Hey, Mr. Fish, looks like the universe is paying attention to your column! It wasn’t Ryan Howard; it was an amateur in the stands, but I think it still counts. Friday, at the Yankees-Rockies game, Michael Kacer, a “lucky” mono-armed Iraq War vet caught a baseball with his cap. “Kacer, a 29-year-old from Scranton, Pa., stuck his cap out over a railing with his right arm in Section 121A of Yankee Stadium, snatching Curtis Granderson’s foul ball in the first inning.” (quote from the article on the Yankees website) Random acts of war v random acts of art? Random splotches of paint from Pollack? Perspective. Perspective. Perspective.

Am I way too behind everybody’s infinitely bending curve here, or is Mr. Fish’s use of the word “nonexistence” kind of fishy in his 2nd to last graph? - “. . . but the yardstick necessary for measuring the talented against the untalented would be nonexistence because everybody would be crammed onto the same diamond,. . .” ‘Cuz, I can go with the whole not being here thing, especially if that’s the measuring yardstick. Wait, if I’m talented, it means I’m not here, right? OK, watch. See, now, I’m gone.

consider it a pithing contest, perhaps?

Picture this:

Mr. Fish and Chris Hedges rolling on the floor in side splitting laughter as they swap Jesus jokes.

Here’s another for your collective collection:

Jesus’ father, Joseph, was out in the yard making some prehistoric cabinets while Jesus and his mother Mary were in the kitchen. All of a sudden, Jesus runs out to the yard and says,

“Father, did you call me?!?”

Joseph replies, “No, I just hit my thumb.”

Such a waste of words when they could be used
constructively.

oh yea, i forgot my favorite suicidal author…
John kennedy Toole. 

there are some nice kernels in your verbal swill Mr Fish.. but a lot to wade through to get them

You still use your hands? Wow, that is sooo last century.

Obviously, masturbation leads to one-handed typing, which slows the thought processes.

Nay, you naysayers. Fish should be passed out as on the mount to feed the multitudes waiting for the word.

God damn that was satisfying reading.

Thanks again, Mr Fish.

@Gordy

I don’t want to get involved in your pot/kettle masturbation debate with Mr. Fish and Mr. Cyr. I just wanted to say that I loved the mysterious Charlie Chaplin “cell phone” time traveler footage. It was truly chilling. I will never forget it as long as I live.

It is hard to gauge what the writers could possibly do to get fired when it seems everything they do displeases/enrages at least half of their regular hardcore audience of heavily medicated schizophrenics.

It won’t be long before Fish is fired from truthdig. He’s way too conservative.

QUOTE, Gordy:

“it’s ‘effect’ change, not ‘affect’ change.”
________________________________

No it isn’t.

If “both kinds [of activism]” cause a change, or influence the what, how or when of a change, then those both kinds of activism affect change.

The change would be the effect resulting from the activism that affected it — if activism could.

Also, Fish’s use of “both kinds” had nothing to do with genders or sexual preferences. The “both kinds” referred to were “organized” activism and “individual” activism.

Fish should have referred to the first of the two as being organizational rather than organized, since an individual can be as organized as organizations are. Some individuals are considerably more organized than groups can be.

Whether or not Fish’s article was masturbation might depend upon what the meaning of “is” is.

Oh Fish, pot-kettle…

The fifth paragraph (“Both kinds have benefits that…”) is stonkingly tortuous and ugly. The he/she him/her stuff does more harm than good; just use your own gender or choose one arbitrarily; it’s not so ‘fracking’ important to the cause of gender equality that you should feel obliged to make an already clunky paragraph virtually unreadable. I would like to see how you would cope in French or Italian, where even inanimate objects are gendered. And this prim PC-speak from one who pretends to be beyond twee moralism (although what you escape from moralism TO is never articulated).

Overall I thought this piece was ironically both badly written and masturbatory. Again and again I find that you adopt a pretentious register - you avoid clarity and plain speaking because this would expose the paucity of coherent argument or even serious thought. You are, here, a dilettante pretending to be more, throwing insults at the people just a step beneath you in the artistic pecking-order - and I’m not at all sure Stephen King really belongs in that category: as far as the writing fundamentals go, he smokes you.

Also, it’s ‘effect’ change, not ‘affect’ change.

Because writing has been stored up for generations we have mountains of stuff produced by a super-elite. People grow up reading this and want to reach that level. But it’s by definition a virtually unreachable super-elite. If we can stop trying to deceive ourselves that we are geniuses perhaps we can appreciate being merely quite bright, or quite dumb, or whatever it is that we are. The vanity, overreaching desire and pretention cause you to suffer, not the lack of genius. Genius is overrated. And there’s some genuine Buddhism for you.

