< Andrea Coates' Writing JUNK >

= /|/|\|\ = Dear Margaret Atwood = /|/|\|\ = I am your Heir Apparent

2012-02-12T14:08:00.000-08:00

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Andrea Coates
FernHood, Vic City, Van Isle
Coast Salish Territory
Canada
Turtle Island

RESUME

Dear Margaret Atwood, my Name is Andrea Coates. I want your Job. I want to be Canada's Best Known and Most Talented Writer. Not Immediately. Immediately, I want to be acknowledged as your Heir Apparent. You don't have to acknowledge me as Such, not in those Words, not Publicly, but if you could help me get a Book Deal, that would be Much appreciated. The Rest I can do on my Own. Now I'm going to tell you why I am your Heir Apparent, and I'm going to frame my Reasoning as an Argument as to why I think being a Great Canadian Writer is the Only Job I am cut out for.

People within [schools], who don’t adjust to that structure, who don’t accept it and internalize it (you can’t really work with it unless you internalize it, and believe it); people who don’t do that are likely to be weeded out along the way, starting from kindergarten, all the way up. - Noam Chomsky

My Problems with School and Employment- One a Preparation for the Other- emerged Young. A Wilful, Colourful Child, I resented School: School with its White Walls; School with its Grey Halls; School with its Crowds; School with its Bells; School with its Required Activities; School with its Retention Tests; School with its Social Dramas; School with its Demands; School Full of Fools; School Full of Rules; School, I Really couldn't stand it.

So it was that by Eleventh Grade I began suffering Panic Attacks. These would happen at School and be triggered by Some Thing as Mundane as watching the Way a Guy's Head Band inched up his Head during an intraMural Basket Ball Game at Lunch Time, a Fact that confused me until I understood, Years Later, it was the Mundanity causing the Anxiety.

One Day, in Grade Twelve, I was sitting at my Desk, the Class Room Quiet, an English Test in Front of me, staring down at a Question, Zoned out on Depression, wondering, “Why do I have to prove to People Far Away I know what this Material means? I know what it means. Why do I have to prove it to Some unKnown, unSeen Authority?” The Answer that came to me was: “Because if you don’t prove you know what this Material means, you will get a Poor Grade and, thereby, a Poor Life.” So it was that in that Moment I realized my being in this Place (School) at this Time (the Middle of the Day), performing this Task (the Test), was the Result of Coercion and Threats. Had it not been for Coercion and Threats- I would be punished if I left Class; I would fail High School; I would not be able to get a "Good Job"; I would live a Life of Oppression and Monotony- what would I have been doing that Day, that Hour? Working on a Graphic Novel, a Passion into which I poured a Great Deal of Spare Time? Going for a Hike? Reading a Book? Collaborating with my Fellow Teen Agers on Some Creative Project in Stead of just getting Drunk after School to deal with my Depression? It was in that Moment I saw that I was a Child put into a Prison and made to regurgitate Facts by the Lashes of Teachers, their Selves working beneath the Lashes of Government. I began to cry. No sooner did I begin to cry did I recall I was in a Class Room with Twenty Other Students. I was supposed to be working on an English Test. I didn’t want my Peers to think this English Test mattered so Much to me that I would cry: the Opposite in Fact, and I began to cry More, for the Hopelessness of it. I had to get up and ask the Teacher to be allowed out of the Class to compose my Self. As he opened the Door into the Hall, the Teacher made Clear I would have to finish the Test if I wanted a Decent Grade. I was choked with Tears. I did not say, “I have no Interest in your Fucking Test or your Fucking Grades! What has this Society done to the Beauty of Youth that it requires this Crap, Day in and Day out, of me?” In Stead I stood in the Hall Way and collected my Self. I would have to finish the Test if I was going to graduate and escape this Horrid Place, repeated Town after Town, Province after Province, Country after Country, its Homogeneity the Evidence of its Ambition to Conformity and, thereby, Control. I finished the Test. I got a Good Grade. I was a Real Bright Kid, I tell ya. But the Melt Downs continued, Ever More Frequently. I knew there was no Way I would be able to graduate High School in this State, and so, at Seventeen Years Old, I went to a Psychologist and had my Self put on Anti Anxiety Pills. In the End, I finished High School in the Top Ten Students of my Grade.

Following Graduation, desperate for a Life Free of Authority, I moved away from my Parents and the Town I grew up in. Terrible Things happened. I blame a Combination of Ignorance, Youth, Buried Anger, unStable Relationships, Poverty, Illegal Drug Use and Prescription Drug Use. The Truth is, I have never been More Fucked Up in my Life than when I was on Prescription Mood Drugs. I was put on Seroquel, whose Name Even frightens me now, after Citalopram failed to prevent a Depressive Episode that followed being fired from a Pita Pit: for a Day, I sat in my New Room sawing into my Wrist with a Bagel Knife. Fact was, I acted just as Oddly on Mood Drugs as did off them, but I was Less Aware of what was going on: it was like I was watching my Life on TV Screen. Though I had suffered before Prescription Mood Drugs, I knew the Cause of my Suffering and felt it Righteous. On Prescription Mood Drugs, my Mind was a Blank, my Body repeating the Same Disturbing Actions I'd begun indulging in in High School to Deal with the Pain of trying to fit my Creative Nature into the Limited Box of the Education System (Illegal Drugs and unUsual Sx) but sans the Ability to Critically perceive my Actions or to laugh at my Self, Conscious, as I had been Once, I was doing these Things to shove the Failures of my Society in its Face. I am a Brilliant, Creative and Beautiful Young Girl and my Society has failed to provide for me, my Abused Body attested. Before Mood Drugs, I did Messed Up Things because I wanted to prove a Point. After Mood Drugs, I did Messed Up Things because “I” had been taken out of the Driver's Seat.

Finally I just Totally lost it and my Parents had to come pick me up and take me Home. I love my Parents. I don’t blame my Issues on them: I blame my Issues on the Authorities behind the School System. Putting your Kid in that Institution of Oppressive Control is what All Parents are xpected to do these Days, and with “Proven Results,” called “Jobs.” Mine didn’t know that in Side, in that Teen Aged Place they couldn’t reach, I was weeping in a Cage meant to break my Will and that this Misery carried on past High School: it had left a Permanent Scar on my Psychology, but it did not break me. My Parents have been, throughout my Life, Solid and Considerate People and to them I credit not my Issues, which were born at the Intersection between Creative Brilliance and Systemic Control, but my Survival.

I Also credit MDMA. The Story of how I got that Especially enLightening Tab is too Long and Funny to tell here- suffice to say, after my Nervous Break Down, back in my Home Town, I took a Pill, headed to the Fair, and after walking Home with an Old Friend, I sat down at my Computer and began writing the Story of my Night to ride out the Come Down.

That was when it happened. The Words, written in Light, that appeared before my Eyes:

I AM A WRITER

Then it All made Perfect Sense: the Depression, the Isolation, the Intellectualism, the anti Authoritarianism, the Drug use, the Sx Drive. OMG, a Writer was what I was meant to be. I had resisted as a Career Choice what was a Natural Talent (I wrote my First Novel at Twelve) on Account of believing, “Writers don’t make Any Money,” but there it was: I’d had a Vision. I had no Choice: to write was to be my Fate. I passed the Nxt Few Hours, until I could sleep, creating a “Resume” including All the Reasons I should be a Writer.

I wanted to be the Best Writer I could be. I thought, how do I make my Self the Best Writer Possible? I learn from the Best. I made a Commitment to read "Every Great Book Ever Written."

The First Book I chose to read was Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, and it revealed to me just what Kind of a Writer I was, that to write of it was to bring to Others the inSights of my Wayward Youth. Knowing that if I wrote a Great Enough Book (or Several) I could change the World, I could be Immortal gave me Reason to save my Self.

I went off Drugs, Both Legal and Illegal. I got my First Monogamous Boy Friend. I worked at a Gas Station and drove an Escort. I was Eighteen Years Old and I lived with my Parents in a Small Town. I went searching for God. I Only had One Friend beside my Boy Friend. I read Many Books. I xercised Every Day. I Portion controlled my Meals. I was a Little OCD, but I was Healthy.

Such was my Social Brainwashing, how Ever, that after I quit my Job at the Gas Station / realized my First Monogamous Boy Friend was Sxist, I enrolled in University to study Literature and Philosophy, the Natural Choice, in this Day and Age, for a Young Lady interested in the Literary Arts, don’t you think? Get me an MFA in Creative Writing with a Minor in Xistential Philosophy, the Focus on Nietzsche, and Wham Bam thank you Ma’am, I’d be Thirty Years Old, $45,000 in Dept, who knows if I’d be Married and my First Novel, published by a Small but Well Respected Literary Press in Canada, after my Favorite Professor introduced me to an Editor at a Wine and Cheese Party at said Professor's House, and I said to the Editor, “It’s a Novel about a Girl's Attempt to become a Philosopher written in a Prose that captures her Mind's Volatility,” and the Editor smiled and said, “Margaret Atwood for the Prozac Generation, I like it,” would be hitting Stands to Rave Reviews and Talk of a Giller Nomination. How Nice.

But this is how University Really went for me: I chose a Small under Graduate College in Vancouver because 1) I get Anxiety in Crowds, 2) I hated the Idea of spending Time of a Campus where Dorm Students would be going through the Same Decadence I spent my Teens coming to Terms with and 3) I’d read an Article in Maclean’s noting the Superiority of the Smaller Class Sizes in these Institutions. I arrived at the College Full of a New Student’s Hope and Vigour, Ready to Impress and Challenge my Self and Others.

Wait… go back. Remember that English Class I cried in? Well, before I was able to graduate, I made One Last stab at FreeDom from the Constraints of Institutionalized Learning: I wrote the “Free Form Essay” in my Grade Twelve English Xam in Xperimental Run-on Sentences. For this Flourish of Self Initiated Creativity, I was awarded a C Grade, the Only C in my Bouquet of As. What Ever, Top Ten Any Way. Only, on Account of my Lousy Grade Twelve English Xam, I had to write an Entrance Xam upon arriving at the University to see which English Class, the “Average,” or “Advanced,” the University would place me in that Semester. There, deSpite giving the Markers what had I hoped they wanted, a Clearly written Argument for Some Thing I guessed a Federal Liberal would defend, I wound up in the “Average” English Skills Class. “Xcuse me?” I said, and walked up to the English Department to xplain to the Dean of Admissions that the Year Before, of my Personal Volition, I’d read Finnegan’s Wake. All of it. From beginning to End. And Ulysses. And Plato and Aristotle and Dostoyevsky and Franzen and Woolf (and on and on and on, there being Little Else to do in Small Canadian Towns) and now I was on to Tolstoy. I did not belong in an “Average" English Skills Class. The Dean sorted through and found my Xam in a Pile, glanced it over and said, “Okay. I think this is Good Enough for the Advanced Class.” I thanked her with a Sentiment I would place between Malice and Gratitude.

Classes started. Having spent the Year before reading Xtensively in my Chosen Filed of Study, and Genuinely believing in the Value of the Socratic Philosophic Style based in back and forth Debate, I was not shy to question my Teachers when Ever I detected a Gap in their Logic. The Teachers were Good with this, and answered my Questions Honestly and Effectively, but I was getting a Vibe, a Vibe emanating from the Rest of the Students (None of whom I could say were my Friends, Even a Semester in), and this Vibe was: “Would you shut up alReady, Lady? All I want to do is to take my Notes. You are holding me up.” It occurred to me then that, my Teacher’s Indulgence of me Aside, Universities did't xist to feed the Minds of the Curious, to foster New and Brilliant and un Conventional Thinkers, to change Paradigms and start Revolutions—the College was but a Boot Camp for the Soldiers of the Information Economy, a Holding Pen for the Emotionally Immature, Spoon-fed and enTitled Children of the Millennium, Students shunted from One Fluorescent Lit, Plastic Chaired, Wooden-desked, Person-filled Institutional / Corporate Environment to an Other for the Rest of their Lives and that was just Fine by them, they’d Never known Any Thing Else. I realized that the Small FreeDoms to be eked out by climbing the Ladder of School and the Employment that would follow were to be Hard-won by Years and Years and Years of having to suffer being told what to do and how to do it, Some Thing I, as a Creative Writer, had Very Little Patience for.

But yet again, Such was my Programming, I signed up for an Other Year. There was going to be a Creative Writing Course that Year, Huzzah. A Month before I was due to go back to Class, how Ever, I began to think. I was about to enter a Class Room with Several Dozen Young Aspiring Writers like my Self. We were going to talk amongst Each Other, perhaps in the Introductions, about why we were interested in Creative Writing, and People were going to say Things like, “My Name is Jed Lewinsky and I’m here because my Professor suggested it might help xpand my Essay writing Ability for Political Sciences” or, “My Name is Mary Thompson I’m here because this Class sounded like a Lot of Fun.” And when it came to my Turn, what was I going to say? “My Name is Andrea Coates and I’m here because when I was Eighteen I had a Drug Induced Vision that told me that I was going to be a Great Writer,” and that was not going to endear me to Any One. I thought about lying. But then I thought, how can I lie about the Event that has meant More to me than Any Other in my Life? How can I lie about the Event that has given me a Reason to live amid a Society I resent? How can I pretend to be Some One I’m not when who I am is Great? I didn’t go to University that Year. I moved to Brooklyn where, among the Hipsters walking the Streets of Williamsburg, my Ambitions to Grandeur in my Art were no unUsual Thing and where I shouted the Freely written Poetry of Wasted Northern BC into a microPhone at Bars while Musical Acts tuned their Instruments.

