Jolly Roger MiSTing with Mice (3/6)
Austin Loomis
[continued from part 2]
[end commercialsign; we join the SOL crew already in progress...]
>From: dra...@email.unc.edu (Drake Raft)
MIKE: I used to have a drake raft when I was a kid. Sort of a duck-shaped
thing...
>Newsgroups: alt.wired,alt.society.generation-x,alt.tv.beavis-n-butthead,
TOM [Butt-head]: Yeah, huh-huh, cool.
CROW [Beavis]: This sucks. Heh-heh m heh-heh.
MIKE: No rip-offs, you two! I mean it!
> alt.
>+ culture.jollyroger,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,rec.arts.books,alt.
>+ philosophy.objectivism
>
TOM: o/~One of these froups is not like the others.
CROW: o/~ One of these froups does not belong.
MIKE: o/~ Can you tell which froup is not like the others
ALL: o/~ By the time we finish this song? o/~
CROW: And the answer is...alt.culture.jollyroger, because it's the one
where this post was relevant.
TOM: Or alt.philosophy.objectivism, because it was the *most* irrelevant.
MIKE: Uh-huh. So basically, he's off-topic...
>Subject: www.jollyroger.com WHY BEAVIS & BUTTHEAD ARE COOL WHILE RUSSEL BANKS
>+ GEN-X NOVEL SUCKS
CROW [Beavis]: Change it, Butt-head! Change it or kill me!
TOM [Butt-head]: Don't make me kick your ass again, Beavis!
MIKE: AAGGH!
>Date: 7 Nov 1996 05:27:04 GMT
>Organization: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
>Lines: 151
>Message-ID: <55rrv8$4...@newz.oit.unc.edu>
>NNTP-Posting-Host: login4.isis.unc.edu
>X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]
>Xref: news.io.com alt.wired:54172 alt.society.generation-x:160917 alt.tv.
>+ beavis-n-butthead:46170 alt.culture.jollyroger:1561 alt.fan.rush-
>+ limbaugh:540158 rec.arts.books:205513 alt.philosophy.objectivism:149241
>
> THE FASTEST-GROWING NEWSGROUP ON THE WWW:
CROW: Newsgroups on the WEB? Now *that's* backward compatibility!
> alt.culture.jollyroger alt.culture.jollyroger alt.culture.jollyroger
>
TOM: You *bet* they're growing fast! They're already over the 1500 mark,
while rec.arts.books is only at 205513! -- Um, never mind.
MIKE: Go gentle on the boy. Any growth from zero is 100% growth.
> THE JOLLY ROGER
> Flagship of the conservative literary renaissance.
> http://jollyroger.com/beaconway/jollyroger.html
>
> Send join jollyroger to jolly...@jollyroger.com
>
>
> "Catcher in the Rye of the Grunge Generation UPDATE!"
> --By Becket Knottingham
>
>Well the liberal boomers are at it again.
MIKE: Trying to peddle their evil agenda of free love and food for
everyone.
TOM: No boomers today. Boomers tomorrow. Always some boomers tomorrow.
> In the last issue, you'll
>recall that Suzie Greenberg, a young editor at St. Martin's Press, said in
>her exclusive Beaconway Interview that, "it's not like publishers are
>looking for fifty-year-olds and then getting them to write Generation-X
>Books."
>
CROW: That was a rather pointless quote.
TOM: No, they're looking for five-year olds to novelize movies.
>Hell yeah they are.
>
CROW: No they're not!
TOM: Yes, they are!
MIKE: Less filling!
CROW: Tastes great!
>Russel Banks has just come out with the latest "Slacker" novel, "The Rule
>of The Bone." It got dubbed a cross between, "The Catcher in the Rye,"
>and, "Huckleberry Finn" in last Sunday's NYT Book review, on the front
>page. I wonder if Russel Banks is insulted?
TOM: If he wasn't before, he is now.
> For an artist takes pride in
>the uniqueness of his vision and the uniqueness of his ability to render
>it. Thus to be compared to another is not a compliment.
CROW ["Drake"]: Unless it's a comparison to *me!*
> To be compared to
>a combination of two is an even greater insult.
TOM: Uhm, like hell it is.
> Who was Salinger compared
>to? Who was Twain compared to? Who was Shakespeare compared to?
MIKE: Sir Francis Bacon?
CROW: Sir Edward de Vere?
> Who was
>Beethoven compared to? Who is Michael Jordan compared to?
TOM: Wilt Chamberlain?
MIKE: George Mikan?
> Who is Rush
>compared to, other than God,sometimes?
MIKE: Rain Man?
