nonsarcastic lol
― Treeship, Friday, 12 July 2013 17:08 (ten years ago) link
Two months into freshman year he had committed to not speaking in almost all situations. He felt ashamed and nervous around anyone who’d known him when he was popular and unself-conscious. When he heard laughter, before he could think or feel anything, his heart would already be beating like he’d sprinted twenty yards. As the beating slowly normalized he’d think of how his heart, unlike him, was safely contained, away from the world, behind bone and inside skin, held by muscles and arteries in its place, carefully off-center, as if to artfully assert itself as source and creator, having grown the chest to hide in and to muffle and absorb—and, later, after innovating the brain and face and limbs, to convert into productive behavior—its uncontrollable, indefensible, unexplainable, embarrassing squeezing of itself. To avoid awkwardness, and in respect of his apparent aversion to speaking, Paul’s classmates stopped including him in conversations. The rare times he spoke—in classes where no one knew him, or when, without knowing why, for one to forty minutes, he’d become aggressively confident and spontaneous as he’d been in elementary/middle school, about which his friends poignantly would always seem genuinely excited—he’d feel “out of character,” indicating he’d completed a transformation and was now, in a humorlessly surreal way, exactly what he didn’t want to be and wished he wasn’t.
See to GOWF* right here, this sounds like bad DFW.
Good Ol' Watrr Face
― waterface, Friday, 12 July 2013 17:12 (ten years ago) link
he had committed to not speaking in almost all situations
grammar
― cardamon, Friday, 12 July 2013 19:44 (ten years ago) link
what about that phrase is grammatically incorrect?
― Treeship, Friday, 12 July 2013 19:46 (ten years ago) link
What I'm saying is he's on the cover of Time magazine and being published as literature and talked about as literature but that doesn't mean it's okay to ask if he's actually a good writer, yeah? Have some fucking decorum guys. And what with him being Asian, well clearly you can justify his writing style because it's Buddhist, because no-one of Asian descent who claims to be a Buddhist is also a total bullshitter, nu-uh, not ever.
― cardamon, Friday, July 12, 2013 11:41 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
lol dude, Tao Lin was not on the cover of Time Magazine, he was on the cover of an issue of The Strangler that was a spoof on the Time cover with Franzen
― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Friday, 12 July 2013 19:49 (ten years ago) link
if TAO LIN is our thomas de quincey, who are his wordsworth and coleridge?
― reggie (qualmsley), Friday, 12 July 2013 19:50 (ten years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhKpaTOG4yg
― waterface, Friday, 12 July 2013 19:51 (ten years ago) link
This guy is both
Kidding!
― waterface, Friday, 12 July 2013 19:53 (ten years ago) link
so much dependsupon
a red wheelbarrow
glazed with rainwater
beside the whitechickens.
because the farmerneeds it
to carry all theeggs
you stupid fucks.
― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Friday, 12 July 2013 19:55 (ten years ago) link
parents paying forNYC
housing glazed withdrugs
and yes tuition too
― reggie (qualmsley), Friday, 12 July 2013 19:57 (ten years ago) link
I heard a Fly buzz – when I died – You Stupid Fucks
― waterface, Friday, 12 July 2013 19:59 (ten years ago) link
this is just to say
I have smoked the buds that were in the cig case
― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Friday, 12 July 2013 20:00 (ten years ago) link
you should have entered that red wheelbarrow "remix" poem in the poetry context, hurting
― Treeship, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:06 (ten years ago) link
i think that's the whole point. we are all Tao Lin.
laying on my Ikea mattresslooking for new shirts on my iPadthe delivery man buzzes my doorfor the Chinese food I ordered an hour ago
― Spectrum, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:07 (ten years ago) link
sitting on the top of the stairsbecause the internet doesn't reach my room anymore, otherwise i would probably be on my ikea mattress,feel "sick and tired" of "defending tao lin"spectrum's comment reminded me to heat up chinese foodleft over from last night. singapore rice noodles.
― Treeship, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:13 (ten years ago) link
site new answerssite new answersi should do some work nowsite new answersfart
― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Friday, 12 July 2013 20:14 (ten years ago) link
sitting at homei my underwearswatching wheel of fortunereading ilxvanna is so hotneed a snickers
― waterface, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:15 (ten years ago) link
hurting stole my joke
I think that captured something about our generation's predicamentis this still part of my poem?I am not sure.
― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Friday, 12 July 2013 20:15 (ten years ago) link
once i get a full time jobi am never coming back to this websiteyou stupid fucks
jk
― Treeship, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:15 (ten years ago) link
you are the poem
― waterface, Friday, July 12, 2013 4:15 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
stole? motherfucker I preemptively shocked and awed your joke.
― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Friday, 12 July 2013 20:16 (ten years ago) link
a guy on the internet said I stole his jokeI said that I didn'tfart
treeshiptreebutttreeshiptreebutttreeshiptreebutt
― ty based gay dead computer god (zachlyon), Friday, 12 July 2013 20:17 (ten years ago) link
not a bad "strategy" i thoughtscratched my bellybuttonconsidered what ilx would be like without "tweeshit"
― waterface, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:17 (ten years ago) link
sometimes i wonder what it would be like to be a website
― ⚓ (elmo argonaut), Friday, 12 July 2013 20:18 (ten years ago) link
waterface:your hostility toward meseems excessiveand unwarrantedand "insane"
― Treeship, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:19 (ten years ago) link
Treeships your idea of hostilityis kind of crazyi was merely respondingto your joke about quitting ilx
― waterface, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:21 (ten years ago) link
sweetmakes sense"tweeshit" sounds like a hostile nicknamei was bullied as a childi think some of the stuff you say is funnyand loled when you compared me to malcolm gladwell once
― Treeship, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:22 (ten years ago) link
i also reminded youthat you are the poem
― waterface, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:22 (ten years ago) link
if you can't laugh at tweeshitwhat can you laugh at
― waterface, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:23 (ten years ago) link
if you don't write this poem, tao lin will. he's probably reading this thread right now.
― Spectrum, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:25 (ten years ago) link
there is a ninety-five percent chancehe is reading this thread right nowbecausehe reads all of his pressand shitand tweeted to me once when i mentioned himto clarify something
― Treeship, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:27 (ten years ago) link
tao lin is reading every threadright now
― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Friday, 12 July 2013 20:27 (ten years ago) link
guys
― waterface, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:28 (ten years ago) link
hey guys
hey TAO LIN can i borrow some money i want to go to NYU
― reggie (qualmsley), Friday, 12 July 2013 20:29 (ten years ago) link
i like how in taipei"paul" lives in williamsburgoff the graham street stopbecause my friend lives thereand i am there all the timeand all of the public spaceswherein the novelthey did drugswere places i have been
― Treeship, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:29 (ten years ago) link
Treeship are you "drugs?"
― waterface, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:30 (ten years ago) link
i used to live theretoo,treeship
― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Friday, 12 July 2013 20:30 (ten years ago) link
i am going to move somewhere like that, probably not super close to the Lbecause that shitis expensive
― Treeship, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:31 (ten years ago) link
waterface:i don't do drugsanymore, really
― Treeship, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:32 (ten years ago) link
no Treeshipwhat I meant wasyou seem to be all of the placesTao Lin was doing drugsso i was thinking"Maybe Treeship is drugs."
― waterface, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:32 (ten years ago) link
maybe we can summon him to appear like the chrisagis brothers.
we must make an offering to him. we'll need insense, a plate of research chemicals, and an Apple product. with our collective dissatisfaction over 21st century urban life combined, I think we can do it.
taooooooooooootaooooooooooootaooooooooooooooooooooooooo
― Spectrum, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:33 (ten years ago) link
waterface,shitwaithmno, i remembered:i am not drugsi am a human being, who is male,and born in the state of new yorkin 1989, according to my passportand drugsdon't have passports
― Treeship, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:34 (ten years ago) link
spectrum:tweet a link to this threadto tao linand he will probably make an accountand show up. i don't want to do that though,because he will act in his characteristic, schticky mannerand i will look insaneto other ilxorsfor arguing that "this guy" is a great novelist,which is something i believe anywayand won't back down fromon the strength of taipei andrichard yates
― Treeship, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:39 (ten years ago) link
are either of those novels as good as 'a game of thrones'?
― reggie (qualmsley), Friday, 12 July 2013 20:40 (ten years ago) link
hahahaha
― waterface, Friday, 12 July 2013 20:40 (ten years ago) link
these fake tao lin poemsall end wrongmy asshole itches
― ty based gay dead computer god (zachlyon), Friday, 12 July 2013 20:41 (ten years ago) link