So, there you are, it’s Three and a Half Years Later, and I’m living in Victoria, BC. I’ve been here for Two Years, during which Time I have been Sporadically Employed in the Service Industry. I say Sporadically because I keep getting “let go.” Lucky for me, my Parents were so Kind as to take the Money they had saved up for my University Education and give it to me to do what Ever I’d like with: an Other Might not have been so Lucky. I've done a Great Deal with that Money. I've started a Media Company. I've made Short Films. I've Drastically xpanded my Web Site. I’ve got a Draft of a Novel called, SIS:, which I believe it is a MasterPiece of Millennial Fiction, a Feminist Canadian On the Road, to be read for Generations to come.

Tragically, the Era of the Trust Fund is coming to an End, I do not have a Publisher yet, I do not know how to make my Films or my Web Site Profitable, I balk at the Idea of writing Conventional Articles for Magazines, and the Risk of going Mad working at the Kind of Employment available to me as a Person with Only a High School Diploma to my Name is Very Real. I cannot stand the Thought of returning to Employment or to School, for Both would be a Such Tragic Waste of my True Skills: I am an Incredible Writer. How could I turn over my Authenticity and Autonomy, Delightful as they are, and which create Works Spectacularly Original and Deeply Intelligent, to a Boss or a School which would have me present a Lesser Version of my Self to fit in and not spend my Time dwelling on or distracted by All the Reasons that this is inJustice?

I am Highly Intelligent

What is the Way, in this Society, to get a Job where you get to use your Brain? Go to School, of Course! Well, I’ve Already proved that Place was not for me. I have a Self Education in Classical Literature and Philosophy. My Vocabulary is Ample, my Critical Capacities are Cougar Claw Sharp and these are Necessary Skills for the Great Writer. To the Cash Register Operator, how Ever, they are Only Hindrances. Being as Intelligent as I am, I become Immensely Bored by Repetitive Activities. Boredom creates a Bock in my Energy, which is Tremendous, causing it to loop back on its Self, becoming pent up and therein causing Emotional Disturbances: in performing Repetitive Tasks, I Literally am Afraid of going Mad, or quitting in an Embarrassing Blow out before this happens in its All the More Frightening Form. The Whole Situation seems Avoidable in its Melodrama: if Only I could be a Writer. Going Mad (which I have done) is not Worth $10 an Hour.

An Other of my Problems with School / Employment are the Nature of the Environments provided for these Activities. Walls are White or Beige. Architecture is Straight Forward and Geometric. Plant and Animal Species are Few and Far between. As Some One who grew up in the Woods, with a Mind that responds Best to Natural Complxity (hence my Fondness for the Psychedelics and for Dense Literature) I find the Aseptic, unNatural Environments Common to Schools and Places of Employment Stressful. My Mind, desperate for Some Thing to Entrance it, becomes Lost in Fantasy, making me Prone to Distraction and Irritability. Going to High School Drunk was a Method of coping with this Lack of Stimulation, and I still got A Grades. I am a Reader and Writer of Technically Dense but Lyrically Spectacular Literature. My Mind thrives in Places of Constant Organic Challenge and Beauty. A Service Industry Job or a post Secondary Education in a University Institution, remaining in a Single Position in a Single Building for Hours and Days and Months and Years on End, repeating Identical Phrases to Customers or Identical Essay Styles to Teachers for a Pittance of a Pay or a Literary Style broken and reformed to conform to the Xpectations of the Establishment, this to me sounds Worse than Madness, Worse than Death, and there have been Many Days I have thought of slashing my Wrists just to be Free of it: were it not for my Knowledge that I am a Great Writer, a Writer whose Works will One Day be held to yours, and to those of Dostoyevsky and Austen, I would have done this Long Ago: as I stands, I still have Some Thing to live for. The Melt Downs that happened to me in High School are Minor compared to what would happen to me now in the Same Environment, as my Mind has gotten that Much More Powerful. Every Day I get Smarter, More Intuitive, More Perceptive but the Jobs and the School Programs available to me, they stay the Same as alWays.

I work Best aLone

I have a Life Long Aversion to Crowds. Numerous have been the Panic Attacks triggered by Malls, Festivals, Schools, Busy Streets. I do the Best I can to avoid these Places & Situations, but what is the Service Industry, where Society slots Pretty “un Educated” Ladies Such as "my Self," if not One Ongoing Interaction with the Crowd? The Only Time I am Comfortable in Groups of People is when I am High on Drugs (and they have to be the Right Drugs at the Right People) or when I am dancing. On this Account, I have considered stripping. I don’t think this would work, how Ever. I do not believe I have the Patience to be pestered and hooted at by Sxists without giving them a Piece of my Mind. Stripping, it would not be Long before the Anger and the Sadness set in and I had to quit.

It’s Hard for me to “get aLong” with People. Oh, I’m Plenty Funny and Interesting, alRight, and I’m Very Close with the People in my Life, but these People are Few and Select. I xude what I call “Cougar Energy.” I am Aloof, Aggressive, Argumentative. My Natural Tone of Voice is inDistinguishable from Sarcasm. My Humour is Cutting and Dark. I am un Erringly Honest. I feel no need to be Discrete in speaking about the un Usual Aspects of my Life. I radiate a Vibrant and Nubile Sxuality. My Tastes are Beyond Pretentious. My Language abounds in Poetic Flourishes. In Other Words, I have a Big Personality: too Big for Most: I scare People. I have been working in Stores for Several Years but Every Day More of the Mask of Complacent Normalcy, Necessary to appear Amiable to People, falls Away, leaving Only who and what I Truly am: a Great Writer. “Working with Others,” I would at All Times have to be watching my Attitude, repressing my Natural Verbal and Intellectual Xuberance and Sharpness so as not to Cause a Scene. The Effort it takes to repress this Vivid, Controversial Personality is not Only xhausting, it’s Bad for my Physical and Mental Health. The Threat of Madness returns in All Environments were I must be Friendly and Subservient. I ride the Line between Genius and Madness, and the Only Thing that keeps me from tipping Over into the Dark Side, the Only Thing that maintains my Internal Homeostasis, is the Ability to xpress my Thoughts as they come, which I cannot do at Any Job whose Tasks are Other than xpressing these Thoughts.

The Only Place I work as Well as aLone is in Intimate Partnerships, and for this Reason I have also considered having Sx for Money. Had it not been for the Trust Fund, I might Well have become a Prostitute. I’m a Writer, but the Secondary Activity with which I occupy my Self (besides the Obvious Stuff of the Day, eating, sleeping, walking, etc), when I am not under the Coercion of Employment, is have Sx. I don’t know why this is. Sx fascinates me. It calms a Mind that is alMost Never Calm. It is also Possible to earn Greater Sums of Money from a Single Sx Session than from Weeks of Employment in the Service Sector and because of this, Plus the Fact Sx Work is Difficult, Various and requires relying on the Wits, it has alWays appealed to me More than Other Forms of Employment available to me as an Intelligent but "unEducated" Person. Alas, there is Some Thing Terrifying about sleeping with Men you don't know for Money, isn't there? As it stands, Sx is for me Some Thing to base Lasting, Loving Relationships on, a Pleasant Diversion, Some Thing to write about, and to introduce Strangers and Money into that Activity would be to cheapen it, and, in All Likelihood, cost me my Loving Relationships.

I have thought that Perhaps I should do Data Entry, or Copy Writing, but these Professions involve the Same Mind Numbing Repetition that is my Enemy in All Forms of Education and Employment. I am a Creative Writer. My Ultimate Pleasure is in writing down what I see in my Imagination. How am I supposed to sit at my Computer, Eight Hours a Day, working on Some One Else's Boring Commercial Bull Shit while my Own, More Interesting, More Innovative, More Important Work languishes? How am I supposed to tolerate that? By thinking about Money? How Corrupt. I have Better Morals than that. I will not surrender my Morals for Money.

I prefer to speak Truths

Back in High School, I was Afraid of writing Essays for Scholarships to Universities because I believed writing in the Style fated to win would require a Sort of "Artistic Prostitution." InDeed, I have been, in my Life, More Afraid of Artistic than Sxual Prostitution, for One is Nearer to my Soul than the Other. Seventeen, I knew how to write in Propositions, Arguments, Conclusions, 5-6 Paragraphs, a Calm Tone, with Proper Spelling, Grammar, Some Diversification of Vocabulary, but not too Much, to provide a Theme Centrist or Humanitarian in Persuasion, I could do that, I could get $12,000 from a University by telling them about a Life Lesson learned while volunteering for my Local Election, but that wasn’t the Kind of Xperiences I had as a Teen Ager. I was a Stoned Slut battling her Inner Demons, battling a Society of Oppression and Conformity, and the Cheeriness Necessary to impress Universities, Brazen before the Indigenous suffering Genocide, the Skids suffering Drug Abuse, the Red Necks suffering Bigotry, the Hippies suffering the Land, the Teen Agers suffering the Culture of Alienation, the Adults suffering Consumerism, All the Abusers, the Addicts, the Liars, the Judgmental I saw pass me on a Daily Basis, Well, I would rather write of them that we might All face up to our Dysfunction and over come it then Smile and pretend I wasn’t a Part of it. Maybe Universities would have enjoyed an Essay on the Utter Hypocrisy of Privilege, but at that Age, with the Xperiences I’d had with Schools, I couldn’t imagine it.

I cannot stand before Some Person and tell them Some Consumer Item is Important. I cannot go into an Interview and tell my Future Boss I will be with their Company for Many Years. I cannot pretend I care about Customer Satisfaction, about being a Member of a Team, about getting up at Seven to spend Eight Hours a Day shovelling Some One Else's Shit for Less Money. I cannot say Any Thing but that which is True: I am a Great Writer. That is what I am meant to be doing.

I'm Beautiful in a Languorous Kind of Way

Pity the Beautiful. Or, don’t. Beautiful Girls who make Money off it practice Vapidity. To be Beautiful to Every One One must be Vacant, that Others might Project their Ideals onto you. So the Popularity of Marilyn Monroe, the Somnambulist. By Popular Cultural Definition, I am an Attractive Lady. My Face is Symmetrical with Large Eyes and Full Lips. My Skin is Clear. My Body is Lean. I have Significant but Perky Tits (I am Twenty Three) and a Good Ass for a White Girl. I am a Talented Dancer. I dress with Style. I am adept in Heels. What this makes me is un Employable as General Labor, which More than Any Thing Else, I think I could handle (I was a Tree planter). But, Frankly, I look Silly doing General Labor. What's up with the Pretty, Fluid Girl packing boxes? When I moved to Victoria, I made an Attempt at Employment in Gardening. I worked at a Gardening Store and attended a Class at a Horticultural College, which was Much Nicer than Any University and fit Fifteen Students. One Day, I would like to live on a Farm, and I will contribute to it’s Maintenance, but Employment in Victoria’s Well Staffed Gardening Industry would have Required an Investment in a Life Style of Dirt and lifting and Tools that is was not Mine, not now. I am an Intellect, Best at Communicating Information. Words & Concepts are my Tools. I am Less Skilled with Physical Objects. The Physical Tasks I am Best at are Dancing and Sx, Free Form Activities conducted in Periods of High Passion. I Tree planted for Two Years. I know my Body is not meant for Xtended Physical Labor and that using it that Way would diminish my Other, More Notable Skills. I am a Lady with the Appearance of the Courtesan, and if it weren't for my Scathing Intelligence, my anti Capitalism, my disTaste for Regulation and Hierarchy, I could fit in with those Hot Waitresses at Cactus Club. You can see why Escorting has Always appealed to me, but I have this Habit of falling in Love on One Side and Challenging People's Ideas on the Other, Common Enough Traits among Writers, not so Much Among Ladies who make their Livelihoods at Beauty. My Lithe Beauty make me Ill Suited to Labor and the Intensity of my Personality makes me a Poor Choice as Decoration. I would how Ever, make a Great Writer.

I have Ego

Any One who has worked at a Job that is below their Degree of Talent knows how Humiliating it is, how Much Pride it requires the Employee to swallow just to get by. As Any One who has read my Blog knows, I have one of the Biggest Egos on the InterNet. This is why I couldn’t stand the Idea of lying to my Creative Writing Class about my Identity: because the Soul that has been granted me by the Universe is a Soul to be Proud of, and I will be no One Else. I am the Mountain Lion, the Fiercest Predator on Turtle Island, and it is inTollerable to repress that Majesty for Small Sums of Cash. If I were to go for Employment in Any Position but the One I have chosen for my Self—the Great Writer—I would appear as a Very Big, Very Mean Fish in a Very Small Pond and that would make Every One unComfortable.

I am who I say I am: the Most Fascinating and Prolific Millennial Intellectual and Artist. A Media Star whose Every Project is to be met with Celebration and Confusion. To ask me to suppress such Vitals Talent for Such a Worthy Culture is Proof the System by which we live our Lives here on Turtle Island is Broken beyond Repair. That we have failed as People Deserving of the Blessings of this Land. To make a Person like me wait Tables is to prove this is not a Meritocracy at All, but a Dictatorship, where Obedience to the System is Paramount to the Innovations that could improve it, which I provide for in my Work and which I am Ultimately Quite Entertaining in delivering.

If Any One deserves Money just to be their Selves, just to follow their Dreams, it is me, and I will not stop until I get it and when I get it I will produce Work that can be enshrined in the Canon of Western Literature and Philosophy, for that is my Fate, given to me by what Ever Gods there be.

So, Margaret Atwood, help me get a Book Deal, help me be able to do what I must uninterrupted by beLittling Drudgery and I will show you and the World I am a Credit to my Art and my Land, a Writer yet unSeen in her multi Media Agility, an Ego as Big as James Joyce with a LifeStyle Far More Sustainable, unAshamed of Glory, imPermeable to Sycophants, unInterested in Gross Displays of XS Wealth and Fascinating Enough to be held to the Icons of our Story. I am asking for what I want, Twenty Three Years Old, at the End of my Financial Rope, just as I did at the End of the Rope of Sanity: I have written a Resume not of my Work Xperiences but of my Life with a Creativity and Intelligence that proves my Worthiness at my Chosen Job.