TOM: A giant flaming jackass?
CROW: The Goodyear Blimp?
> The reviewer states, "In his novel,
>Russel Banks has returned to the source of sources and reinvented
>'Huckleberry Finn.'" Here he's accusing Russel Banks of reinventing the
>wheel!
CROW: And it's STILL round this time!
> But hey-- it's the liberals' desperate way of attempting to sell
>books in the industry that has collapsed under their intellectually
>pernicious ideology. Drugs mix a lot better with rock'n roll than they do
>with literature.
>
MIKE: So this guy never read Tennyson.
CROW: Or Fitzgerald.
TOM: Or Hemingway.
MIKE: Or Poe.
CROW: Aaaaah! Poe has been proven not to be an alcoholic...
>The funny thing in the review was that the reviewer said that the novel
>invites comparison with, "The Catcher in the Rye," because, "Chappee is
>more generic and less funny than Holden Caufield." He then goes on to say
>that
TOM: there is no Santa Claus.
> , "Mr. Banks also falls short of Mr. Salinger's artistry in filtering
>acute psychological observation through vernacular distortion." In other
>words, compared to Salinger, Banks sucks. But this is funny-- here the NYT
>Book review emblazons on the cover that Mr. Banks' Novel is the new
>"Catcher in the Rye," and inside the review we find it is compared to "The
>Catcher in the Rye" because it is nothing like it.
CROW: Well, maybe that's because, like most literature, the person
responsible for writing the cover reads, oh, two or three words of what's
actually written...
MIKE: Exactly, Crow...
> Welcome to the liberal
>literary machine, folks. The Turth does not exist,
TOM: And neither does the Truth, but at least the Truth is in the
dictionary. Neener.
> and it's a good thing
>they did away with it, as it takes the pressure off.
>
MIKE: So if I make, say, a new Star Trek, and some reviewer calls it
"the new Star Trek," it HAS to be just as good or better? Period?
TOM: Looks like it.
>So anyway-- I biked over to the local book shop to check out who was
CROW: a bigger loser than I was.
>endorsing the novel on the cover-- it's always cool to see. I thought it
>might be Toni Morrison, because she teaches at Princeton too.
MIKE: Well, of course- if she teaches at the same university, she MUST
agree with what he says...
> Sure enough,
>her name was on the back cover, but she wasn't endorsing it. Cornel West
TOM: wants his name spelled properly.
>was, which made sense-- he's that Afro-American studies dude from
>Princeton who recently took off to Harvard. Being a liberal academic, it
>follows that by definition he must be an expert on the soul of
>Generation-X, as well as all literature pertaining to it.
MIKE: Ooh, dig his bitter irony.
CROW: Ah, the subtle irreverence of the Jolly Roger.
TOM: As usual, about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the forehead and
about as irreverent as the 700 Club.
> On the cover flap
>Cornel says, "Like our living literary giants, Toni Morrison and Thomas
>Pynchon, Russel Banks is a great writer wrestling with the hidden secrets
>and explosive realities of this country. In the Rule of the Bone, he
>corageously explores the frightening new world of American young people."
TOM: So Cornel West can't spell "courageously" either?
>Well I agree Cornel-- it is frightening growing up in a world where
>liberals have a stranglehold on pop-culture, and thankfully that's all
>coming to an end with the advent of www.jollyroger.com.
CROW: Yep, ONE lame-o Web Site is gonna change the face of culture as
we know it.
MIKE: 'Cause Jollyroger is going to destroy pop culture completely!
> We're going to
>defend the soul of this generation against big-word wielding,
CROW: By only using words "Drake" can understand.
> condom
>distributing liberal boomers such as yourself--
TOM: And usher in the age of monosyllabism and STDs.
> 'til death does us apart.
>
MIKE: Because safe sex is EVIL!
CROW [Zed the Exterminator]: The gun is good! The peni--MMPH!
>The novel is all downhill from the colorful cover and vibrant endorsement.
TOM: I read every disgusting word...twice.
>On the first page Russel presents the liberal boomer version of us-- a
>fourteen-year-old named Chappee whose, "life got interesting when I
>discovered weed." Liberals can deal with that-- one more dependable
>CD-purchaser on their way to needing their government drug programs.
MIKE: So THAT's why Clinton is fighting the medical marijuana laws.
CROW: No, that's because he didn't think of it first.
> It's
>cute, and of course, he's just a kid that Newt Gingrich is out to starve--
>no wonder he tokes up.
>
TOM: That, or he's seen Catherine Mackinnon on TV.
CROW: Ha! I always knew Newt was on *something*!
