Saturday, January 26, 2008

4 More Things

1.I watched another Michael Haneke movie: CODE UNKNOWN. I thought it mostly sucked. The 2 hours consisted mostly of short scenes that had little or nothing going on it. There were definitely some good moments, one where a couple is shopping in a grocery store and fighting in a strange way, and one scene where there were all these dead cows and a guy lit his match. Those were okay. I also liked when the drums that had been shown in the beginning started beating over several scenes in a row for no clear reason. I liked that it didn't have to go anywhere but I still felt bored 45 minutes in. I didn't care if I kept watching it or not. I can say, though, that of the 4 Haneke films I've seen they are all very different, and I guess unique in their own ways from other films, and that is good to see in a director.

2. I sort of got into an argument about pot last night. I don't like pot. I've never tried it (as I know it is not for me), but I've been around many people who I've seen get dumber and/or different over the years while claiming it does not affect them and that it is not addictive. Everything is addictive. Touching your feet a certain way is addictive. Especially substances that alter your perception are addictive even if not chemically. I know lots of people who are "addicted" to pot. I'm not against perception alteration. I drink coffee. I drink alcohol. I sit in certain positions long enough to allow my head to change. I absorb light. More so I don't like pot because of 'pot culture' and the stigma associated with it. Pot is kind of like rape. I'm not going to explain why I said that. Pot people are not really people to me. They seem like parts of the furniture but still alive in human ways, and thus not true furniture. I don't trust pot heads. I believe you are a pot head if you own a glass pipe or smoke several times a week or say pot is nonaddictive or smoke pot and simultaneously like 311/Phish/Grateful Dead/any of very many other bands that I don't think non-potheads are capable of liking. At the same time I guess I don't have a problem with people smoking every now and then though it stinks and is boring, though I would question the motivation for doing so. What if instead of smoking pot people went out and stood in the front yard and didn't move for a long time? Or what if instead of smoking pot people walked and touched their head to the wall and left it there and tried not to think? I think those would be equitable solutions for boredom and more healthy and non-smelly and non-associated with so many yellowed cultural associations and would be free and might actually be progressive in the long run. I don't know why I am talking about pot.

3. While I'm going on, I do not understand journals that do not accept simultaneous submissions. Especially journals run by writers who do not accept simultaneous submissions. It's so damn hard these days to publish with so much out there and often reply times take so long, you really think authors should just send their work to you and no one else? I don't care if you have a quick turn around time: if you do, all the more so to allow work sent elsewhere: most are so slow you'll be way ahead of the pack if you want it. I think it's a pretty ridiculous expectation and completely unnecessary and against progression of the arts. I say all this because I got a rejection today from an editor at a magazine I love who I'd forgotten didn't accept them. His note on the slip said he loved my story but hoped I had best of luck placing it with one of the other places I simultaneously submitted it. Really? Is it that offensive? How dare I? I don't know. I mean, it's a writer's choice whether or not they want to send to a non-SS-accepting journal, but for the most part I don't get it.

Boy, I'm soapboxy today. I think I got too much sleep last night for once. I probably should drink some coffee and buy some paint and roll around in it.

4. Also: for Lamination Colony submissions, we are now closed to Tao Lin parodies. We have a lot to choose from already. Here are some parodies I'd like to see: GARY LUTZ, BEN MARCUS, BARRY HANNAH (good luck), JOSE SARAMAGO, KELLY LINK, NICHOLSON BAKER (good luck), DEAN YOUNG, MIRANDA JULY, DIANE WILLIAMS, ANYONE EDITED BY GORDON LISH, ANY POPULAR 'ONLINE' WRITERS, ANYONE PUBLISHED BY SMOKELONG QUARTERLY, ANYONE WHO WRITES MOSTLY 'SHORT-SHORTS,' ANYONE NO ONE HAS REALLY HEARD OF, ANYONE PUBLISHED BY FENCE MAGAZINE, HARMONY KORINE, ROBBE-GRILLET, ANYONE ON THE INTERNET, ANYONE'S MOTHER OR FATHER, ANYONE WITH WORDS.

ADDENUDUM: for this issue I also am going to have a lot of different things that are in forms no other journal would publish. if you have something odd, something that is unlike 'literature,' something that doesn't quite work but still is nice to read, please send it to me. I am not going to name examples because I want people to send me their strange. Send me stuff you found on your hard drive and forgot about. Send me pictures or drawings or XXX self-portraits or spam folder contents or recordings of yourself arguing with your mom. Make a mess. Come on.

13 comments:

Ken Baumann said...

I agree with 2. and 3.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

good thank you ken. sometimes i feel alone in that.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

#2 that is.

Tao Lin said...

i am very excited about the next issue

Josh Maday said...

1. interesting. more movies to see.

2 & 3. amen and amen. i know a guy who started on the drugs, pot and everything else (plus all the jam bands you listed), when he was about 13 and is still going somehow 12 years later. no one will ever convince me that it doesn't blunt the edges (cheap pun acknowledged). the wheels on his wagon have a few flat spots.

4. tao lin parody will be fun. parody of everyone will be fun. it's good to parody now and again. good to soapbox, too. good for everyone. i parody myself all the time.

the hot dogs are at the door, bleating and babbling, shuffling around in the cold. i'm out of ammo, so try to hold them off until i get the rambo dvd working. they'll tear this place apart.

* said...

I'm with you on the pot issue Blake.

Tim Dicks said...

I edit fiction for a small university journal, and cringe when I see exclusive submissions in the inbox...it's an instant feeling of guilt, knowing that the ms is probably going to be rejected, and the author has probably wasted weeks.

* said...

i liked your rain list in fence

sam pink said...

i am too high to understand any of this.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

td: what do you edit?

thank you justin.

sam: i have your child inside me crying.

jereme said...

I will address # 2. I will not concur wholeheartedly but I do agree with some of what you are saying.

I despise pot culture for the same reasons listed and more. I also hate art, poetry, writing, gay, jewish, etc. cultures for the same reason.

Every one is trying too hard to be defined by something that should not be the factor that defines who they are.

It is fucking silly.

All of it. All the posturing. Absolutely silly.

I used to hate marijuana when I was a teenager.

Absolutely hated it.

But then I started doing heavy opiates to numb the madness in my head.

I finally got off of opiates and was very, very depressed/suicidal.

Then I smoked weed again for the first time in 8 years and I felt slightly better. The madness was sufferable if I smoked periodically.

I noticed that my mood during the times of not smoking were also slightly mellower then before.

Most people don't even know I smoke. It is not something that defines me. I do it at night when I'm alone.

it helps me to think slightly different but the same. If that makes sense.

No revelations but small epiphanies.

You also need to admit that some of the people who smoke pot frequently were not that bright to begin with.

Most people are pretty fucking stupid actually.


And I'm no genius.

Zoooma said...

Just gotta say that I have a friend whose brother smoked pot every or almost everyday while at Rutgers University. You'd think that much pot would make him a total dunce, huh? Maybe have to cause him to drop out?

He graduated FIRST in his class.

And many non-potheads dig the Grateful Dead and Phish.

I respect peoples' opinions but I think you're a little off here. Give me your address, I'll come over and we can smoke a bowl, help you see the light!

BLAKE BUTLER said...

i like the random example of someone who wasn't addicted to it, thank you
good job