The Tears of Things

Not By A Long Shot

by The Tears Of Things

This started out as a reply to a persistent droning firefly without no light that's been bumping ineptly around, but then it got more general. In the comments to the last posting, a blurb writer for the Phoenix New Times left a short quote-comment that got Catherine and I talking toward a long fruitful reply, way past the dimbulb commenter, and this is how it came out, distilled and summarized:

To JP:

Less suffering and better treatment for us all is among my goals.

That's you, writing to us, back on October 10. If you really believe that, why do you continue to plague us with your pseudo-intellectual elliptical crap? [The reader will have to look up the comment. We don't even want to copy it.] It would treat us with more respect and less suffering, that's for sure. And we believe that Catherine told you "so long," many days ago. Yet here you are, ignoring the admonition, with nothing to say, just as before.

If you're so concerned about heartlessness and evil, you should direct your finger-wagging nattering pseudo-moralizing at some of your bosses and colleagues at Phoenix New Times, including Amy Silvernman, Rick Barrs, Stephen Lemons, and the literal Fat Cats themselves, Jim Larkin and Michael Lacey. Scumballs all, in our experience. But God forbid you bite those hands. Instead, you supinely write smileyface boilerplate blurbs for your masters --don't make waves-- cash your checks, and come after us, who are without doubt --and, in this cultural climate, with pride-- the most ostracized, friendless, outsider couple in this Valley in fifty years or more.

Everybody gets a pass but us. Every artist who celebrates misogyny or stinkiness or grinning death or cartoonish stupidity gets kudos and exhibitions and recognition and money. We're a different kind of artist, and we've wised up, and we get the way the angle is played, and you, whoever you are, are not the first to try to jab us with it.

Look above, fool. You don't even mention The Blessing Room. It's a real idea. You think we should give precedence to your quote --you didn't write it, after all, did you?-- over our beautiful, elegiac concept? Look inside, fool. It isn't a joke. Yet you skate right over it. What does that say about you, and those you serve? Let us save you the trouble of thinking: you're nothing much at all.

Your quote says, with tiresome repetition, that we should take it and take it and take it, and never be bitter or angry or sorrowful because then it might lead to evil, you shallow Julie Peterson who has probably never even had a life yet.

We don't take it.

We're done taking it.

We've been done taking it for four years.

And we're not done not taking it.

Not by a long shot.

In case y'all haven't noticed --which you have, to each other but not to us-- we've been dishing it out for over four years. Just last week, for the first time, we mentioned the "revered" print publisher Joe Segura, who has been around town for at least twenty-five years, and has had half that long to build up a big fat internet profile. Yet with our first mention, we climb near the top of his Google pages. If you bracket his name in quotation marks, for example, out of 1,550 citations, we're number 9. And we're not just there to gratuitously jab a thumb in his eye; we're there to point out his hypocrisy and his need to change his ways. Oh, yes, we do believe in black and white; we do believe in making value judgements. You know who we are. Oh yes, we're nobodies. Just ignore us. Go your way, sinking lower in the stink. But . . .

We're not done dishing it out.

No, not by a long shot.

Get used to it, you wankers.

Is this the best you've got?

Posted by Jerome at October 24, 2007 05:40 PM | TrackBack