Thank you

Andrea Coates

Stop Sxism Now!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2012-02-09T12:06:00.000-08:00

Seriously, read this, and if, like me, its Trivializing Stereotypes make you want to wring a Neck with Rage, send the Authors an eMail (hotdogandtheladybun@gmail.com) telling them you want an Apology for publishing Sxist Material. This is 2012. I should no Longer have to tolerate the Patriarchy condescending to my Gender.

Interview @ Bulk Culture

2012-02-03T14:08:00.000-08:00

Noah Cicero interviewed me for Bulk Culture, here

Wake up and smell the Anarky

! < [ [ Throw the Tao Lin ] ] > ! or, Alt Lit's Witch

2012-01-12T14:18:00.000-08:00

The Following is a Paragraph from Shoplifting From American Apparel, a Novella by Tao Lin, selected by Randomly opening the Book:

“ ‘I’m going to use the bathroom,’ said Sam. ‘Do you want to use the bathroom?’ Kaitlyn shook her head no. Sam washed his face and peed and went in his room. Kaitlin was sitting on the mattress staring at the floor. ‘What are you doing?’ said Sam laughing. Kaitlyn grinned and said she was drunk and laid down on the mattress. Sam jumped on the mattress. He sat on the mattress. He lay on the mattress. He took stuffed animals and put them around Kaitlyn. He said his ex-girlfriend Sheila made them.”

The Following is a Paragraph from Richard Yates, a Novel by Tao Lin, selected by Randomly opening the Book:

“At the carnival they made funnel cakes under a tent with Dakota Fanning’s mother and a church pastor. Sometimes one of them left the tent to go get more milk from a full-size refrigerator. Haley Joe Osment tried to make a funnel cake in the formation of a pentagram. Dakota Fanning said they should replace the sugar powder with bacon bits. Haley Joe Osment said they should fry the funnel cakes in bacon oil and then wrap it in bacon and pour nacho cheese on it to create a family-size funnel cake for cheese beast families. They talked about having their own tent next year to sell organic vegan funnel cakes. They made funnel cake for about three hours and then walked to different areas of the carnival, sometimes saying ‘cheese beast’ or ‘party girl’ quietly while facing forward with neutral facial expressions.”

As it stands

(the 3rd Week of 2012)

Tao Lin

with his

"Minimalism"

is the "Crown Prince" of "Alt Lit":

the Best Known

and

Most Imitated

Literary Figure

of this

Generation

the Very First

OnLine

Generation

as I like to call them:

MillenniGeni.

He’s Twenty Eight Years Old and he’s published Two Books of Poetry, One Book of Short Stories, One Novella and Two Novels.

He’s the RingLeader of a Publishing House called MuuMuu House that is staffed by his Friends, Admires & Acolytes.

He’s made his Personal Brand "Sxe" and "Cool" by cashing in on the

a) "it's Sxe to associated your Self with Young Ladies, the Younger you can get Away with the Better" Factor in the Arts by marrying and then divorcing Film Maker/Performance Artist/Writer Megan Boyle,

adding Teen Aged Fashion Writer Bebe Zeva

to his Circle of Influence,

publishing a Controversial Story describing the Seduction of a Blogger by 21 Year Old Writer, Marie Calloway,

and by making the Plot of Richard Yates,

his “Autobiographical” Second Novel, revolve around a Relationship between a 22 Year Old Man and a 16 Year Old Girl (Really?)

b) the "it's Cool to associate your Self with Drugs" Factor in the Arts by naming his Film Company, MDMA Films (which creates Films in a Style he calls “Mumblecore,” and that’s getting Plenty of Press in Plenty of Relevant Places), after a Drug, and writing a Column for Vice Magazine, a Hub of Hipsterdom, called Drug Related Photoshop Art.

Despite his Detractors, and there are Plenty, Tao Lin is the Most Significant Writer of the Generation that grew up OnLine, the Ultimate Hipster Writer, and, with a 3rd Novel on the Way, Quite Possibly the Person he posits him Self to be for American Letters MilleniGeni:

a Spoof of

Cause no Matter how Many People dislike his Literary Style, Gimmicky and underWheming, and no Matter how Many People find his OnLine Persona irRitating and Self Aggrandizing, Tao Lin has achieved what he knows is a Righteous Thing: he has created a New Literary Movement around him Self: Alt Lit.

Critics bash his Style now, yes, but Tao Lin knows All Meaningful Literary Movements were mocked and derided in their inCeptions, and so he soldiers on, as Well America's Leading Young Writer should.

Yep. Tao Lin must be feeling Pretty Good Right now.

There Must be Times, though, Times when Tao's Alone, surfing the Web, looking for New Blogs, Some Thing niggles at him.

Okay, a Lot niggles at Tao Lin. But Some Thing to do with his Career, Some inEvitable Event, Some Thing, no, Some One, he's know he's going to have to face for Years:

THE GREAT(ER) WRITER

THE GREAT(ER) ARTIST

THE GREAT(ER) ICON

In Actual Fact

Tao Lin has alReady met his Trump

for

in 2008 I

was Twenty Years Old

and living in Brooklyn

and Tao Lin was living there too

as he still is

Tao Lin was then the Some Body of the InterNet Writers, yes

but not a Film Maker yet, no

just a Young Writer out of NYU with a Couple a Books in Print

with More than the Usual Amount of Buzz around his Name

He was suspected of being Carles

the Author of Hipster Runoff

that Voice of USAlt

Teen Aged

subUrban

Millennial

Nostalgia

and Fandom

He had caused a Kerfuffle in the Literary Establishment

by selling Shares for the Royalties of Shoplifting From American Apparel, his Novella, OnLine

before it was Even written

and with this Act of Originality

he cemented his Identity

post readerofdepressingbooks.com

the Blog that launched his Career

as Part Writer

Part Personal Promotion Performance Artist

how Very MillenniGeni

and he was riding that Edge

Uniquely his, Uniquely Hamster

between Terribly Smart and

Terribly Irritating

for Xample

he was Still Openly Obsessed with his MySpace “Friends” Count

the Poor Guy

and in this

(Righteous

if OCD)

Quest for Greater OnLine Readership

Tao Lin sent me

ANDREA COATES

Andrea Coates' MySpace Profile Picture, 2008, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY, USA

TRULY

THE FIRST GREAT

WRITER / ARTIST / ICON

THE MILLENNIAL GENERATION

a Message that Read

“Nice Tattoos.”

Well, thanks, Tao

But was it Really about the Tattoos?

Or was it Only about the Tattoos?

I mean, my Writing wasn't Great yet

I was Twenty Years Old

I was Twenty Years Old and living in Brooklyn

I was a Twenty Year Old Lady from North West no where BC, Canada, living in Fucking Brooklyn, NY

and I was like a White Savage to those Lorimer St Hipsters, Man

a White Fucking Savage

the Way I danced

Camp Fire danced

letting All my Feelings come out my Body

while they shuffled around in their

Skinny Jeans

in their

“Semi Legal Club”

trying so Hard

to get their Fingers

on the Pulse

of Happening

it wound up

their Asses

No....

the Opposite of that

cause if they’d had Fingers up their Asses

they'd've been dancing around like I was then

what Total Dullards they were

OMG

a Real Disappointment

to a Girl from the Stix

Any Way

besides the dancing

I was having Sx with Questionable Men

and trying not to become a Hooker

I started

Andrea Coates’ Writing JUNK

and the MySpace Account (since Defunct)

and posted Poems

about being in Love

with a Philosopher

and how Much I hated

Sxism

(I hate it)

I was an Adolescent Cougar

My Paws and my Ears were too Big

I’d seen Tao’s Ads on Hipster RunOff

I thought his Ads about being the Last Great American Poet were Xactly

the Kind of Thing I would've made if I was 25

and had Friends

who were Writers whose Blogs I could post Ads on

Yep

back then I was Totally unKnown

I Totally sucked

still I

believed I’d be the Person

I know I am in

no Time Flat

Thought I'd be

Megan Boyle

Bebe Zeva

Marie Calloway

no Time Flat

Thought I’d be

sucking

Tao Lin’s Cock

Awe, how Precious

no Time Flat

Of Course I didn’t

that’s a Positively Apocalyptic Thing to say

it suggests Tao Lin is going to destroy Literature where it stands

make it Totally Conformist, or Some Thing, we'll see

Of Course I couldn't have been

Known

Right off the Bat

Of Course I’m not

Megan Boyle

Bubu Zeve

Marie Calloway

Of Course I couldn't've

sucked

Tao Lin’s Cock

Awe, how Precious

I have Sixteen Times More Personality than All Four them Bitches hanging together on MDMA

But, I was Twenty Years Old and my Mind wasn’t workin' Good Yet

Grass Still made me Sleepy, or maybe that was just that…Bushwick Shwag…

cause after the Message

“Nice Tattoos”

I Seriously thought I'd be enveloped in the Tide of Tao Lin and his InterNet Fame in

no Time Flat

Thought I’d be gettin'

the Recognition

I know

I am Due

Right then

and

Right now:

Tao's

in no Time Flat

but thas Okay

iz Mine now:

The Following is an Article arguing that Tao Lin, Currently the Most Significant Writer of the OnLine Generation, has Merely been a Place Holder for a Far More Talented, Far More Compelling, Millennial Literary Celebrity:

I am

and

I am

the Smartest

the Funniest

the Meanest

the Sxiest

the Deepest

the Darkest

the Most Intense

the Most Creative

the Most Unique

the Most Magickal

the Most Controversial

the Most Entertaining

and

the Most Powerful

Writer of the OnLine Generation

so this is why he should

THROW

THE

TAO

LIN

I wish that I could say that Tao Lin's Literary Out Put is a One Trick Hamster and be done with it, cause it is: the Best Thing I could say about Tao Lin's Writing is that his Prose is Very Consistent- All the Effort he puts into writing his Books must be into making his Prose so Consistent, Otherwise, Interesting Things would happen in those Books, ba dah ba ching.

In my Opinion, which is just my Opinion, btw,

Tao Lin's Books are

BORING

MEDIOCRE

SHALLOW

FORGETTABLE

Bound Pages
of
FAD

but that
Description
(my Subjective Xperience of his Work)
fails to take into
Account

Tao Lin

“OnLine Phenomenon”

Tao Lin

“Literary Voice of the Millennial Generation”

and those Monikers

Many Times

More so

than his Books their Selves

are what is so

Compelling

to me

about

Tao Lin

I gotta ask my Self, how did Some One who writes Book that are what I, with my (Self) Education in Classical Literature and Philosophy, would consider Middle Brow get to be the Most Famous Literary Writer of his Generation?

And what does that say about this Generation?

The Word “Literary” is Key.

Saying that a Book is “Literary” denotes it has Poetic Prose, Timeless Plot and Realism of Character.

It has Long been a Fact that Writers without Much Literary Talent, ie Writers who write Books of Little Poetry, little Timelessness and Little Realism, become the Most Famous Writers of the Moment—think Stephanie Meyer of the Twilight Series—but it is also understood (by Frustrated Literary Types) that these Writers are not “Literary” Writers at All, their Books are not “Literary” Books Either, but of an Other Breed inDeed: “Commerical” Books, by “Commercial” Writers.

All together, a Book’s “Literary”nss can be said to be correspondent to its "ProFunDity" of inSight into the World we live in. Conventional Literary Wisdom says you cannot write a "Clueless" Literary Book. Stephanie Meyer's Twilight is not Literary because it's Protagonist is Clueless. It is Hard, as an Intelligent Reader, to become attached to a Clueless Protagonist: we read for inSight.

Obviously, Books can be More or Less Literary vs. More or Less Commercial.

The Easiest way to tell how “Literary” a Book is compared to how "Commercial" a Book is is to compare Prose to Plot.

Commerical Writers write for the Masses in a Prose that does away with the Verbal Variety and Poetry for which the Literary Writer is Best Known. In Commerical Novels, the Xcitement of the Plot compensates Both for Utilitarian Prose and the Work's Consequential Lack of ProFunDity, or "Thematic Depth."

Which is to say, if the Way the Words are put together in the Sentences is the Most Interesting Thing about the Book, it is a "Literary" Book. If the Action in the Plot is the Most Interesting Thing about the Book, it is a "Commercial" Book.

As Bret Easton Ellis said about Raymond Carver in Vice’s Issue 17:5, “The plots don’t really matter. The solutions to mysteries don’t matter. Sometimes they’re not solved at all. It’s just the mood that’s so enthralling.”

This tells us that Raymond Carver is a Literary Writer despite Commerical Attention, like Ellis him Self.

Tao Lin, with his Distinctive, Consistent and Much Imitated Minimalist Prose Style, but Nearly Plotless Books, falls Comfortably into the Territory of Literature: in a Tao Lin Book, the Style the Prose is written in is More Notable than what's going on in the Plot, which is Usually not Much.

I would say, that Tao Lin's Work is “Commercial Literature”: Literature that is More Commercial than Literary in the End, but still Qualifies as Literature as opposed to Commercial Fiction: it is Abstract.

How Ever, the Critics of Literary Writers, like my Self, are, above All Else, when judging how Good, or Literary, a Literary Book is, judging the ProFunDity of that Literary Book: how Deep does it go? Depth is xpressed in the Poetry of the Prose, the Timelessness of the Plot and the Realism of the Characters, with a Little More than 2/3s of the Weight of the Question, “is it a Good Literary Book?” falling onto “is the Prose Poetic?” and “are the Characters Realistic?” We are asking, in judging the ProFunDity of a Literary Book: how Well does this Book capture the Complxity of being Alive? Often, our Lives don’t have Plots, just Events that flow together. In this Sense, Plots are Almost Even frowned upon by Literary Writers, who Often prefer to keep the Plot to a “Series of Mundane interActions,” the Better to show off the Poetry of their Prose and the Realism of their Characterizations. Tao Lin is here included: his Prose is More Poetic and his Characters are More Realistic than his Plots are they Eventful.