MIKE: I always thought it was something stronger, though.
>Every now and then, to give the reader a wink, Mr. Banks inserts a "like,"
>or a "dude." But this wink comes across as a kick.
MIKE: Much like when "Drake" or "Dreck" or whatever the hell his name
is today posts the rare insightful, intelligent thought.
CROW: But that's never happened.
MIKE: Well, true. But you get my point.
> It's not too long until
TOM: we're bored right out of our eyesockets!
CROW: You don't have...
MIKE: Shhhh! He's rollin'.
>he blows his cover and has his fourteen-year-old grunge protagonist say,
>"Then I felt the long arm of the law so to speak." Now "like" is my
>generation's version of "so to speak" and
CROW: *you* can't have it!
> we have disposed with the
>latter, having found a far more economical term for the sentiment. A
>contemprorary teen-ager would say, "Then I felt like the long arm of the
>law."
MIKE: No, by that logic, he would say "Then I felt the long arm of the
law, like."
CROW: o/~ Sometimes you feel like the long arm of the law. o/~
TOM: o/~ Sometimes you don't! o/~
> A liberal boomer creative-writing teacher at Princeton would say,
>"Then I felt the long arm of the law so to speak." A fourteen-year-old
>would refrain from saying it in this manner, for at that age one tends to
CROW: do everything some idiot on Usenet says they do.
>value the opinions of one's peers, and Chappee would not want to be
>considered a fairy.
MIKE: With a name like Chappee? Nah.
> This we know because Mr. Banks gave him a mohawk.
TOM: You heard it here first, folks: If you have a mohawk, you are a
heterosexual. Learn it, live it, love it.
> Mr.
>T and Billy Idol were eighties phenomena,
TOM: So? Melville was a nineteenth-century phenomenon, and Shakespeare
was sixteenth-century, but I don't see you saying we should get rid
of *them.*
MIKE: Besides, Billy Idol wore a buzzcut with spikes, and Mr. T had a
Mandinka. Neither of them had a Mohawk.
TOM & CROW: Fanboy! Faaanboy!
> but Mr. Banks prides his
>knowledge of history far too much to let this opportunity go.
MIKE: Oh, yeah, fourteen year-olds can't remember back before 1990.
> Also, Mr.
>Banks fails to realize that because my generation has found a far more
>economical term for "so to speak" in the word "like," we use it far more
>often than his character does.
CROW: But that's because the "we" he's talking about is the same "we"
that scores under 300 on their SATs.
> When "like" shows up once every three
>pages, the reader is alerted to
TOM: "Dreck"...whoops, I mean "Drake" putting waaaayyyy too much stock
in one word...
> the formula being used in the placement of
>the word, and the significance of the work is lost, for the reader has
>discovered the author's subterfuges, and is too busy being annoyed by them
>to grasp the content.
MIKE: Unless the reader is "Drake"; then he just misses the point 'cause
he's a dink.
TOM: And he also misses a semicolon in the sentence above.
> But Russel Banks can afford such transgressions at
>no expense to his literature.
>
MIKE: 'Cause he has dramatic license.
CROW: I wish I could revoke Drake's dramatic license.
>He has Chappee watch MTV every seven pages, on schedule, but never does
>he tell the reader what Chappee sees.
TOM: I've seen MTV. The reader doesn't WANT to know what Chappee sees.
MIKE: And if he did, wouldn't he just...
ALL: WATCH IT HIMSELF?
> You don't know if it's Sand Blast,
>or Headbangers Ball, or Yo MTV Raps,
CROW: Neither of which have been on for two years or more!
> or Beavis and Butthead. Does Chappee
>like, "The Real World?"
MIKE: No!
TOM: Yes!
CROW: No!
ALL: PASS!
> He also keeps Chappee's favorite bands a secret
>from the reader, but the reader does not care. Chappee hears Megadeth
>once, when he's hanging out with the biker gang he joined, but we do not
>know if he appreciates their talents.
TOM: And this is the reason that it's not a good book?
MIKE: We also don't know what kind of coffee he likes either, so I guess
by Drake's definition, he can't go to a coffee shop.
> I wonder how many Megadeth albums
>Mr. Banks owns-- probably an amount equal in number to the biker gangs
>he's been a member of.
>
CROW: But Megadeth started in the '80s, so they're not important!
>We like to know what bands Beavis and Butthead think are cool and which
>they think suck, because we know who they are.
TOM: What the heck do Beavis and Butt-Head have to do with this??
MIKE: Evidently, we care about them.
CROW: Well, they're more interesting than "Drake."
