Momus, judges

judges: http://www.cardozo.net/life/spring1999/wigs/group-of-judges-sm.jpg

http://www.flim.com/flim/article.html?a=026&t=article

Chris, this piece of writing is either an emulation of the Eliza computer program or an actual dialog between a human and said program. My problem with it is that the human responses seem as random and programmatic as the mechanical ones. The considerable possibilities for humour have been missed, and I consider humour a great sign of intelligence. I award 3.

Who will submit the next URL of web-scrawl to my gavel of mercy?

I haven't read this myself, I just called it up randomly. It looks like it wants to be intelligent, though.

http://deanna.ladyinterference.com/ilx/deannarant01.html

No matter what criticism you may throw at it, I've already thought it about this piece, probably.

Actually, I've only just found out. This is turning into the sketch where the judge doesn't know what a VCR is, but can identify an inflatable woman.

And I'm still on the phone, damn, ten minute recess!

http://www.completeobscurity.com/x/showart.asp?ID=66

This is very badly written and punctuated, a passive agressive employee rant. I'm tempted to see it as an Onion-type parody. Unfortunately it seems

('What are you typing?' says the person on the phone, angrily. 'You can do that later!')

2 out of 10.

http://www.erickraft.com/markdorset/topicalguide/dust.html

www.freakytrigger.co.uk/underworld.html

http://www.freakytrigger.co.uk/underworld.html

Amaterist, this is the best text so far. It's pithy, brief, well-expressed, speculative. It has something of La Fontaine about it, and something of Aesop, and those two are models of excellent writing. The methodical investigation of something inherently impossible also reminds me of Kafka and Borges. I was going to say 8, but I'm going to knock off a mark for the text's main failing, the unnecessary reductive one liner about 'Sheesh, I'm eating my own tail'. In my view it would be much stronger and more elegant if this obvious, populist line were cut. 7, then.

Francesco, this exegesis on dust begins by reminding me of the too-sensitive, too laboured 'fine writing' of Proust and Peter Handke, but soon turns into the gobbledygook of algebra, thereby revealing itself to be parody. I suppose it might tingle some propellorhead's funny bone, but for me Raymond Queneau did this kind of thing much better. I'll give it a 6.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Parker

Ronan, this piece begins in unpromising 'employee rant' mode, like the one Ned linked above. It's better written than Ned's. With the transition to a live review half way through, the reader is in a quandry. Should he feel annoyed for being subjected to the writer's musings on his own trapped, lazy and frustrated life? Or should he admire the daring mixture of genres (autobiography sliding into criticism) and applaud the way this highlights the cathartic nature of music, which can only ever be consumed by persons in the midst of all their contingent personhood? I'm going to plump for the latter yet still award only an ambivalent 5, perhaps because the final sentence should have a question mark at the end.

Cinniblount, my first inclination with this Eminem review by our very own Ethan is to applaud the adoption of a strong narrative voice, in this case scattershot AIM-talk. It's certainly original, and probably 'the voice of youth'. What would I know, though, I never use AIM and I haven't been young for a while. (Come to think of it, when I was young I modelled my prose on Boileau and Tacitus.) So I'll give it a ten for nerve. My reservation comes with the thought that this is a 'Catcher in the Rye' written by Holden, or a Molesworth book written by Molesworth himself. I don't doubt the author is mocking himself and treating himself like a persona, but I do doubt he has any other styles or personae at his disposal. The disadvantage of this, of course, is myopic closeness to his own concerns, which are not necessarily those of the reader, and a failure to do 'prolepsis', or to internalise an editor or even a reader. To its credit, the piece acknowledges this limitation by putting in a (somewhat incestuous, in-jokey) dialogue with Ryan, the Pitchfork editor. If Ethan has invented this dialogue, I will eat my hat and admit that he has two (rather similar) voices in his repertoire. Otherwise, I will award 0 which, combined with the initial 10, makes 5. A rare combination of cosmic vision and autistic navel-gazing.

Dom, this is a blog that follows the standard blogging formula almost suspiciously closely. It reminds me of the blog about the porn store clerk, which I was sure was written by a professional writer who'd studied blog form and got its glib, punchy triviality down pat. The phrase 'hugging the shore' comes to mind. This writer flits inoffensively over the surface of her academic life, never being exactly boring, but never showing any genuine originality or passion either. I'd have to give it a 4, and recommend the author to take a peek at this blog for an example of something better written and more original.