The Strange Thing about Tao Lin though, and what infuriates the Literary Establishment about him, is that while he has created a Brand of Literature that meets the Standards of Literature (the Prose is Poetic and the Characters are Realistic), but a Very Few Poetic Tricks are repeated to the Point of Absurdity throughout Otherwise Banal Prose describing Characters that are Totally Realistic in their Routineness, yes, but Actively devoid of ProFunDity. Tao Lin’s Characters' Lack of Literary ProFunDity, we are lead to believe, via his Success as a Writer, says Some Thing ProFound about the Generation he chronicles: he has been crowned King Literary Writer of the Millennials by the Millennials because he, in his Shallowness, a post Modern, post Xistential, sub/Urban Consumer Nihilism (Hipsterdom), represents them in their OutLook. Tao Lin has become a Literary Pop Star, but the Similarities between Tao Lin and a Phenomenon like Lady GaGa go Deeper than that.

CrimeThink, in their Life Changing Book, Work, say about Pop Stars that “they embody our creativity- the creative potential of all the exploited- purchased from us, concentrated and sold back.”

The Way that Tao Lin has made him Self a Literary Pop Star is he has done as All Pop Stars do: he has commodifed his Art. He has taken an American Literary Style developed by Bret Easton Ellis (and Due, at its Source, to Hemmingway)- Minimalist Prose + Consumer Consciousness + Emotional Nihilism (Have you read that Article by Kurt Anderson where he points out that American Culture has Barely changed in 20 Years?), concentrated it into an Easily Recognizable Meme, and is now selling it back to the Millennials as the Literary Style of their Day. And they are buying, cause, you know, that's what Commodities are for: buying.

Tao Lin is not commodifying Books

Book have Always been Commodities

TAO LIN IS COMMODIFYING LITERATURE

He is commodifying Prose

He is commodifying Character

He is commodifying Plot

That's why his Work is so Repetitive

Because it's like a Factory

A Line of Tao Lin's Prose is repeated, in it's Elements, Over and Over Again in a Book (see the Quotes at the Top of this Article)

A Plot by Tao Lin features the Same 8 Subjects repeated Over and Over Again: Boy/Girl/Gmail Chat/NYC/Walk/Food/(Consumer)Object/Sadness

A Story by Tao Lin alWays features the Same Protagonist, Tao Lin him Self, surrounded by unDifferentiable Rotation of Friends and Girl Friends

You have heard the saying "A Million Monkeys on a Million Type Writers would produce Shakespeare?"

Well, Tao Lin's Literary Oeuvre, as opposed to being a Million Monkeys typing on a Million Type Writers, is More like a Hamster in a Cage running on a Wheel

Every Book by Tao Lin is a Hamster Cage

Every Syllable in Every Word

is a Little Squeek

a Little Eeeeee Eeeee Eee

as the Hamster

runs

The Hamster (the Soul of the Book)

running in its Wheel

in its Cage

is bred for Cheap

and will be sold for Profit

to Children plied with OnLine Advertisements

"Buy me"

Millennial Hipsterism, and thereby, Alt Lit, the Hipster Literary Movement, is Remarkable for being the 1^st Youth Counter Culture absorbed into Consumerism before it Even began.

In Other Words, Hispterism is Counter Culture as marketed to you by the Powers that be and you buying it and thinking it’s Cool/iRonic.

So, Tao Lin represents the Literary Style of a Generation taken from them, concentrated (turned into a Commodity), and sold back to them as their Literary Style via Advertisement: Tao Lin's Writing is the American Millennial Literary Style commodified and marketed as the American Millennial Literary Style to the Point it forgets that Literature qua Literature is found in the Deep Personal Search for Truth, rendering it a Depthless Repetition of Literary Elements, just like a Pop Song is the Depthless Repetition of Musical Elements.

Both a Pop Song and a Book by Tao Lin seem directed More to hitting the Nerves that make us produce/consume Products than the Nerves that allow us to Understand the Emotional Current of our Lives; because that's the Aim of Commodification: to make you produce/consume Products, and if you understand the Emotional Current of Life, Well, you're Less Likely to think producing/consuming Products is what's Really Important.

Under this Light, Tao Lin’s Characters’ “Depression” seems Less like “Depression” its Self and More of an Effort to capitalize on the Commonality of Depression in Books & Readers. Which is to say, Tao Lin’s Books seem More like Ads for Books than Books their Selves. Tao Lin's "Literary" Books are composed of Elements of what the Great Literary Books are made of (Depression, Walks, Romantic Relationships, Conversations, Era), but without Any of the True and Honest Soul, which is One of the Reasons so Many People copy his Style: they think they can make Equally Popular Books out of the Vacant Prose/Plot/Characters he has provided for them: Tao Lin is writing by Numbers.

Yet while the InterNet is Full of Reviews calling Tao Lin a Fraud, their Dismay Over the Quality of his Books (Repetitive and Dull, if Popular) has yet to depose Tao Lin of his Position as the Most Famous Literary Writer of his Generation because Tao Lin as a Phenomenon was Never about the Literature at All: it was Always about the Commodification of Literature, as a Kind of Xperiment, because the Commodification of Literature qua Literature, the Commodification of Prose and Plot and Character, is the Commodification of Consciousness its Self, the Soul its Self.

Tao Lin is commodifing Souls, First his Own (he is a "Brand"), then Others (MuuMuu House)

Which is not to say that Tao Lin is Part of a Conspiracy. Rather, that the Way Capitalism as an Ideology works (see the Industrial Revolution) is it takes Ppl's Authentic Work away from them, makes them work for Capitalism in Stead, and then, with the Money they make working for Capitalism, makes them buy back what was Once their Own to create and consume. The More Things it can commodify- steal from People, concentrate (for cheap) into a Commodity, and sell back to People (for profit)- the More Money it makes, the More Power it gets, the More Places it goes looking for New Things to commodify- steal from People, concentrate for Cheap, and sell back to People for Profit.

With the Books of Tao Lin, the Senseless, Voracious Commodification Process of Capitalism has made it to Literary Consciousness, which is Consciousness its Self, the Soul its Self, and made that into a Product for Consumption.

Literary Consciousness for Sale. Soul for Sale.

Tao Lin's Literary Style, his Literary Consciousness, his Own Consciousness, his Very Soul, is reproduced by his Followers, because that's the Way Commodification Works: with his Influence on Literature, Tao Lin is franchising. No One who copies him will Ever be as Big as him, though, for Capitalist Commodification is a Pyramid Scheme, Always with Some One on Top, making the Most Money/getting the Most Recognition. Any One who writes like Tao Lin, Other than Tao Lin him Self, is not going to achieve his Success: Worse! Tao Lin is alReady a Mediocre Writer, like Subway is Mediocre Food. His Followers are Rubes: he is fleecing them: All the Effort they put in to writing like him Only reinforces him, like All the Food we eat at Subway does our Culture and our Bodies Little Good, but lines the Accounts of Xecutives with Money.

Surface

Tao Lin constructs his Prose out of Surface Observations: Words said, Food eaten, Things done. Perhaps the Most Noticeable Thing about Tao Lin's Books is the Lack of Emotions xpressed by the Characters. Tao Lin’s Characters are Patrick Bateman with Less Money and Less Rage: they are Patrick Bateman as Broke, Listless Vegan: they accomplish no Thing and they Constantly think about how they Look on the out Side, Pointedly obscuring , with their Surface Infatuation, what is going on in Side. The Millennial Hipsters are means to see their Selves in these Characters. Tao Lin’s Characters lack Depth because their Identities are not inHabited: Rather, they are intended as Products for Sale on the Market, meant to be worn by Some One Else, like a T Shirt from an American Apparel.

"Be a Hipster," say Tao Lin’s Books. "Here’s how to write/be." Just like an American Apparel says, “Be a Hipster. Here’s how to dress/be.”

There are Many Similarities between Tao Lin and American Apparel:

- Both are Popular with American Consumers between the Ages of 18 and 35

- Both have Connections to the Movers and Shakers of Modern Cool

- Both have a Sxuality Focused on Slim, Caucasian, Brunette, Quirky & Artistic Ladies who are NonetheLess made Secondary Citizens the Way they are Presented as the Faddish Objects de Fascination of the More Successful Men who created their Scenes

- Both claim to have a Social Consciousnesses (Tao Lin’s Veganism/AA’s Fair Trade) but Both bury it so Deeply under Capitalist Consumerism and Cult of Personality, I don't believe it's More than a Copout: I'm not a Jerk, I eat Only Plants. I'm not a Jerk, I pay my Mexican Employees $1 More than the Other Guy.

- Both use the InterNet as a Primary Media for Advertisement

-Both use Guerrilla Advertizing Tactics

- Both are Notable for their Ads More so than for their Products

- Both are post 9/11 iRonic. Which is to say, Depressed and degrading Every Thing around them with Snide Jokes as a Coping Mechanism

- Both are Well Traveled on Lorimer St

- Both are criticized for Phoniness

- Both used Questionable Investment Strategies to get where they are Today

- Both over saturate the Market with their Products

Every Time I read Some Thing by Tao Lin/step into an American Apparel (Curiosity summons me), my First Thought is “I wish I was as Popular/Recognized as this/these Ppl,” and my Second Thought is, “Wait a Minute, if surrounded my Self with as Many Cliquey, Shallow, Sell Out Friends I wouldn't be a Great Writer, I would be a Hipster. Thank God I missed that Failure Bullet.”

And out I go.

With Hipsters it is Always about following the Surface Trends. It is Always about Xternal Indicators, because, in Side, like a Tao Lin Character, they are All the Same. They are taught to be Empty by their Culture (American Capitalism), to xist as Consumers of Xternal Things (Clothes, Books, Identities): they define their Selves by what they consume, and so the Consumption Never Ends: they are feeding a Hole where their Authentic Personalities should be: this is why they are Obsessed with Authenticity in the Products they consume: because they lack it in their Selves.

Under Capitalism, People are not the Creators of their Own Culture, but Consumers Passively reacting to Choices offered to them by the Market and convinced by the Owners of the Means of Production via School and Media and Advertisement that this is the Same Thing. The Millennials have chosen Tao Lin as their Literary Hero because he captures, with his “pre Packaged” Literary Style, the Way Every Thing in their Lives has become “pre Packaged,” and thereby, their Alienation from the Way their Lives are lived: inDeed, in Tao Lin's Books, we reading about no Thing if not how Tao Lin copes with Alienation: Emotional Nullification.

Tao Lin’s Characters wander around, yet No Thing happens to them, not Really. No Thing is completed. No Thing is learned. No Thing is achieved but a New, Thin Book, like a Short, semi Satisfying Masturbation you can then sell for Money OnLine to buy More Things with/get Some Other Hipster to recognize you as being Hip for having done.

In Tao Lin’s Books, Other People are Things you talk to on Gmail Chat/text/Occasionally see. Spending Time with Other People consists of saying Meaningless Things that are Mildly Funny and feeling Vaguely unComfortable/Vaguely turned on but not Really knowing what to do about it xcept what People are believed do with their Time on Earth (under sub/Urban Capitalism): walk around, eat Food, make Small Talk. On this Account, the Characters are inDistinguishable from One an Other but for their Names and Genders. alMost Every Girl Friend in a Tao Lin Book could have been Dakota Fanning Once. alMost Every Guy Friend in a Tao Lin Book is a Member of the Alt Lit Movement.

Tao Lin's Books represent but a Meager Degree of what being Alive is. But because People under Consumer Capitalism are so Alike, they think he's got Life in the Millennial Generation nailed.

Tao Lin’s Real Talent, then, is not his Writing Style—which is Only Original in being so like a Mass Produced Consumer Product, a New Trick for Literature, if not for the Rest of the Arts (Tao Lin is a Sxually Repressed Andy Warhol)—it is his Marketing of that Writing.

If he were Any Less Good at it, he would have to work in Advertising.

Lin has managed to convince us, Eager for a Literary Voice for the New Millennium, that he is that Voice based not on what used to elevate a Literary Author to the Position- the ProFunDity of their Literary Work- but via the Very Same Technique Capitalism has used to sell Mass Produced Consumer Products for Decades: market a Product as if it is Great, and People will buy it, no Matter how Xtraneous it Really is.

Tao Lin is Self Aware, to a Degree. He knows he is being Xtraneous, and so he makes fun of it by drawing our Attention to it. Tao Lin's Books glorify their Own Meaninglessness. And so they establish and reinforce the Purported Meaninglessness of Millennial Hipsterism as a Whole.

Tao Lin is a watered down for the Median Consumer Version of Great Literature. In his Books, he makes it Obvious he has the Elements of Great Literature Down (Angst, interActions, Movements from Place to Place, Objects that Define a Particular Era), but he has no More than that: that is why his Books are so Short. Yet, he has a Million Hipsters, subjectable to Advertising like no Generation before them, yearning for a Generational Literary Hero, identifying their Own Mundane, Repetitive, Alienated, Vaguely Depressed, Consumer Mediated Life Styles in his Books and trying to write just like him on Account of that/their Conformist Capitalist Consumer Brainwashing. What Tao Lin does not have with what Literature needs to be Great: he does not have the ProFound Search for Meaning that is the Kor of the Great Literary Work: inStead he has an Affected Claim to Meaninglessness: the First Significant Writer to emerge on the InterNet, from MillenniGeni, has sold out before he was Even made. A Generation appears Lost to the Borg

Thankfully, marketing your Self as the Great Writer of your Generation Only goes so Far: I should know. Despite his Popularity, despite creating a “New Prose Style” based in Commodifcation + Meme Theory (create a Relevant Product Such as a Self Consciously Shallow Prose Style and reProcuce it as it is as Many Times as Possible + include as Many Meme Jacks as Possible) Tao Lin is rejected by the Literary Establishment because his Books, with their Conscious Lack of Meaning, are Only Half as Interesting as the Hype he’s created around them via the Same Technique: Commodification + Meme Theory (create a Relevant Product Such as a Young, InterNet-Based Writer and reproduce it as it is as Many Times as Possible + include as Many Meme Jacks as Possible), which works Better in Sales, which thrives on Consistency, than it does in Literary Writing, which thrives on Variety, no Doubt.