> Beavis and Butthead have
>discernible characters that were developed by placing the two in comic
>situations, but Russel Banks provides no equivalent situations for Chappee
TOM: So "Drake" compares the lead character to Beavis and Butthead, but
doesn't like the fact that other reviewers compared him to Holden
Caulfield?
MIKE: Uh-huh.
CROW: The Jolly Roger. Hypocrisy 'R' Us.
>to provide him the opportunity to overcome his plight of being cursed with
>a stupid name.
MIKE [sarcastically applauding]: Oh, VERY objective. Pointless, but
objective, in a National Enquirer sort of way.
TOM: Oh, don't glorify it.
> Beavis and Butthead were endowed with the ability to change
>the channel-- Chappee's character lacks this dimension.
TOM: Of course, so does DRAKE, but hey.
> But none of this
>matters to the audience, for the reader will be a liberal-elite boomer
MIKE: Drake's a liberal boomer?
CROW: He read the novel, so obviously...
>who doesn't know the difference between "Guns and Roses," and "The Flaming
>Lips."
>
TOM: Yeah, if you're over 30, you aren't allowed to know who these groups
are.
>In the novel Mr. Banks has somebody deliver the old addage to Chappee--
CROW: And the old subtractage.
>"Those that can do, those that can't, teach." Here he is drawing from his
>own life's experiences. I had Russel Banks for creative writing,
TOM: And learned absolutely NOTHING!
CROW: Was this before or after Joyce Carol Oates kicked you out of her
class for writing poetry?
MIKE: Now now, don't expect him to be consistent in his autobiography.
Besides, he's in the Becket personality this time, remember?
> and I
>think the saying should be amended to, "Those that can do, and those that
>can't, do something else."
MIKE: Yeah, that's a lot funnier.
CROW: Except that it MISSES THE WHOLE FRIGGIN' POINT OF THE JOKE!
> For creative writing cannot be taught.
TOM: Well, not to Elliot, obviously. He already knows everything.
> That is
>a liberal fallacy. It is something that is earned by the writer on the
>frontier of his choosing. Russel Banks chose the creative writing
>department at Princeton as his frontier,
TOM: Writing...the final frontier.
> and we wish that he would write
>about it more often. It would be interesting to see the true, deep
>thoughts of the token white straight male in a liberal creative writing
>department.
TOM: Oh, yeah... Those poor white, straight, men... We just DON'T hear
enough from them, you know?
MIKE: Sad, really...
> It would be vastly more interesting to us than his books on
>topics that he knows nothing about, like us.
>
CROW: "Drake" also chooses to write about topics he knows nothing about.
MIKE & TOM: Like EVERYTHING.
>It would be fun to hear him elaborate on the possibility that he was
>chosen for the position because he is safe.
MIKE: As opposed to, say, Charles Manson, yes.
> Nothing that he ever writes
>will ever distinguish itself from the nihilistic work of Joyce Carol
>Oates.
TOM: Soooo, "DRAKE" can compare Banks's work to anything he wants, but
nobody else can!
MIKE: Apparently...
> None of it will ever inspire my generation to read.
TOM [as Drake]: "'Cause we can't."
> None of it will
>exalt the sober soul nor intellect of the people. And thus Toni and Joyce
>will not be oppressed, the people will be kept in the dark, and the
>liberals can hang on to their fading power base for one more day. And as
>an added bonus, there will be no need to deconstruct Russel's work.
MIKE: And besides, it's so much more fun to deconstruct "Drake's".
> For
>he, like most liberals, writes in a pre-deconstructed format.
TOM: It's PRE-DECONSTRUCTED! JUST ADD WATER!
> Once they
>had convinced themselves that words don't mean anything, it was easy to
>make their novels follow suit.
>
CROW: Pinstripe or herringbone?
>For a novel that spans the sublime dimensions of this generation's
>Reality, check out THE DRAKE RAFT FIELD TRIP.
>
CROW: Self-published at a cheap coffee hut near you.
MIKE: And for a masterful trashing of that overblown, underplotted piece
of tripe, write to Chris Mayfield <camf...@iastate.edu>.
>http://jollyroger.com/beaconway/drft.html
>
TOM: If you pronounce Drake Raft fast enough, it becomes Drift. I think
that's a lesson for us all.
[Commercialsign now.]
Time for more ads for toilet tissue, feminine hygiene products, and power
tools.
[continued in part 4]
--
Austin Loomis | ROBIN: "Jolly Roger"? And you say you *trained* with
ze...@io.com | her in Africa? What *was* she, your tantric sex
| instructress?
| -- _The Invisibles, v.2#1