David, this Colleen review follows the same pattern as Ronan's Underworld review, shifting from the personal to the critical. The writing here is more polished and considered -- in fact, I have a feeling that if Henry James had written record reviews, they might have read like this; sentences strung out through endless subordinate clauses, fusty words like 'flaneur' and 'heuristic', delicately existential insights into how 'we' live our lives, ostentatious abstractions like 'my identity... blurring and fraying'. It's all the stuff of somewhat forced 'fine writing', and therefore risks looking like a sophomore effort, a spurious attempt at profundity. There's considerable writing skill on display here (with a brass frame), but when it all boils down to the judgement that the record in question is 'boring', there's a distinct sense of bathos. Extra marks for the conceit at the end whereby the writer affects to 'pretend I'm not me' and gives us a capsule review, peeked over his own shoulder. Very M.C. Escher! 7

Lots of testosterone in this angsty, angry blog, the kind of thing that seems always on the verge of 'going postal'. Rather too many fuck yous for my liking, a rather disingenuous tone-mixture of 'meh' and cautious vulnerability. The brevity and perplexity have an almost Pinterian tone of menace sometimes. 'So I got the car.' (Paragraph.) 'Everyone can and should fuck off.' (Paragraph.) Actually, come to think of it, Hemingway's blog might have read like this. Anyway, it seems all tied up with the tragedy of being an American male, and I'd like to see this writer getting in touch with his inner female. 6.

Chris, I'm going to give these oo pieces a 9. Concise, witty, collectible, aphoristic, absurdist, conceptual, minimalist... best thing so far. Eat one, you have to eat the whole tray.

o.nate, this capsule encyclopaedia entry for Charlie Parker at first seems a model of lucidity and concision. Its air of infallible authority, though, is only skin-deep. I just don't accept that Parker's main contribution is in having shifted jazz from 'arpeggionic flurries' to 'chromatisism', and it doesn't help that one of those terms is mis-spelled and the other made up. There's nothing worse than authority trying to blind the reader with science which turns out, on closer inspection, to be voodoo. 4

barbara morgenstern - "die liebe (r. lippok: schneekristall mix)"

I've got some more ideas about things for you to review, but you can start out with these.

Andrew, this is yet more blog despondency (blogspondency?) -- one begins to wonder whether there is therapeutic value in the semi-public admission of negative feelings, or whether they just anchor and externalise what would otherwise be trivial and transitory moods. 'I think I may just be wallowing in self-pity' says the author. Well, yes. 'It just goes further to suggest that I don't have a creative bone in my body. Fuck it.' No, don't fuck it! You're in the entertainment industry now, lad, the roar of the crowd, the sizzle of the greasepaint! It may just be a blog, but pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and let's do the show right here! 5

David, I have the same impression of this as of the Neumu review. It's fabulously well written and very subtly thought through, but sets up a thought process in my head: Has pop music -- and pop reviewing -- really become so sophisticated? This Flaubertian refinement seems so far beyond the call of duty. Beyond anything even John Updike would write in a literary review. So is it appropriate and necessary in a pop -- or avant folk -- review? Again, bathos seems inevitable in the last paragraph, when a hasty sketch of the actual content of the record ('implied and expressed sadnesses, gentle guitar playing, “gaelic” instrumentation') makes it sound somehow unworthy of the tremulous speculations that make up the bulk of the review, a mere occasion or pretext for young Barthes to flex. (Young late Barthes, to be precise.) The same writer somewhat more relaxed and worldly could be a killer, though. 7

This is one of the worst-written Momus essays for a while. The 'unreliable narrator' device is about as subtle as a truck, and he tells the stuff about being a little boy in his daddy's language lab twice. He needs a good editor. Or two.

This is good, informal writing with all the grammar, spelling and syntax in the right places. It's readable, entertaining, unpretentious. There is a kind of Gen X feel, as if everything in culture were a rehash or a soundbite, though, giving me a slight flavour of Nick Hornby and Stuart Maconie, but I'll forgive that for the use of the fabulous adjective 'schlubby'. The writer is a professional, or could be one should he wish. 7

There's something eccentric about this which makes me feel like I'm breathing helium or walking on a slippery, tilted surface. I'm bowled a googly immediately with 'when it comes to the music world, Duran Duran = me'. Paragraph two begins 'So, what exactly is a Duran Duran fan?' -- a question I would personally not pose at this point, since we've established that Duran Duran is the author. But, after a lengthy quote from the local paper (with 'WTF?' interjections from the author), we get the same rhetorical question posed in paragraph seven, with the adjunct 'Or, to be more precise, what constitutes a Duran Duran fanhood?' It soon appears that, rather than define Duran fans, the author wants to fight them: 'I have a real problem with fans from 1983 - 1984 waltzing in... To all of you little feathers just floating back in again, listen here -- give it up.' It's terrible writing, but terribly entertaining. Would somebody put the floor straight again, please? 4