And this is where is where Tao Lin’s Corruption as an Artist becomes Evident: Tao Lin acts, in his OnLine Self Promotion, in a Way that contradicts the Very Message of his Literature, which is the Truth of where his and his Characters' Drive to Emotional Nullification, to Surface Infatuation and to "Sever Depression" comes from: Tao Lin acts as if he does not know his Own Message. A Writer who does not know his Own Message is a Writer who had not yet found his True Voice.

What is Tao Lin's Message?

Universal throughout Tao Lin’s Books is a Sense of Despondency that is subdued by a Practiced Emotional Neutrality. Tao Lin’s Minimalist Prose elicits Little Emotion Even as Good/Bad Things happen (therefore, it is Hard to say that Any Thing at All happens in Tao Lin's Books). Amid the Stuff of their Days (Boy / Girl / Gmail Chat / NYC / Walk / Food / (Consumer)Object / Sadness), Characters are Notable Only for their Lack of a Notable Reaction. Characters Emotions are Rarely xplored from the in Side (Even their Sadness is not so Much described as inferred via Gmail Conversations about Depression and Suicide, which might Also be taken as Sarcastic). InStead: a Tao Lin Staple: describing the Possible Emotion a Character is feeling by writing, “he/she made a happy/sad/upset/neutral facial expression,” a Technique which emphasizes the Fact we don't Really know what they are Feeling: Possibly no Thing. Any Emotions that are described from the in Side are Mild, Mere Twinges, like a Sneeze: “he felt happy/sad.” Then it passes. It passes over Small Things, like a Girl Friend saying Some Thing Funny, and it passes over Big Things, like a Girl Friend telling you she cuts her Self. By Tao Lin's Protagonists, these Events are Xperienced as Almost of the Same Magnitude on the Emotional Barometer. The Characters' True Emotions Subtly manifest, how Ever, just like Tao Lin's Message Subtly manifests despite his Apparent Ignorance of it: Haley Joel Osment becomes "More Controlling" the More Dakota Fanning Self harms. But that is All Tao Lin will let on to. Now the Book Ends. We Never know how Things work out. Do they break up? Do they stay together? Does it Even Matter? The "Barely there" Progression of Tao Lin's Plots would seem to confirm the Hypothesis that Things stay just the Same, like a Dull Drone, like White Noise, like Hamsters churning out Hamsters to Eternity.

An Effect of this Affected Emotional Numbness is an inAbility to Connect with People. Tao Lin’s Protagonists are Consistently Isolated, Alone & Lonely (a Condition of Life under Capitalism, which would see All interActions mediated by the Market- Gmail Chat, FaceBook, Txting, etc). Then, when they do spend Time with Other People, inStead of feeling the Other Person out based in Unique and Internal Personality Traits, they note Clothing worn, Facial Xpressions made, Words said, Food eaten, as if these Surface Attributes, in Aggregate, would amount to the Same Thing.

An Obsession with Food—the Type of Food One Eats, Scenes featuring Eating, Conversations centering around Food—are Also Universal throughout Tao Lin’s Books.

"Central" to the Plot of Richard Yates is that Dakota Fanning is a Bulimic and that her Mother has Poor Eating Habits—she is a “cheese beast.” Veganism is Repeatedly mentioned in All of Tao Lin’s Books, as if this, despite Little Else, were the Evidence of an Innate Morality to his Character.

Tao Lin’s Characters are Sad Characters whose Xtreme Self Consciousness cancels the Sadness out, creating Ennui. Their Shallow Evaluations of their Selves and of One an Other mimic the Shallowness of the Culture they live in: Consumer Culture. Their Relationship with Food, the Most Fundamental Form of Consumption, is therein their One True Comfort, the One Way they Xpress a Morality & the Main Way the Lady Characters Especially Outwardly display their Internal Emotional Issues.

And yet, as we know, in Tao Lin's Books, no Thing changes. No Thing gets Better. The Static Prose remains. The Static Characters remain. The Static Plots remain. It is Pure Monotony from Start to finish and this is meant to be Funny, or Witty, or Poignant, Mostly because the Characters Some Times say Funny, or Witty, or Poignant Things. But again, Surface.

Tao Lin’s Literature is just like a Hamster running on a Wheel in a Cage. Now the Cage is the Modern American Consumer Identity. Seeing as he cannot escape the Cage, seeing as the Banality of the Cage, Virtually Identical to Every Cage around it, desensitizes the Hamster (Tao Lin's Soul) to his Emotional Self, he can Only reproduce its Qualities by running, Endlessly, without getting Anywhere, observing, Pointlessly, but Continuously, the Things he sees from his Cage: not Much. More of the Same.

So isolated in his Consumer Identity (for the Advantage of the Owner of the Means of Production and the Ideology of Capitalism), Tao Lin's Hamster Soul has no Idea how to be with his Fellow Hamsters. Richard Yates opens with an Anecdote about a Hamster eating its Own Babies: this is what Animals do in Captivity: they appear without Empathy, but they are Really sparing the Nxt Generation their Misery. Haley Joel then says he wanted to give the Hamster a High Five. He is displaying his Own Deep Inner Wound: if he had known he would be born into Captivity, he would have preferred not to have been born at All. Poor Dakota Fanning should have recognized the Warning for what it was, but she does not, and so, because the Cage fails to provide her with Authentic Xperience, and Haley fails to relate to her because he as been so numbed to him Self by the Same Constriction, Dakota pukes up her Food, her Body's unConscious Protest against the Cage, like stealing from AA was Sam's.

Yet what is the Reaction of Haley Joel Osment to Eventual Knowledge of Dakota Fanning’s Bulimia? He becomes More Controlling, More Possessive, just like the Power Structure does when People begin to rebel. Haley Joel Osment is a Man in Emotional Denial, a Passive Aggressive Jerk who dates a 16 Year Old, I think, because no Grown Lady would put up with his Lack of Self Esteem. Emotional Repression and Denial is his Technique for Dealing with his Feelings of Anger at being Captive, and so he pressures his Girl Friend to do the Same. And because he has repressed so Much, he has no Idea why him and his Teen Aged Girl Friend are so Miserable and Stuck in their Lives, though they talk about it Frequently. Perhaps, if Viewed from an Xistential Perspective, it is Even Funny, their Misery and imMobility? The Source of a Witty Book, Perhaps? Tao Lin is absorbing, into him Self, the Perspective of those who keep the Cages.

Interestingly Enough, un Like Most Writers, I don't think Tao Lin writes to release his Emotions, but to continue to repress them through an Affected Neutral Minimal Prose Style. His Obsession with making him Self Present on the InterNet is endemic of a Man suffering from a Lack of Proper Grounding: All Tao Lin's Energy is being pushed to his Upper Chakras and out his Head into the World, rather than recycling through the Body to Energize it: Tao Lin has cut him Self off from his Instincts, the Lower Chakra's: hence, the Emotional Numbness, the Tepid Sxuality, and the Over Reliance on Xternal Indicators as a Measure of Success. For this Reason, Tao Lin is at a Risk of Writer's Block: he has blocked him Self off from him Self, and until he unblocks the Energy in his his Lower Half, he will not be able to flourish Creatively. I hope to help him achieve this Aim by telling him the Truth about his Issues.

Because this is the Truth, it may, at First, appear a Little Harsh. Stay Strong.

Tao Lin, you have internalized the Attitudes of those who keep the Consumer Cages we live in Today: you have internalized the Ideology of Capitalism. Despite it's Manifestation in your Literature, you behave, in your OnLine Persona, as if you are unAware that the Message of your Work is that our Consumer Identities are destroying us by keeping us Captive within them, unable to live our Lives as we ought to: Freely, Emotionally, from Instinct and Intuition.

Consumer Identities trap us within them, use us to perpetuate them, and then destroy us when we have given All we can to Some Thing that can give no Thing back besides Consumer Products: Capitalism raises us in a Cage of Consumerism wherein Every Action must be mediated by the Market: in the City, Capitalism feeds off us at Every Turn: it co-opts our ProFunDity as Beings by making us its Slaves and convinces us, via School, Advertisement and the Media, to reproduce its Memes of Production and Consumption in our Identities in Order to perpetuate it, and so Tao, you do: Every Thing about you screams: Brand. The Truth is, it is you who has been branded, by Capitalism, and so now you are its Slave.

Capitalism takes our Creative Identities Away from us in the Conformist Pressure Cooker of School and then sells them back to us as Adults with Jobs in the Capitalist Sphere as Consumer Products it convinces us, via Advertisement and Media, are Necessary to our Well Being and Sense of Self: just like Tao Lin, you convince us, via Advertisement and Media, your Books are Necessary to our Collective Literary Consciousness, to our Sense of Self in the Millennial, OnLine Generation, when in Fact there is Almost no Self in your Books: just the Xternal Appearance of One.

Suicidal Thoughts, Common to your Characters, are a Suitable Response to feeling as if you are a Slave, that your Life is not under your Own to Control, but Some One Else's and to Some One Else's Advantage. At Least your Death could be your Own. But, should Suicide be rejected as an Option, and it is More Often that not, the Nxt, Easiest, Option is Conformity to the Power Structure, that Obedience might bring Favors, and the System suggests it will, to its Own Advantage, of Course: just like writing like you, Tao Lin, guarantees a Place in Alt Lit, if Never, for being Derivative, your Success. You have chosen, Even in Face of your Depression, to conform to that which is eating away at you for what Ever Meager Advantages it may offer, just like a Hamster in a Cage who still needs the Cage Owner to Feed it and therefore dare not escape it's Captivity, but rather keep running, Endlessly, Pointlessly, in its Wheel, trying to Convince its Self its imPrisonment is Wroth the Good Things it brings: Food, Literary Fame.

Tao Lin has given his Literature to Capitalism that Capitalism might provide him with Food and Literary Fame.

If you sell out you will be Rich, said the Fortune Teller to Sam in SLFAA.

Well, my Fortune Teller, and that happens to be me, said, RESIST PATRIARCHAL COLONIALIST CONSUMER CAPITALISM and you will Ascended to the Highest Heights the Cultural Arenas of Literature & Philosophy in your Life Time and Beyond.

So, from the Looks of Things up here, Tao, from the Behaviors of you OnLine and the Characters in you Books, you are not helping to alleviate the Heinous Tragedy for Unique and Authentic Sapiens Self Xpression that is Capitalist Commodification and Consumerism. You are watching what is happening, you are recording what is happening, you are getting a Little Bit Upset about it, but in the End you are doing no Thing besides swallow down your Misery, pressure your Girl Friend to do the Same, and keep on conforming (sending out signed Copies of Will Farrel's Elf to Readers, putting AA's name on your Book, stickering BRITNEY SPEARS to the Door of a Lit Mag), and in that, you are perpetuating the Problem, your Own Problem.

The Way you live, Tao Lin, in a Cage of Consumerism, is the Theme of your Writing, is the Biggest Problem with your Writing, and it is why you and MuuMuu House are so Flat and Apathetic in your Styles. InStead of becoming aware of this changing it, you have kept on going with it, commodifying your Own Literature for the Sake of Capitalist Comfort, believing that this indulgence of the Power Structure is "iRonic" considering your Position as Literary Writer and, thereby, "Funny." It is Neither. It is what the Power Structure wants from you and it does no One but those at the Very Top of that Power Structure Any Real Good: maybe not Even them, if Bret Easton Ellis is Any Indication.

The Best Parallel between Real Art, like the Work of the Beats, and Commercial Art, like yours, (Alt Lit is an iRonic Choice of Name: in your Case, it should have been Lit Inc), is between Real Sugar and reFined Sugar: One is the Stuff by which we have Survived, Hand to Mouth, for Millions of Years. The Other is a New, More Addictive but Less Healthy Industry made Product pumped Every where in the Market, causing, in it's Monotonousness, Mass Obesity and Mass Diabetes.

Eat up, Tao.

Wait! You think Veganism makes you Different? Makes you Better? It might mean you have a Healthier Body, Sure, but it is Still just an Other Commodified, Consumer Choice in a Long, Super Market Line of Commodified Consumer Choices. It is still buying the Disease, Tao. It’s just a “Hipper,” "Healthier" Way of doing it. It Only proves you're a Slightly Smarter and therefore Slightly Better kept Slave than Some of the Other Ones: it Only proves you are a Member of the Middle Class.

Tao Lin, your refusal to denounce Consumerism, Truly the Greatest Evil of our Day, the Cause of your Sorrows, the Very Fact that you are not Even Aware that this is the Source of your Sorrows, or you wont admit it, Even as it writes its Self into your Books, your reproducing, inStead, its Memes- the Memes of Capitalist Commodification and Consumerism- and thereby your "pre Packaged" Way of Writing, suggests that you are is Naught but a Docile Slave to the Order of Money, like Hollywood, which is to say:

Tao Lin

you are

not

and

COULD NEVER BE

UNDER THESE CONDITIONS

GREAT

WRITER / ARTIST / ICON

For what makes a Great Great, Tao

is the Fight

for FreeDom

FreeDom Even from the Oppression of their Own Language

Your Prose never breaks Free of its Self

It is Flawless, but it is All the Same

Calculated, xecuted, Identical

A More Conformist Work of "Literature" than yours has Probably Never xisted and for this Reason, you are Special: your Records of Life in the Cage have shown us how Far Capitalist Commodification has gone: it has gone for the Soul of the Literary Book, which is the Soul of the Literary Writer, and commodified that.

