Lines from Shakespeare Mistaken for 1990s Hip Hop Lyrics | HTMLGIANT
htmlgiant.com“I’ll teach you how to flow.” (The Tempest)
“He speaks plain cannon fire, and smoke and bounce.” (King John)
“I have within my mind / A thousand raw tricks of these bragging Jacks, / Which I will practise.” (The Merchant of Venice)
“That’s an ill phrase.” (Hamlet)
“Holla, holla!” (King Lear)
“I am the dog: no, the dog is himself, and I am the dog–Oh! the dog is me, and I am myself.” (The Two Gentlemen of Verona)
“You knights of Tyre / Are excellent in making ladies trip.” (Pericles)
“Just as high as my heart.” (As You Like It)
“Thou art raw.” (As You Like It)
“Our tongue is rough, coz, and my condition is not smooth.” (Henry V)
“Ay, on the front.” (Macbeth)
“Holla, you clown!” (As You Like It)
“Our cake’s dough on both sides.” (The Taming of the Shrew)
“Trip no further, pretty sweeting.” (Twelfth Night)
“Look, when I serve him so, he takes it ill.” (The Comedy of Errors)
VINTAGE "BOOK DEAL" WEEK-IN-REVIEW
Sunday night Wall Street Journal “scooped” the news of Vintage’s acquisition (via Bill Clegg) of my third novel with an article that was located “behind” a subscription wall. The “scoop” was a result of Mike Vilensky’s pro-active style of journalism, as he had already emailed Bill Clegg, I think, before the deal happened, when he learned, a week ago, via this or this maybe, that Bill Clegg was representing me. Three hours later it wasn’t Sunday anymore.
Monday 1:05AM New York Observer posted what became perhaps the most trafficked piece of the week: a somewhat lengthy piece featuring an email interview. Encouraged by positive feelings toward New York Observer’s “house style/tone,” which includes being open to posting interviews verbatim, I “opened up,” to some degree, revealing that Bloomsbury “had the bleakest office, in my view.” 2:30AM New York Magazine’s Vulture posted “Tao Lin Sells Another Novel.” Sadly, the post was not, to my knowledge, Tweeted by @vulture. 9:51AM HTMLGIANT linked the New York Observer piece. Galleycat and other sites posted things later that day, eliciting, among other Tweets, a playfully sarcastic Tweet and a “two birds w/ one stone” Tweet.
Tuesday was uneventful in terms of the “book deal,” I think. Vice posted my final Drug-Related Photoshop Art ”piece.”
Wednesday was uneventful in terms of the “book deal,” I think. The “full spread” of Megan Boyle’s selected unpublished blog posts of a mexican panda express employee (Muumuu House, 15 Nov 2011) was revealed.
Thursday a piece surfaced on Hipster Runoff in which a person whose appearance is shockingly similar to my appearance (jk) is shown “[stealing] wifi” by laying outside a building while staring at their MacBook screen. Sadly, the @hipsterrunoff Tweet of this contained an unclickable link, denying Statcounter thousands of hits, perhaps because Carles, like so many others (jk), temporarily experienced problems with Twitter’s t.co service.
Friday “juliewbp” responded to a long comment on BookPeople’s blog that was made Monday. Comments continued to be posted at HTMLGIANT and Slog. I posted [this post] in the style of January’s MY ‘NON-VIRAL BLOGGING’ WEEK-IN-REVIEW, arguably improving on it by adding a “special offer,” which can be found below.
*SPECIAL OFFER* if anyone wants one of my books for free, and lives in America, reblog this post and comment in this post what book by me you want (view options) and your address (or email your address to binky.tabby [at] gmail.com) and I will mail the book to you or order it for you (up to 25 people) *SPECIAL OFFER*
100 things to do when you have the time
- Doodle. Look for new styles, new approaches.
- Draw a picture of a friend. See how many different ways you can do it, such as how few lines you can use.
- Recite something you once memorized: a poem, a song, a story, a monologue.
- Memorize something new.
- Write a review of something you like.
- Go over the steps in a procedure or a process.
- Explain to a friend a thing you know, or think you know.
- Write a song, or cover a song.
- List the projects you’re working on, or want to work on. Set a deadline for completing one of them.
- Review every thing that you’ve done in the past week, the past month, the past year, the past five years, the past decade.
“The wind was this. Being born was this. Dying without dying and without a disease was this. To tell you the truth: I am here and I need you.”
—Luna Miguel22 Things I Learned from Submitting Writing | Blake Butler in HTMLGIANT
htmlgiant.comThis is an amazing list. I’ve been struggling to keep motivated, to remember that writing is what I want.
Blake Butler rocked this out.
4. Often editors who reject you are doing you a favor. Either the piece isn’t great and needs work (thus saving you face of looking back later like whyyyyy did I publish this) or taking a strong piece and making it stronger because of force of will. Yeah sure some editors just are pussies but so what. The work is never done.
5. Some pieces are you learning. Some never get it right. Don’t publish your homework. “Burnsong” was the first story I ever finished and was like Yes I did something really strong here. Now I know it sucks, and trying for so long to get it published and being rejected over and over was way more of an accomplishment for myself than having it in a damn magazine.
6. Deletion is holy.
9. If you really want to publish a book one day you will publish a book. The time that you spend getting there is kind of wonderful. Don’t cut it short. The emotional range is valuable.
13. Don’t lose sight of someone you love in the midst of this.
It’s eerie to me that there are always pieces of writing that emerge as smart, true, ethically multifaceted and—this would be the most important noticeable quality—so suddenly and quickly diagnostic (feeling like someone had articulate and correct thoughts so soon, it’s amazing) after events like the bombings in Boston: as though disaster is always also a poetic event or something, which it probably is, given that disasters have to be monstrously unimaginable before they happen just to get called disasters in the first place. Like, of course, the imagination responds.
But what I like best about this Jimmy Chen essay at HTMLGIANT is its brevity. So short I can’t even call it by the wretched name that often tags such post-disaster (read: post-terrorist-attack, whatever that might mean) and post-bloodshed writing: think-piece. This isn’t a think piece. It’s a note on the coming (?) global war, which isn’t going to look like old wars and won’t look like a new one either. Not a holy war (?) but a war of the disenfranchised. Maybe it’s just a state of war that touches wherever it might, all the time, any time—not “over there” but everywhere. I’m actually not so sure it isn’t already happening, or hasn’t been happening for a long time. I’m not so sure it’s anything but awful and sad, and while I’ve spent a large part of this morning thinking about what books to include on the syllabus for the sci-fi and fantasy lit course (?) I’ll be teaching in the fall, it occurs to me all of a sudden how scary a good discussion is. I want to have more scary discussions.