This is an efficiently-crafted piece of professional blurb-writing. Unlike the Wykipedia Parker piece, though, I'm not tempted to distrust it, although I do slightly resent being lectured at with the slightly zany and utopian footnote: 'Hir' and 'Ze' are experimental nongendered pronouns, not typos. It's a bit like getting directions from a man at the roadside who turns out to be Wilhelm Reich and tells you to turn left at the orgone accumulator. 4

The footnotes were intended as notes for the editor. I didn't intend for them to be included on the finished page, but they were anyway.

http://www.geocities.com/scottrc80

... And wait on pins and needles for the Judgment of Momus.

Thanks, nick. And that's in the FAQ, which I read, but I confused links with posting images and hence the dumb stuff.

http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=balls_are_huge

I sentence that you be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution where you shall be hanged by the enormous balls and, being alive, cut down, whereupon your privy members shall be cut off (if possible) and your bowels taken out and burned before you, your head severed from your body and your body divided into four quarters to be disposed of at the King’s pleasure. Do you have any last requests? 1

Hey Momus, you can judge my incomplete error-strewn novel if you like, I'll forgive you if you give up after the first couple of paragraphs.

This is concrete and compelling. It reads like a frisky piece of 'outsider literature', the product of a schizophrenic or a child. Its obsessive, megalomaniacal litany documenting imaginary personal powers is clearly a transparent fantasy compensation -- in fact we are dealing here with a weak narrator whose ego hangs by a thread. He is misguided. Yet the imagination at work is livid and powerful. There are parallels with the 500,000 word novel of Henry Darger, or the racist rants of Jim Roche. And yet this might also be a canny visual artist interested in creating an exaggerated, absurdist Marvel-scape. Apart from odd slips like 'I've got got clothes and a fridge and a washing machine', it's very well-written, with an insistent, muscular rhythm and striking images on each line. In the end I have to assume it's a clever satire on American culture and award it an 8, though if it went on for 500,000 words I'd probably reduce that to 3.

(warning: not brief piece)

http://www.memorygongs.com/citysoul.php

Sterling Clover's Sarai review reminds me of my early Voice-reading days. I'd buy it in London and marvel at dense and quaint boho-hipster tone, subcultural patter we hadn't heard in Britain since the days of Charles Shaar Murray. And although this review is high fiving me and doing an emulation of rap-speak rather than shaking its peace beads, it still hits me like a cloud of joss smoke. It's a throwback to the days when the underground press and the underground music industry were backslapping hipster equals, speaking their own dense, tribal language. When subculture was still subculture, in other words, which has to be 1976 at the latest. (When did Virgin invent the Megastore?) Part of the appeal of this kind of prose is the feeling that if you understand it, you are an initiate, a hipster. So you struggle to join the dots. You play 'hunt the verb'. 'The production matches up, with sometime Dre producer Scott Storch's G-funk keyboards on the cheap, Bomb Squad alum Ali Dee slinging noise-wall Southern bounce, and Beau Dozier spitting the same post-"Can I Get A . . ." tech-house madness he brought on 3LW's A Girl Can Mack.' The irony here, or perhaps I mean the symmetry, is that the review is of a white rap artist, and Sterling is basically approving 'how [Sarai] turns what she thinks distinguishes [black producers and rappers] into how she mimics them.' This shows a keen understanding of the essence of pop, its artificiality and feelgood bad faith, and the conclusion, 'Sarai wants to be hip-hop, own it, hold it, kick it, throw it—so bad you can't help but feel that need' actually comes close to my favourite saying by Adorno: 'In the end, soul itself is the longing of the soul-less for redemption'. Which applies not just to white rap artists, but also to journalists who wish they could be part of the subculture they're commentating. You want it enough? You got it! 7

Well, for copyright reasons you can't find any Gary Larson cartoons on the web, so I guess Scott is filling a void and providing a public service. Humour is pretty subjective, but I admit captions like 'please don't interrupt me while I'm babbling incoherently to myself' strike me as rather lame and normative, not far from the office posters that say 'You don't have to be mad to work here... but it helps!' Order in court, order in court! Guards, take that man away! 3