In this, you epitomize MillenniGeni Hipsters, who have been trained to see their Very Selves as a “Product,” a “Brand,” to be sold on the Market to the Highest Bidder. In Other Words: Hipsters are the Slaves (what Other Kind of Person is bought and sold?) and in you they see their Xperience of Slavery reProduced and feel validated.

But Great Writing, in its Greatness, is a Refutation of Slavery. It is an Assertion of FreeDom, an Xpression of FreeDom pushed to its Limits and beyond. Great Literature, as Great Literature, cannot be commodified or it would loose that Ecstatic and Miserable, Tremendous and Terrible, Sublime and Awful, un Predictable and unControlable Quality that makes it Last, as Great Art, for Hundreds, if not Thousand of Years.

Tao Lin, your Prose, Plots, and Characters are Empty Facsimiles of those that make Great Literature Great. With your Consistent Prose, your Generational Content, your Depression, it is Easy to confuse you with Great Writing, but just because you look like Some Thing on the out Side does not make you that Thing on the in Side and Time, Time has an Amazing Way of weeding the Frauds from the Real Deal.

Tao Lin

you are on the out Side

what I am to my Kor:

But what I liked about you, Tao Lin, back in those Brooklyn Days, was Xactly what Many People didn't and still don't like about you: that you act, in your OnLine Persona, like a Multi Media Pop Star when you are a Writer, and a Relatively New One at that.

Being One of this New Breed of OnLine Writers, these—Blog-gers? via the LameStream Media… no. Blog-niks? via SLFAA… uhgk. Blog-ists? via me, Right now…Sure!— these Blogists, I was aware that Literature, for All its Ivory Tower, could not be Immune to the Fracturing, inter Breeding, and thereby, Proliferation, of Medias OnLine if it wanted to survive there, Even qua Literature.

I was aware, as Tao Lin you Most Certainly are Aware, because I found out when I moved to NYC that you had beaten me to the Position I had hoped to attain in leaving Canada: Literature, Serious Literature, of the Kind who’s Death is alWays being trumpeted, needs Multi Media Celebrity to refresh its Self from the Doldrums it has become associated with since the Invention of teleVision & Computers.

But not the Kind of Promo Heavy, Product Vapid, subServient to Capitalism, Surface distracting from Inner Emptiness for the Sake of the Status Quo Pop Celebrity Music and Film have come to rely on for Cash and which you epitomize for Literary Writing Right now.

No.

It’s Literature, Goddammit.

It needs a Celebrity of Great ProFunDity if it is going to be "Literary" at All.

People look to Great, Generation Defining Literary Books to see their Lives lifted from the Mundane into the Mythological.

Any Literary Celebrity who does not achieve this in their Works is no "Literary" Celebrity at All, just an Other Commerical Writer, cashing in on what's Popular.

There is no Thing "Mythological" about your Books, Tao Lin: Mythology is All about Character- what drives the Character? What forces affect the Character?- and in your Books, the Characters aren't there. They are Empty, witnessed going about their Day they do not, yet, reveal Any Thing ProFound about their Selves besides their Concerted Attempt to deny Any Profundity in their Lives.

Trying to turn Some Thing Mundane (Any Thing Surface is Necessarily Mundane) into Some Thing Mythological (which xists in the subConscious Swirl of Archetypal Forces), as you attempt to do by marketing your Self as the Head of a Literary Movement

a Grand Character your Self, deSpite your Characterless Books, is doomed to Failure because those Qualities are in Contradiction to One an Other. This makes your Work a Joke, yes, a Literary Joke. But ha ha. Now the Joke is Over, just like Hipsterism will be replaced by a New Youth Movement, just like Capitalism will fall into the Earth: that with no Thing at its Kor is bound to Collapse.

Well, let’s just say that

Where you are Mundane

I am Mythological

Where you are Narrow in Scope

I am Xpansive

Where you are Caged

I am Wild

Where you are Numb

I am Passionate

Where you are aSxual

I am Sxual

Where you are lacking Depth

I am Deeper than xpected

Where you are Weak

I am Strong

Where you show how Literature can depreciate on the InterNet

I show how it can improve

Where your Life, beyond your Celebrity, is Ordinary

Mine is unBelievable

Where your Prose repeats its Self

Mine is in Constant transFormation

Where you are a Conformist

I am a Radikal

Where your Work is Industrial & Material

Mine is Organic & Magickal

Where your Work makes Sense considering the Progression of American Culture

(towards Greater and Greater Commodification)

(though the Signs were there)

no One xpected me

did they?

But, now, here I am

to tell you a Story:

My Man and I were Down Town

I'd just bought SLFAA

in a used Book Store

for $5

cause I wouldn't

pay More

It was in my

Purse

My Man wanted Food

SUSHI

he said

because it was hot out

We walked to the

Sushi Place he liked

Only to find out it was

Closed

My Man said

AHHH

WHAT THE FUCK

WHAT THE FUCK AM I GOING TO DO NOW?

I said

what Ever

My Man said

NOT WHAT EVER

I said

I Usually just start walking and see what I can find

I DON'T DO THINGS THAT WAY

So my Man and I

stood on the

Side Walk

out Side the

Sushi Place

for like

5 Minutes

while my Man

huffed and

puffed

that inDecisive Pisces

about how Hungry he was

and how

he didn’t know where to go

to eat

Come on, Mr. Dragon

Let's walk down to the Water and sit on a Patio in the Sun Shine

FINE

On our Way

to the Water

we passed

The Lotus Pond

this

Vegan

Buddhist

Chinese

Restaurant

I like

My Man said

LET'S GO HERE

and I said

Okay

But the Lotus Pond

too

was Closed

for Lunch

According to the Sign

The Lotus Pond

would open

10 Minutes

My Man said

COME THIS WAY

and pulled me by the Hand

(he is Very Tall and walks Very Fast)

2 Blocks Over

to a Coffee Shop

called

Bliss

I'd Never been to this

Coffee Shop

called

Bliss

before

Bliss

sold

Organic

Vegan

Local

Seasonal

Fruit

Smoothies

for like

Jar

Heheheh

Xpensive Yuppie Food

I said

leaning against the Bar

looking at the

Xpensive Yuppies

and their

Xpensive Babies

in the

Xpensive

Faux Rustic

Booths

drinking

Organic

Vegan

Local

Seasonal

Fruit

Smoothies

out of Jars

for like

$10

Each

SHHH

said my Man

and he and bought a Smoothie called

BERRY YUMMY

which we drank out Side

in the Sun Shine

just like I had wanted

and it was

BERRY YUMMY

inDeed

Then my Man said we were going

back to The Lotus Pond

where we sat down and my Man

ordered a

Vegan

Rice

Dish

and

I started reading

SLFAA

for that

Very 1st Time

in a

Vegan

Buddhist

Chinese

Restaurant

after

just having been

dragged

2 Blocks out of the Way

to a

Vegan

Local

Seasonal

Fruit

Smoothie

Shop

I didn't Even know

xisted

by a Red Blooded Man

who is Loath to accept

alMost Any Novelty

when it comes

to Restaurants

Holy Shit

YO PSYCHIC POWERS

BE REAL, TAO LIN

No denying that

I didn't figure out this “Thing with the Capital Letters” (I call it "CAPITALISM" [and then I laugh so Hard I have to pee]) until I read SLFAA.

A Little Competition is Good for us All, Eh?

and Every Body loves

a Good

LITERARY

FEUD

TAO LIN vs. ANDREA COATES

Whose Literary Work comes off the More

ProFound?

Compelling?

Dangerous?

Accomplished?

ROUND 1

In Richard Yates, his Second Novel, Tao Lin names Characters who start a Casual Relationship over Gmail Chat after pre Teen Movie Stars Haley Joel Osment and Dakota Fanning.

These are Really: Tao Lin and Bebe Zeva.

And if they aren't, Well, they Very Well could've been.

In SIS:, her First Novel, Andrea Coates names Characters who start a polyAmorous Relationship over MDMA/Alcohol after French Xistentialists Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

These are Really: Some Teen Agers from a Small Town in Canada.

And if they aren't, Well, they Very Well could've been.

ROUND 2

Tao Lin's Literary Alter Egos are called Sam, Andrew and Haley, Average American 21st Century Male Names, indicating they are Average American 21st Century Males.

Each Book, their Lives are Similar: they are Young Males living in sub/Urban American Consumer Society.

Andrea Coates' Literary Alter Ego is called Happy and her Last Name is a Different Representational Color Each Book, or Portion of a Book, indicating she is a Fulfilled and multiFaceted Lady.

Each Book, or Portion of a Book, she appears in a Universe correspondent to the Color of her Name.

ROUND 3

Tao Lin’s First Novel, which is about being a Young Person in America Today, Eeeee Eee Eeee, is populated with Dolphins, Hamsters, and Bears- that talk.

Andrea Coates’ First Novel, which is about being a Young Person in Canada Today, SIS:, is populated with Goth Girls, Political Scientists, and Drug Dealers- that fight.

ROUND 4

Tao Lin wrote a Literary Novella called Shoplifting from American Apparel about a Young Writer who steals from an American Apparel because he is…Depressed? and...Poor? or…Bored? I can’t. Really. tell. I think. the Book's. about. Consumerism. causing. Emotion.al. Constipa.tion.

Not to be read while on the Toilet.

Andrea Coates wrote a Horror Novella called The Sex Magick Book about a Nineteen Year Old Girl who goes to a Witch to interpret a Dream she had while recovering from an Over Dose of Cocaine and then has the Witch put a Spell on the Young Man she is interested in.

But the Witch may have her Own Reasons for invoking the Spell.

Not to be read while on Cocaine (Unless you dare...).

ROUND 5

Tao Lin’s Poetry is about feeling Sad and Distant in Side of Consumer Culture.

Andrea Coates’ Poetry is about feeling Angry and Lusty out Side of Consumer Culture.

ROUND 6

Tao Lin's Books are Each Similar in Structure, Style and Plot, creating a Cohesive Oeuvre.

Andrea Coates' Books are Each Vastly Different in Structure, Style and Plot, proving she is a Creative Writer.

ROUND 7

You can read a Book by Tao Lin in a Couple of Hours if you don't get annoyed by him.

You can read a Book by Andrea Coates in a Couple of Days if you don't get overwhelmed by her.

ROUND 8

Tao Lin’s Overriding Emotional Frequency is “Ennui.”

Andrea Coates' Overriding Emotional Frequency is “fucked.”

Whose Film Work comes off the More

ProFound?

Compelling?

Dangerous?

Accomplished?

ROUND 1

Tao Lin makes Films with Megan Boyle, a Multi Disciplinary Artist who was spotted on her Twitter Page slurping from a Subway Takeout Cup.

How Funny

Andrea Coates makes Films with jody franklin, a Multi Disciplianry Artist who was spotted on his YouTube Page writhing Half Naked on the Floor of a Dirty Art Space, howling and bashing Things into his Head.

How Intense

ROUND 2

Tao Lin and Megan Boyle make their Films on a Mac Book

Andrea Coates and jody franklin make their Films on a Sony VX 2100

ROUND 3

Tao Lin and Megan Boyle made a DIY Documentary featuring them walking around a City while High on Drugs.

Andrea Coates and jody franklin are looking for Investments in Order to create a Feature Length Porn Film featuring them starting a Sx Cult in which they initiate People by getting them High on Drugs.

ROUND 4

Tao Lin and Megan Boyle made a Documentary about the Life of Teen Aged Fashion Blogist Bebe Zeva, who lives in Las Vegas, Navada, USA.

Andrea Coates and jody franklin are making a Feature Film about the Lives of Radikal Anarkists who live in Coastal, British Columbia, Canada.

(For More on these Film Projects, See LLWAM)

You have got to be getting what I’m saying.

But, just in Case your not:

Hipster RunOff. So into it back in my Brooklyn Days. I thought it would spread from Williamsburg and Burgs that wanted to be Willaims and be recognized the World Over for having its Finger on the Pulse (up its Ass). The Moment I moved back to Canada, how Ever, it became…Totally Irrelevant... Sickeningly Consumer MainStream/Repetitive/inSecure (Carles often strikes me as a Self Loathing Sycophant), its Drop of Creative Lube rubbed to the Point of Uselessness.

Tao Lin, you, too, are the Same as back in my Brooklyn Days, Only inStead of More Consumer MainStream than you AlReady were, you've gotten "More Intense"

A Conceit that makes me laugh

Dude, you couldn’t handle One Party at my Place

All Aspiring Writers ought to know this:

There are Two Ways to get Attention directed your Way as a Writer of Literary Fiction, Poetry, or Philosophy (ie: there are Two Ways to being Xceptionally ProFound, or giving People the Impression that you are):

1) Be Epic in Scope - this encompasses Most of the Great Fiction Writers, Most of the Great Philosophers, and Many of the Great Poets. This Style of Writing, "evokes of a Wide Range of Characters, Locations, Events and Themes." In Life, it means an Author is Wise.

2) Be Intense- this encompasses Many of the Great Poets, Some of the Great Fiction Writers and a Few of the Great Philosophers. This Style of Writing is, "Minimal, but Highly Evocative." In Life, it means the Author is Cool, or Hip.

Most of the Greats have a Mixture of Both these Qualities but fall More to One Side than to the Other, for the Sake of Argument. Less Accomplished Authors fail at Both, Most Often due to Mediocre Prose, or a Lack of Thematic Relevance, ie: the Work is Epic in Scope or it is Minimalist, but it fails to be Evocative, Either of Feelings or of Scenes, because it lacks inSight, or "Thematic Clarity" (Tao Lin, you, with your Numb Books, are here included).

