it referenced that "Any philosophy major...knows that Sartre rips off of Heidegger..."
I don't mean this to call you out, or to challenge you to go on the defensive.
The gents had similar but different ideas, simply put. I wouldn't call it "ripping off" but rather 'influenced'. Dunno, maybe I'm completely off and missed this bit of philosophical common knowledge, seriously, no sarcasm.
@Aaron: You’re right. “Ripping off” might be a wee-bit uncharitable to Sartre (I’m taking a grad. seminar on Heidegger at the moment and my professor absolutely cannot stand Sartre. So it might be rubbing off on me.) Influenced is more like it (the title Being and Nothingness itself is, after all, a play off of Heidegger's Being and Time). Although I still do not believe that their ideas were all that similar, and I would side with Heidegger for his originality and the sheer amount of thought-provoking-chin-stroking "whoa" moments in Being and Time.
Of course, Sartre has a number of interesting things to say. And Nausea is a good read—although I'd argue (violently) that Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night is much better (a book which Sartre cites as yet another major influence).
Also, it was very un-postmodern of me to say, “any philosophy major” etc., etc. Especially when all I’m really referring to is myself.
@Jordan Castro, I thought that was with Trey Songz. is there like a lil wayne remix? seems like an appropriate song to mention here, good job.
@desario, yes. trey songs is in it too. i forgot to mention him. nice. unsure if the version i was listening to was a remix or not, i think it was the 'regular version'
@Jordan
seems like we should start some kind of beef. talked with brandon re my dislike of your young age.
'fuck you' + 'god, just stop'
let me know how you feel about this, might be mutually beneficial
felt motivating to write 'defending' you but i put some chili in the microwave instead.
feelin' people talking about buddhism and tao lin together is irrelevant for me because i never made the personal mental connection with it and still don't
feeling like it is all an extension of people with predetermined ideas about what 'real literature' is trying to legitimize themselves in the face of 'counter-shittalking'
when i see an extensive comment on a blog, i skim through it. when i was reading the posts on htmlgiant, i felt sad. it seemed stupid. when i read your post about it, "shitstorm alberto," i laughed, i felt better.
Forealz, it's sort of crazy how all these people take to the virtual barricades to defend Literature! against the horrible commercialism of the marginally employed Tao Lin.
i think 'heidegger' 'sucks'
Amiable dispatch and this mail helped me alot in my college assignement. Thank you seeking your information.
@elise
"such is life"/"so it goes"
i 'dig' 'heidegger'
but "to each his own"
i like independent minds/you probaby think for yrself.
cheers
@Elise:
Are you aware that you come off as inauthentic when you say such things? Maybe your post was ironic. (No scare/ironic quotes around irony). Maybe you were being ironic about irony and wanted to be post-postmodern. Maybe you were trying to illuminate (viz. disclose) what Heidegger says when he talks about idle chatter (Gerede). Of course, you are probably aware that what characterizes this inauthentic mode of chatter is that an emphasis is placed on what is spoken rather than what is being discussed. That is, when we use words like “I,” “think,” and “sucks,” we are no longer talking about anything at all because we no longer know what these words really mean.
With that said, the ambiguity in your post prevents us from having an authentic relation to it. Let’s put the matter in Heidegger’s own words: “Idle chatter is constituted by just . . . passing the word along—a process by which its initial lack of grounds to stand on [Bodenständigkeit] becomes aggravated to complete groundlessness [Bodenlosigkeit]. And indeed this idle chatter is not confined to vocal gossip, but even spreads to what we write, where it takes the form of ‘scribbling’ [Astute boldness mine]." In short, please try not to scribble. Thank you kindly.
For more on idle chatter (or "idle talk," depending on the translation) See: Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), [esp.] p. 212.
@Justin R. Morris
shut the fuck up. no quotes.
shittalking mushrooms
@erik, feeling unsure re beef. / 'if you want beef, i'm the meat cleaver' - weezy
writing a really long 'professional sounding' essay about death. do you guys know of a 'good' place to submit it (maybe for $$??) or 'should i just' post it at 'TNB...'
today i ate 1x apple, 1x banana, 1x clementine, 1x salad (organic kale, organic spinach, carrots, black olives, sunflower seeds, organic broccoli, italian dressing), 1x 'everything' bagel, various 'small handfuls' of 'chips,' 1x vegan 'ground beef' w/ steamed spinach, corn, white rice, sriracha sauce, organic salsa, organic whole-wheat tortilla, 1x bowl soy 'mint marble' 'ice cream'
drank 2x coffee, ~?x water
ran 1.23 miles, exercised
justin, thank you for your interest. i think i am authentic.
my skin is genuine leather.
@andy:
To reemphasize: when you (we) use words like “shut,” “the,” fuck,” and “up” we are no longer talking about anything at all because we no longer know what these words really mean. Perhaps abiding by Wittgenstein's words would be helpful here: "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence." In this instance, Andy, I encourage you to pass over in silence. You are concealing the meaning of Being and making us all inauthentic [Uneigentlichkeit]. With that said, the ambiguity in your post prevents me (us) from having an authentic relation to it due to your inauthenticity, viz. idle chatter, viz. scribbling. Cf. my previous post. All the best.
'things' seem to have escalated. here are some pointless comments that i am taking time to craft for no reason beyond boredom:
@justin you really know yr heidegger. that takes a lot of effort/time. good job. though, you are sort of holding it above people after being provoked. still, you seem really smart.
@jordan you eat healthier than me, but only slightly.
@elise sometimes people claim thyr 'authentic' but then turn out to be pleather or rubber or other synthetics. i am glad you are genuine leather.
i honestly enjoy all your writing taste, very charming.
don't quit and keep creating for the reason that it simply just worth to read it.
excited to read much of your stories, thankx :)
@ justin morris
it is difficult to agree with a statement saying that when we use words we don't know what they mean, because even though words (be they sounds we vocalize into speech, or symbols we arrange into words, sentences, and/or paragraphs) are just creations, before they come into use (be it written or spoken) an idea, and/or image is present inside our minds. So to say that I don't know what I mean when I write "shut the fuck up," is to say that I can't imagine another being being quiet. that is not true. i do not know what you look like in reality, but i can have the image of a human figure, and then based on your name, "justin," i can imagine a male, human figure, and then i can imagine that male human figure saying very complex sentences seeming to my perception to be a disguise for a simple idea or concept, but with these complex sentence, being, or at least, seeming to be, "very smart."
now, in my opinion, based on varied forms of readings and life experiences, being educated is not the same as to be smart. to be smart , in my opinion, would be to live an efficient life, and make it far. being educated, is to know things like heidegger very well.
knowing heidegger, meaning being educated, would not help you get out of a shady situation in a bad neighborhood. being smart would.
lol @ anti-intellectual intellectuals proffering theories of reference itt
Post a Comment
<< Home