This starts as the blog version of Spinal Tap -- a self-deprecating band puff -- then segues into Mr Bean, with an amusingly defensive rumination on eating one's own lip skin. I prefer Mr Bean, though we're perilously close here to The Dullest Blog in the World. 3

in the reviews section

Ah, a humourous murder mystery. An unabashed amateur NaNoWriMo project. Granny reaches into frozen pea cabinet and grasps corpse's penis instead of broccoli. When non-professionals turn to writing, you hope they'll bring some fresh mindset, break away from literary convention. So it's a bit disappointing when they rehash formula for laughs, just a bit sloppier than the slick originals they're pastiching. (Hey, isn't that the disappointing thing about indie rock too?) Here we get sentences apparently unread even by their creator, like 'E was a wiry young man, with a goatee beard and greasy unkempt beard he played the drums in a thrash metal band called Frozen Corpses.' What, two beards? I rest my case. 3

E was a wiry young man, with a goatee beard and greasy unkempt beard he played the drums in a thrash metal band called Frozen Corpses.

Let's give Jel the benefit of the doubt. Let's try, anyway. E's bandmates are being referred to, thanks to metonymy (by which device the part stands for the whole) as 'a goatee beard' and a 'greasy unkempt beard'. They are perhaps Peaches' backing band, for instance. I could even accept that they are 'beards' in the fag hag sense, chaperones to a gay male who needs an alibi. But even these stretches of the imagination are not enough. No, the text demands more of us. We must then picture them all clustered around the same drumkit ('with two beards, a goatee and a greasy, he played the drums...') Frankly, this beggars belief. In all my years at the bar I have never heard anything so preposterous, and since the rest of Jel's page fails to reach this level of Munchausenian drolerie I am inclined to consider it, alas, a temporary aberration. The defendant may plead insanity if he sees fit. I will try to be lenient, by all the stars!

An enigmatic little poem. I seek the 'key' to its obscurities, but the lock fails to swing open and the ambiguities remain intact, which is a mark of good poetry. I am reminded of Paul Celan, somehow. Which is a good sign. I like the last two lines. 'It's mad, but it just might work' indeed. 8

White beard (noun): similar to pearl necklace, white {sperm} beard. Semen on one's chin after fellatio.

I am considering a sentence of hard labour.

Damn, I was hoping to finish the re-worked version of that panel before you got to it. Instead of babbling incoherently, he's drinking his morning cup of coffee!! Get it??!! Even lunatics in the asylum need the elixir of the Gods to get through Monday morning in the madhouse!! Can't we ALL relate? Oh, and the other guy has ripped out of his straitjacket and is furiously masturbating, and his spew is about to land in the coffee cup!! It's funny AND shocking!!

The City Without A Soul. Why then does the author resort so heavily to anthropomorphism, as if seeking to assign to the inanimate collection of buildings and trees the attributes of human beings? Do I have to remind him that anthropomorphism is a serious felony in literary law, nearly as grave as paedagogy? Why then must 'buildings stride' and 'windows stare lifeless', why must 'red leaves cry' and 'clocks turn the minutes over like pages'? Why must 'buildings tremble with the thoughts of the workers' and why, why must 'trees seem to speak', to 'shake their leaves at me and laugh'? Be warned, you will never sell the film rights, for Nicholas Cage will never agree to be cast as a laughing tree. (Mort Schuman may, however, be interested in making a richly pathetic musical of your page.) 4

A Prefuse 73 review may be a handy 'launchpad' with which to beat your 'granny', but don't 'egg the pudding'. Excuse me? I am merely attempting to draw attention to the tendency, in music reviews, to layer metaphor upon metaphor, without thought for the incongruous landscape created in the reader's mind. Look at what happens here. 2001’s Vocal Studies And Uprock Narratives was the opening salvo -- fine, we establish the idea that the record is a bullet or canonball being fired -- that had you salivating But wait! Nobody salivates in the face of a canonball, unless they're a cannibal, surely? Reading on, now the creamy goodness of One Word Extinguisher should keep you fully sated. But 'cream' in such proximity to 'extinguisher' suggests the foam that shoots out of a fire extinguisher. Handy for putting out the fire caused by the salvo, perhaps, but who would 'sate' themselves by eating such stuff? Not even a cannibal would wolf down this 'cream'! Later, Herren is hand-making hip hop mom and pop-style. But a few lines later, as in a pantomime, Mom and Pop cast aside their humble disguises and reveal their humble painted easter eggs as, in fact, another crown of downhome jewels from the Decatur king. 5

http://www.jabootu.com/cantstopmusic.htm

(Not actually by Ken Begg, main mover of said site, but his Canadian minion-in-Jabootu Jason MacIsaac.)