To get Attention as a Literary Writer, Tao Lin, you could have tried being Epic in Scope, but we All know that’s the Opposite of what your Writing is. As it stands, you don't have a Great Enough Range of Emotions/Characters/Sentence Structures to be an Epic Novelist of the Level of Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky or Faulkner or Joyce or Proust or Elliot or Dickens or James or Bolaño or Franzen or Melville or Foster Wallace, or Any of those, and beSides, becoming Epic in Scope would mean giving up the Reductionist Shtick for which you are Best Known and Most Recognized

Better, you think, to try that Technique, Both Personally and Professionally, which has Most Often gained Attention for a Minimalist, whether that be a Writer of Spare Prose, of Short Novels, Short Stories, or Poetry, like Hemmingway or Bukowski or Ginsberg or Hunter S or Easton Ellis or Fitzgerald or Rimbaud or Baudelaire or Sartre or Shelley or Conrad or Woolf or Orwell or Pushkin or Kafka or Hesse: being Intense.

So, in Order to balance out your Cuteness / Minimalist Prose by upping you Intense Cred, you started “doing Drugs.” You started writing a Column for Vice Magazine called Drug Related Photoshop Art.

(I Also have to balance out how Cute I am by being Intense

For Good Meaure, how Ever, my Literature is Also Epic in Scope)

I was Super Xcited when I heard about this cause I like Drugs and Art a Lot More than I like Sulky Hipsters, Average American Days, or talking Animals in Minimalist Novels, so, Fully prepared to accept this, New, More Andrea Coates Accessible Tao Lin, should he have warranted it, and crossing my Fingers the Drugs had xpanded his Perspective Some what, I dug in.

Gee

It's Justin Bieber

How you disappointed my Optimism, Tao

DRPA is an unReadable Pastiche of Self Conscious Pop Culture Reference and InterNet/NYU Hipster Jargon Complete with unNecessary & unUsual Punctuation meant Only to denote you have [no Emotions out Side of 'iRony'].

It reads More Difficultly than Any of my un Edited Blog Posts about Sxism, and it’s a Humor Column published by an interNational Magazine.

The Impression gathered from DRPA is that Vice is publishing it because it's got the Word “Drug” in the Title and you wrote it but they don't bother reading the Thing before it goes out to Print, cause, why bother? it's got Drug in the Title and Tao Lin as the Author. People are going to read it.

You have a Lot More Friends in High Places than I do, Tao Lin, which could be because I live in Victoria, BC (pop 78,057) and you live in Brooklyn, NY (pop 2,504,700), or because I’m Twenty Three and you're Twenty Eight or because I’m a Lady and your Man, or Maybe it's because I’m Real and Brilliant and Raw and it scares People and you're a Fluffy Pet People think they might look Cool/Cute/Approachable carrying around in their Bag. What do you think?

Daniel B Roberts, in his Review of MuuMuu House, calls you and your Followers Writing "Lazy" and in Deed, that is a Good Description of your Style: posting on the InterNet, you don't have to try Nearly as Hard as when you're attempting to get your Work published via More Traditional Routes. Question: would you call my Writing "Lazy?"

The Fact is- and this is Endemic of Vice Magazine as a Whole- talking about Drugs will not save you from your Laziness. Tao Lin, at Some Point, if you want to be a Great Writer, you will have to shackle off your Privileged North American Consumer Vegan Hipsterdom and deal with the Ugly/Beautiful Depths of Sapiens' Society and the Emotions as a Whole. It doesn't matter whether your Books are Long or Short, Minimalist or Loquacious, if Every Sentence is as Much of a Jolt to the System as a Line of Blow. If you want to be a Great Writer, Tao, there can be no writing along the Surfaces of Society and Self, posting an out of Context Twitter here, depriving Words of their 'Meaning' there, dropping a New Photo of your Self on that Blog there, sticking to defining a Narrow & Shallow Segment of being Alive Today in your Books; no, you have to go Deep, Deep down into the Belly of your Species and your Self, and that's Some Thing the Drugs can't help you with, not on their Own, not without your Initiative. Otherwise, they aren't a Tool of Enlightenment, but an Other Effort at Emotional Repression.

Just because you do Drugs now doesn’t Mean you understand the underBelly, Tao, Either your Society's or your Own, Especially if you're Primarily doing Drugs for the Purpose of getting Attention drawn to you/continuing to obscure your True Feelings about Things. If you were willing to go Deep into Sapien Xperience, you would stand up to the Autocracy for Authenticity of Self Xpression that is Commodification, but beSides the “Drug Use” I’ve seen no Evidence you stand up to the Oppressive Power System at All, in Any Way, Much the Opposite in Fact, and we’ve talked about this, Tao: Resistance to Oppressive Power is the Most Essential Element of Any Great Writer (at whose Essence, as I said, is FreeDom: Pure, Absoulte, Anarkich FreeDom).

No, shoplifting from an American Apparel does not count as a Protest if you then go and put their Corporate Name on the Cover your Book and then fairydust that Book All over the InterNet. You might as well be working for them, Tao.

An 'iRonic' Ad for American Apparel

Tao Lin, underCover Employee. Ha ha. That’s Funny... Xcept it’s...Truer...than it is Funny.

You may be a Writer of Poetry and as of Such have to shoplift to get by, or you Might see your Actions as Some Kind of Righteous, but when you then turn around and put a Corporate Name on your Book, just like Franzen wouldn’t let Oprah do it his, for Real you’re saying you're Okay with All the Obnoxious Capitalist Shit we the Creative Nature Oriented People of this Earth suffer from, irRepressibly, on a Daily Basis.

My Guess is, you've Never spent Longer than a Walk in Nature and that's why you don't state in your Books, that's why you act in Contradiction to the Very Message of your Own Oeuvre:

HOW FUCKING SICK

PATRIARCHAL

COLONIALIST

CAPITALIST

CIVILIZATION

!!!! IT'S FUCKING SICK !!!!

!!!! I FUCKING HATE IT !!!!

!!!! I WANT IT DONE !!!!

!!!! I WANT IT GONE !!!!

!!!! I WANT THE ECO REVOLUTION !!!!

!!!! AND I WANT IT !!!!

!!!! NOW !!!!

See, that’s how it Works. That’s how you have an Opinion about Society.

Let’s try you:

"I just actually don't have opinions about society. I can discern that certain things have an effect on certain other things but I don't view those effects as good or bad."

And that, that Right there, is your Problem, Tao. That's the Problem with All of Muumuu House: you are inDifferent (and for the Reason why inDifference is an Evil, see the post Script by Antonio Gramsci).

Opinions about Society are the Great Writer’s Bread and Butter, Tao. It’s how they Distinguish thier Selves from the Crowd of Eager Little MFA Birdies, twittering Away about the Same Silly Things Other People are, not rustling the Bushes too Much lest they Actually have an Impact on Society beyond Entertainment, cause that's how their Masters would have it.

You have to feel

LOVE

PASSION

RAGE

SORROW

GUILT

ENVY

HATE

if you wanna be a Great Writer, Tao

and you

you're just

Neutral

on Every Thing

it's Worse than Boring

it's Dangerous

Without a Moral Centre, which is to say, without feeling Genuine Anger at Oppression— the telling Sign of a Strong, Free Being—there is no Chance your Work will be Any More Memorable than a Hamster from a Mill, a T Shirt from AA, or Takeout Cup from Subway Restaurants. Without focusing on your Lower Chakra Issues, without Developing a Concrete Sense of Self and the Personal Opinions this entails, you will be blown hither and tither with the Whims.

Succeeding at been a Great Writer is a Lot like succeeding at been a Great General, Tao. Attack that which needs to be attacked. Defend that which needs to be defended. Know how to topple Shit. Know how to protect Shit.

You are a BillBoard, Tao, yes, I see that, but if your going to be a Great Writer too it’s Time to be a BillBoard for Some Thing More Substantial than your Personal Fame. It’s Time to stand up for a Truth People can believe in, Tao, a Truth that gives them hope of freeing their Selves from the Repetitive, Mundane, Hamster Wheel of American Culture in the 21^st Century: Some Thing that goes Deeper and Realer than Fame.

Hamsters can live in the Wild, Tao. There is Hope for you yet. Use your Influence to organize those who are Also in Cages. Use your Influence to organize an Escape to FreeDom.

Tao Lin nibbles his Vegan Snack

Right now, Tao, you are Technocrat being xploited by Capitalism, in Side the System, observant, but too Bored, Generally preOccupied, Under fed, and Well kept to make a Significant Point about it; Even Worse, you perpetuate the Disease of Commodification through your Particular Style.

Your Work, Tao, is no Thing but Consumer Propaganda, your outLook so sunk in Apathy you might as Well be a Dispatch from the Pentagon whose Ultimate Goal is making Sure our Generation Never lifts a Finger in Politics.

And Even if your not, the Effect of your Work is the Same: we don’t need to take Command of our Lives, we just need to write Funny Little Sentences & make Funny Little Videos about Every Thing Utterly Ordinary and Completely Consumer Mediated that happens to us. That Mild, Controlled Creativity is supposed to make up for People's being in Captivity, Tao? I don't think so.

Here's Megan Boyle, a Performance Artist, sipping from a Subway Cup

and you Guys think that’s an “iRonic JuxtaPosition”? Ya think that’s “making a Comment about Consumer Society?” You are spreading the Cancer, Tao. When Corporations convince Artists, Artists who (think they) are at the Top of their Game, to hawk their Products as Some Kind of “iRony,” don’t you see they’ve won? Don’t you see they own your Very Soul? Don’t you see that’s why you're Depressed/your GirlFriend is making her Self Puke/your Hamster is eating its Own Babies? Because its Life is not its Own, Tao. It's Life belongs to Capitalism, and until you renounce this Ideology and go seeking Self Xpression beyond its Surface Consumerism, you will not write a Truly Great Book.

I know what makes me Depressed, Tao: it’s the Society I am forced to live in, which has created its Self in the Image of the Factory, which demeans and oppresses Life in its Diversity and Spontaneity. It is being kept from my FreeDom that makes me Depressed, Tao. It is being kept, for Years, by School and Employment, from Authentic Self-Xpression: I refuse to give up my Authentic Self Xpression, for Any Thing, and that is what makes me a Great Artist. Great Artists are Constantly and Fully engaged in the Battle for their FreeDom of Xpression, Tao, and when Some One tries to take that FreeDom away from us, we are the First to Martyr our Selves for it, and the Most Dramatic about it. I don't see you rebelling, Tao. I see you conforming to what the Oppressors want from you: your Soul. You are creating your Soul, your Self, in the Image of the Commodity, not in the Image of Art, and until that changes, you cannot be a Great Artist.

In suppressing your Emotions, you are acting like Robot, a Literary Robot, released on the InterNet for the (unConscious) Purpose of making into a Commodity to be bought and sold the Very Soul of you Generation, just as your Own Soul was made a Commodity to be bought and sold.

Start getting

REAL

FUCKING

MAD

TAO

LIN

because you deserve Better and MillenniGeni deserves Better.

Readers might be entertained and shocked by your Antics for the Moment, Tao, but the Feeling will wear off when they realize your Work is Empty of Meaning, and Purposefully so. When they realize that your Books give them no Thing to feed on but their own Consumption: the Source of the Meaninglessness that permeates your Books and their Lives. Your Apathetic Literature leads to One of Two Places, Tao: Suicide or Complacency to the sub/UrBan 9-5, a Car, a Mortgage, 2.5 Kids (if you don’t eat them), a Retirement Residence & then Death, and they will reject you, Tao, those Intellects who crave Great Art in their Lives to remind them that FreeDom and Originality is Real and Possible, to help them through and help them learn and grow. Those, like me, who look to Literature to find the Meaning of Life will reject you, Tao Lin, because you have no Thing to offer them but More of what they are alReady suffering beneath: the Compulsory Consumption of Commodities under Capitalism, the Compulsory Repression of the Living Instincts under Capitalism, the Compulsory reProduction of the Memetics of Capitalism in an Endless Cycle of Self enSlavement.

As it stands, Tao, you are a Pawn to the Order of your Day, and so you are a Trifle to Literature, whose God is Liberty and Individuality at what Ever Cost, be that Madness, be that Solitude, be that stepping out before a Young Writer Quite Possibly on the Verge of his MainStream Break and saying to him, “Is that the Best you've got, Tao Lin? Cause, Boy, do I got Better. So, the Time is now to step up." I am looking for Equals, Tao. I want Equals. I want Great Writing in this World and you are not yet Great Writing. Only I am.

See, where you offer no Respite from the crushing Drone of Capitalism but Conformity, here I am, me, with a Whole Plan for the shackling off of Capitalist Xploitation plotted in the Resplendent Details of my Life and Art.

I am your Shadow Tao, your rejected Self, your Doppelganger, come to face you as a Real Person with Real Feelings and a Real Past and a Future, and you can Either accept me as I am, incorporate me into who you are and flourish from that, or be driven to Creative Bankruptcy trying to pretend I don't xist. I xist Tao. I am your un Spoken Feelings. Mine is the Voice of the Great Writer that lives in Side you, waiting to be released.

Maybe in America, and thereby in Letters as they are in English Today, the post Modern Mentality makes you and your Hip Young Writers Wary of Grandiosity (Grandiosity of Emotion, Grandiosity of Literary Style), but I think its Truer still that the Oppression of Capitalism has you and your Friends by the Soul, Tao Lin, and thereby, you don’t know what Grandiosity is: you've confused it with Recognition. You've confused the out Side with the in Side. You can make a Fake Cover proclaiming your Self a Great Novelist and laugh over it and hope it’ll get you that Place via Association, the hope of All Advertising, but keep on repeating a Single Simple Style of Prose, keep creating Characters devoid of Depth of Feeling and see how Many People consider you a Relevant "Literary" Author in 20, 50, 100, 200 Years.