Personally, I would do away with airplanes.

There are just too damn many of them.

Weather satellites we can keep.

Also, a person should only be allowed to act in one movie every ten years.

Speaking of writers…
Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter S Thompson, David F. Wallace.

Writers of verbal diarrhea at times. Some sparks of genius with some coherence.  Nonetheless they all have one thing in common.

keep the wheat, rid the chaff

That’s life in a society where everything is for sale.  Writing a book on aliens with laser pistols can get you more money and fame than a book of philosophy, but that doesn’t mean it gets you more artistic success.

*
meant to type “Not one of them writers.”
Pretty bad when one messes up masturbation…

Democratic societies are unfit for the publication of such thunderous revelations as I am in the habit of making.
Salvador Dali

Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.
Salvador Dali

In order to change the world, you have to get your head together first.
Jimi Hendrix

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
Albert Einstein

It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.
Stephen Hawking

Not one of the ‘writers’

Word
Renderer
Intending
To
Educate/Entertain
Readers

WRITER

JDmysticDJ,

While I am flattered that you remember who I am, what part of my comments
seemed like an endorsement?

I was actually try to be nice and say that I appreciate when Mr. Fish sticks to his
fiction and not some kind of boring preachy essay. 

I’m with you brother; this is junk.  But now, I actually am endorsing your
comments, so…

I was going to write that I was on the fence until I saw thethirdman’s endorsement, which had enlightened me to Fishy’s nihilistic reprobation, sort of a killing of two carrion eating scavengers with one stone, but that would be a lie, I noticed Fishy’s reprobation at first glimpse.

Virtue is vice and vice a versa, amoral is moral and moral is immoral, as seen from Fishy’s scummy little feces clouded bowl.

Fishy’s attack on Christianity is oh so tiresome, sophomoric, and irrelevant. Concepts of good and evil are no longer dictated by an ancient fraudulent religious document, but I value the “ Sermon on the Mount” for its Daoism like ethics and morality, and the book of “Ecclesiastes” for its wisdom; “vanity of vanities, everything is vanity.” Carly Simon could build a new career with Fishy in mind. Incidentally, Chomsky describes the prophets as “dissident intellectuals,” I’m on board with that description.

I suspect that the likes of Fishy and thethirdman will be ecstatically getting their rocks off as the world crumbles around them, actually, I seriously doubt that their ilk experience any semblance of ecstasy unless it comes from a drug, or from a maniacally deranged cynical hysteria.

Fishy’s time would be better spent watching “TMZ.”

I even like Fish’s writing and thoughts when they are as clear as mud. I’d have
dinner with him anytime.

I’ve been a good writer for as long as I can remember
(which doesn’t mean I haven’t written some crap).
People like me are called “graphomaniacs” (word
addiction).

Where do you go with this compulsion? Back in the
day, you aspired to the “great American novel.” When
I was 19,the most inspiring writers I knew were
William Burroughs and Bob Dylan. But then I got
religion and fracked-up that whole thing.

Today, though, I don’t devour books like they were
going out of style: I daintily pick at them like a
plate of liver and onions. Books aren’t as
interactive as social networking—it’s just you and
the author in anonymity.

Am I premature to say the book is dead? When I find
one I want to read, I want to speed up the process—
cut to the chase. I want all this fanciness broken
down into a quick learning experience. Time is short.

Wow!  Finally we find out what we’re all doing here: 
“...  misconstruing the consensuality of the chaos with a deeply meaningful camaraderie.”

I don’t agree with a lot of what Fish has to say in this piece, I actually dislike a lot of it.

But, I prefer to hear what he has to say, and the way that he says it.

Sometimes, there are opinions inside of us that others will certainly hate. But don’t expect to shape Fish’s opinion. We have not walked in his shoes.

And since it’s his column…

For Mr Fish

Exactly.

‘Typically, when one decides to save the world, he or she is deciding to save only the parts of the world that he or she finds most flattering to his or her ego and sense of right, wrong and beauty. After all, what good is a savior’s concept of moral law without the implied lawlessness of contrarians who embody a contrary point of view?’

Thank god for the people who try to save the world, and are capable of choosing one issue to attack in the myriad of injustices and pain… for whatever reason they devote themselves to it.

Better a chowline of stale mints than a heapin helpin of sour grapes for one.

I like Stephen King!

Wow.  Usually a big fan of both Mr. Fish’s art and writing.  Definitely think he
shines brightest with his fiction.

I love finding some merely mortal wit
Trumping a huge pile of immortal shit.

Thanks.