I am asking the clerk of court to delete that remark from the record, although I may use it when I come to sentencing Jel, should he plead insanity.

Rate me, hate me, validate me

http://www.krokodile.co.uk/out2/biograph.htm

?

I would be interested in Momus's views on this, though: http://www.scotsmanality.com/article.php?story=20030423204549553

This thread dispute between Nate and Trife resembles two hearty, healthy young chimps sparring
a) for territory
b) to see which of them is more mature
c) to see which can get the protection of 'the elders', sitting nearby chewing on twigs while being deloused by females.

Nate mentions cocaine, Trife steps into the clearing with a challenge that he has experienced neither the white powder nor, in fact, sexual intercourse (staking a claim to seniority by implying that he has already sampled both). Nate appeals to the elders to expel the aggressor but is met with indifference. Trife chases him into the brush with the cry 'eat my ass you clueless cum bubble'. As literature or evidence of intelligent life on earth, zero. A mark added for Trife's assonance and alliteration: 'ass' and 'clueless' have alliterative endings, 'clueless' and 'cum' alliterative beginnings, and 'cum bubble' is a nice piece of assonance. For humanity, though, bathos and probable deletion. 1

this writ was by samuel pepsy it says. he writs about the ship and the lord. that means hes talking about jeesus and a boat ride with jeesus. also about the bed and to sleep there too. then about a pickle that was sad but not writ why. and he married a womon that is his wife and likes to go to church. and the talker at the church dood a talk about joggening. then another lady came there that had a baby that was cute and a baby. the lady that had a baby sat on a pew and was talking about feets. then the roof was crashed by a dangerus axcident. then the church talker said. i will fix that roof that got broked and you should go home now. then afterchurch he called a boy on a phone that could ring and they went and had a something drink and it was enjoydible. ate a fish too. then he said. i like a pretty women. and trumpets too. then he vomatid. then he called mister bowzer and asked him fored books. then went to vizet jeesus in the house. when he got there he sat on a bed there and jusd looked at womens that were looking at him thru the windows. he not writ about jeesus and why not in the house. then he left the house and to buy socks for his feets. and met frends while buying socks for his feets. then he writs more about drinkings and some misters. then sleeps in a bed.

when he wakes upped. he talking about mister bowzer and the books of mister bowzer again. then he walked around the river and saw a scary dead man in the river that had to be burried in the nite becos of being dead. then he went and dooded more drinking with importont misters. then they all had a fite and ate walnuts that were good. at 100 oclock he went home and had a barrel that he drank with the misters. then went to bed.

i wantad to hear more about why the pickle was sad and the jeesus boat ride. that means i gives this writ that samuel pepsy dooded the number 5.

'The Caudal Appendage and Haemorrhoids' is my new track on Electromancer. The words are from a poem I recently had published in M(onkey) K(ettle) magazine. I would be thrilled if you reviewed it, Momus.

http://medpundit.blogspot.com/2002_11_17_medpundit_archive.html

...one begins to wonder whether there is therapeutic value in the semi-public admission of negative feelings, or whether they just anchor and externalise what would otherwise be trivial and transitory moods.

OT fucking M

http://biroco.com/2003_08.htm

Unleash you superego on that one, Your Honour. But remember, justic is blind, and you still have one eye.

submitted

There were concerts in the park...

i like how he's based this assessment on the fact that at a club night he went to it took a long time for the DJs to play grime.

I wish he was still doing this thing so he could critique my LJ, now that I actually *have* one (these were the pre-LJ days for me, I think). But as for now, I'll reflect upon his "terrible writing, but terribly entertaining" quip.

American Football (A Reflection upon the Gulf War)

Hallelullah!
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.

We blew the shit right back up their own ass
And out their fucking ears.

It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
They suffocated in their own shit!

Hallelullah.
Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew them into fucking shit.
They are eating it.

Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew their balls into shards of dust,
Into shards of fucking dust.

We did it.

Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth.

Wolves, lower.

.

...

Och, Moemoos, will ye no come back againe?

THREAD TITLE RIFE WITH POSSIBLE ALLUSIONS
ALSO SELF-PARODIC

-- amateurist (amateurist), Saturday, September 27, 2003 9:31 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

lol