As it stands, I don’t think you have the Creative Self Understanding, the Life Xperience, the Depth of Soul, Even at Twenty Eight and on your ThirdNovel, to write Any Thing to stand up to SIS:, and I’m Only Twenty Three and it’s my First. But we'll see, won't we? This is why I've done this Tao: to sell my Novel, that we might compare our Selves Afterward: that the Thought of Such a Challenge might spur you on to Greater Innovation and Achievement. Every One needs a Rival, Tao Lin. Other Wise, the Game ain't Fun. Be Lucky I'm not a Petty One; SIS: is Better than Any Thing you've written so Far, but there's Room for More than One Great Writer a Generation, Tao, there is Room for Many, and though I am the First to arise, I am at All Times Ready to Welcome you into my World should you create or desire to create the Literary Work that warrants it.

I am not Wary of Grandiosity, Tao Lin. I am not a post Modernist. I am a Pagan.

Paganism, from the Video, Burn the Tao Lin (Bottom)

And for this Reason, my Connection to the Ever Changing Powers of the Earth and the Instincts, I look to see as Much as Possible of Life and I look to portray as Much as Possible of Life. This includes Matters from the Worlds out Side of and the Worlds in Side of me. And I have Opinions from what I have xperienced, seen and felt, which are Mine and which I put forward Strong and Clear and so I will be respected for being Good and True and Brave, Tao Lin, and this is why I am called Happy while you are called Sam.

I live my Revolution, Tao Lin. You live your Fame; but if you want Any Thing Close to what I’ve got, the Spiritual and Intellectual ProFunDity of my Work, you will take what I have said here, you will understand that it is True, and you will use that Knowledge to transform your Work from Okay into Great. The Potential is there in you Tao, but the Rage, the Violence, the Sorrow, the Splendour & the Love is not. Turn away from Fame and towards the Self, Tao Lin, go looking to your Emotions and write down what you find there: then you will have a Great Book. There can be no More this sitting in Apartments on Computers, no More this Purposeful Neutrality covering True Feelings if you want to be a Great Writer, Tao. Being a Great Writer is like being a Great Lover: if Neutrality is what you're going for, beyond Seer Consistency, I can't Imagine the Xpereince is Any Thing at All Xceptional, let Alone Fun. But I'd love to be Wrong about that.

You are Popular, Tao Lin, because your Work captures Some Thing that plagues our Generation: Commodification of the Soul. But because you indulge it, because you offer no Solution to it, and no moving Forward from it, so the Future will pass over you and your Works. They will have been a Phenomenon of MillenniGeni and Never again, like a Pop Song is forgotten after its Immense Success. There can be no imMortality for Art without the Glorious Power of Life shining through with All its Hope, and in your Work, as it stands, that Hope is Absent, Tao Lin, turned over to a Complacent Endurance that is Never Satisfied, Never Ecstatic and Never concluded, but in Death. I hope to open you to Hope, Tao Lin: Hope for a Better Life beyond what can be bought, beyond the Commodity.

I have said my Peace, now, Tao and I have no More to say. This has been an Arena, and I’ve won, cause Tao Lin, you couldn't have written an Article like this about me, Even if I had been on the Scene: you don’t have the Stomach for it, and besides, I'm not that Easy to summarize: I don't have a Schtick. So, if you want to join the Great Writers, Tao, scrap yours. Look at your True Feelings inStead, the Whole Wide, Wild Range of them, and write about that.

Hipsters, you've been warned

Sincerely

Andrea Coates

MillenniGeni's

First

Great

Writer

(but not its Last)

Post Script, by Antonio Gramsci:

Indifference is actually the mainspring of history. But in a negative sense. What comes to pass, either the evil that afflicts everyone, or the possible good brought about by an act of general valour, is due not so much to the initiative of the active few, as to the indifference, the absenteeism of the many. What comes to pass does so not so much because a few people want it to happen, as because the mass of citizens abdicate their responsibility and let things be. They allow the knots to form that in time only a sword will be able to cut through; they let men rise to power whom in time only a mutiny will overthrow. The fatality that seems to dominate history is precisely the illusory appearance of this indifference, of this absenteeism. Events are hatched off-stage in the shadows; unchecked hands weave the fabric of collective life - and the masses know nothing. The destinies of an epoch are manipulated in the interests of narrow horizons, of the immediate ends of small groups of activists - and the mass of citizens know nothing. But eventually the events that are hatched come out into the open; the fabric woven in the shadows is completed, and then it seems that fatality overwhelms everything and everybody. It seems that history is nothing but an immense natural phenomenon, an eruption, an earthquake, and that we are all its victims, both those who wanted it to happen as well as those who did not, those who knew it would happen and those who did not, those who were active and those who were indifferent. And then it is the indifferent ones who get angry, who wish to dissociate themselves from the consequences, who want it made known that they did not want it so and hence bear no responsibility. And while some whine piteously, and others howl obscenely, few people, if any, ask themselves this question: had I done my duty as a man, had I sought to make my voice heard, to impose my will, would what came to pass have ever happened? But few people, if any, see their indifference as a fault - their scepticism, their failure to give moral and material support to those political and economic groups that were struggling either to avoid a particular evil or to promote a particular good. Instead such people prefer to speak of the failure of ideas, of the definitive collapse of programmes, and other like niceties. They continue in their indifference and their scepticism.

I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help ing a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent.

The Video: BURN THE TAO LIN

by the Psychedelic Realists at LLWAM

SIS: Andrea Coates' Splendid InSanity > > the Teaser > >

2012-01-12T14:09:00.001-08:00

Melanie and Leanne got on the airplane at 3:40 pm which was a relief because Melanie forgot something in the bathroom before checkout and Leanne had to wait at the coffee shop in the hallway tapping her foot and sipping decaf tea too fast and thinking about her bladder in a disconcerted manner. And then there Melanie was, tugging her luggage on wheels, scarf and red hair flying, half excited, half scrambled.

The first rows of the plane had boarded and so the roommates extracted their tickets from their bags as they carried their stuff to the gate. Boarded, the girls found themselves seated in the middle of the plane and as they sat down Melanie chatted away—bags, books, the house—and Leanne placed her backpack under the seat in front of her, located her iPod in the front pocket of the bag and then, just in case, made certain the new Lady Gaga album was indeed there, and it was. As the plane took off, Leanne inserted her earbuds, leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. And that was how she stayed until Melanie woke her up 20 minutes later.

It was Melanie who, deciding on the airline magazine, found the USB when it slipped from between the pages and into her open purse. Melanie leaned down, perplexed, and plucked the object out of the purse with her fake nails so as to hold it up in front of her as if it were an insect specimen. It was in fact a USB, 1 GB, marked SIS:. Melanie considered this and then she poked Leanne, soft pad of finger and sharp curve of nail pushing skin through Lululemon hoodie.

“Lea.”

Poke. Poke.

Leanne said, “Bathroom?” without opening her eyes.

“No, no. Check this out.”

Leanne opened one eye, the one closest to Melanie, and the USB looked like a white, oblong egg, a moth’s cocoon, maybe, there, held up so close to her.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a USB. It fell out of the magazine.”

“Someone must have forgotten it,” said Leanne and she leaned into the aisle only to have Melanie pull her back into her chair.

“No,” said Melanie, wide-eyed, almost feverish, impish, and Leanne smiled, if tentatively, for she knew that look well.

Melanie Douglas-Mitten and Leanne Gorski had been roommates for three years, after a Craig’s List ad drew Melanie to Leanne’s two bedroom apartment a ten minute drive from UBC. This was back when Leanne was set on medicine and Melanie hadn’t even yet considered law and the friendship began slowly. Leanne rushed from the gym to class to homework to work to homework again, but she nonetheless appreciated the earthy charisma of the strange person in her home, who won her over with an unflappable enthusiasm, even amid disarray, and an utterly irreverent wit, of the kind Leanne had never encountered before, and which allowed Melanie to find fun in a chaos that would have caused Leanne to down a whole bottle of Xanax in the bathtub. When it became evident, however, several months later, that the blithe good moods were being used to cover an indecisiveness that had begun to erode Melanie’s grades and was leading to increasingly frequent nights out with ever differing men, over whom she would cry days or weeks later and then promptly replace, and Leanne walked in on her on the phone with her parents, who were threatening to withdraw their financial support if she didn’t get her act together, Leanne surprised herself, who had always been unsympathetic to the failings of others, by providing first the shoulder to cry on and then, what was, even in her own mind, then and now, an impassioned argument, told over the course of days and a bottle of Pinot Gris or six, on the virtues of post-secondary education. Because for Melanie, who admitted she had had everything handed to her in life, to realize that there were things she had to fight for, that she couldn’t spend her twenties in a flurry of long parties, brief friendships and even briefer romances, that she had to want something more than “a good time” and work to achieve it, this was a profound insight, and though it may have been ingenuine when she fed those lines to her parents the next day, they settled there, and they stayed. A positive experience in a class the next semester, the blessed semester, led Melanie to make the decision she’d be putting off for two years: “Environmental Law,” she said to Leanne, beaming and blushing. “Something I can feel good about.” The smile suddenly vanished. “Do you know what Canada’s emissions regulations are doing to the Boreal forest? It’s disgusting.”

From Leanne’s offering wisdom to a person who struck her as more likable (to men, to other ladies, to everyone, with her easy good nature and effortless, cheeky wit) than she, and seeing that person take that wisdom to heart and grow from it, and from Melanie receiving wisdom from a lady who struck her as together in ways she could never be (always on time, always prepared, always careful), and her gaining a purpose through that, grew a bond that was to carry the roommates through two more years of challenges both personal and professional.

So, when it was Leanne’s turn to doubt the choices she’d made, she was grateful to have the permanently disorganized but ever optimistic Melanie stay strong in a conviction that with our lives we should do those things that make us happy, truly happy, in and of themselves, not what others might expect of us—not even what we may have expected of ourselves.

For Leanne had fantasized about becoming a doctor ever since she was a young teen: the pride she would feel in her crisp white coat with her exclusive education, doing a good job at a difficult task, making people’s lives better and having them respect her for it, that thought was satisfying to her, and that was why it took her so long to identify the cold chill that began at the pit of her stomach in first year university, and which she numbed with work all the way up until premed, by which time it had spread to her whole body, bringing her down to a frightening 110 pounds when she finally went to the clinic complaining of a “light headedness” that was affecting her grades. Only after she dismissed the nurse practitioner because she wasn’t a doctor, and only with great effort did that doctor (a young lady herself) manage to extract from Leanne not only the fact she had eaten only two meals a day, organic yogurt with organic granola and organic blueberries for breakfast and organic green beans with organic boiled chicken and organic lemon tea for dinner, no carbohydrates, no snacks (but the occasional bottle of white wine or handful of Xanax), with an hour and a half on the treadmill at the gym on campus each morning, for going on more months than she could count—as well as, and this was the kicker, the fact that she didn’t think this was a problem: just good sense. The prescription, delivered bluntly, without emotion, was: eat more, work less, see a counselor. Angry at this shallow evaluation of what Leanne herself was coming to see, in her slipping grades, as deep seated problems, and seeing her grades plummet just as it mattered most, it was still not the doctor’s clinical reduction of her issues that set Leanne on the path to recovery, but Melanie’s tough but kind impositions, the little reminders, as either one of them was picking up socks or surfing the internet, that maybe there was more to life than “being a doctor,” more to life than being superior—in other words, maybe it wouldn’t be such a big deal if Leanne didn’t get in to med school after all. Maybe it would be the best thing that ever happened to her. In the end, it was Melanie’s prodding optimism that opened the door that made Leanne ask herself, honestly, maybe for the first time in her life, honestly, what did she really enjoy doing? In and of itself, and not for the admiration and envy she imagined it would bestow upon her? What did she enjoy doing when she wasn’t wrapped up in trying to be the best? Always with what the teacher wanted when they wanted and not a moment too late, lest her hopes and dreams snowball into oblivion, just as they were doing anyhow? What, in other words, did she do for fun? And the answer was, she realized then, “I like to read novels.”

“Then do English Lit,” said Melanie, who was, Leanne recalled, at the moment she related this discovery to her, in the middle of brushing her teeth.

Leanne had scoffed. “English Lit? Please tell me what I am supposed to do with that.”

“My dad’s an English Lit Prof, remember?” Melanie wagged her toothbrush at Leanne, slinging a mixture of saliva and toothpaste onto the floor, and Leanne, sitting at the kitchen table, creased her eyebrows together as she watched the frothy glob arc and fall like a test rocket. “An expert in Modern Canadian Poetry with a personal taste for Al Purdy,” said Melanie, and she stuck the toothbrush back in her mouth.

“Al Purdy?”

“Canadian Poet. Drinker.” Cananadian Pot. Inker.

“Do you really see me as an English Professor, Mel?”

“Ha ha ha. No.” Melanie went into the bathroom and spit. When she came out, she said, “You are way too high maintenance for that, lady. Most of them—and I tell you this, cause I care—mouldy in the brains.” Melanie sat down at the kitchen table.

“Seriously, Mel,” said Leanne, tipping her head to the side, like would an elegant sort of bird, a white egret, perhaps. “What would I do with a degree in English Lit besides spend my thirties working at a Starbucks…or a Chapters?” She made an uncomfortable face when she said this that she hoped made her opinion clear: it would never happen. Her pride was diminished, but it was not gone.

“Could you write a book?”

“I could never write a book. At least not fiction, which is what I like reading.”

“Why not?”

“I’m too fact-oriented to write fiction. I almost cried when they made me write a creative short story in high school. I wrote about the time my Grandma died. It wasn’t fiction at all, but I got an A on it. Part of the reason I like reading fiction is I like being amazed at what the authors come up with. It’s like… vicarious living, I suppose.”

“Yes,” said Melanie, putting on a psychiatrist’s expression, hand on chin. “As if, in fiction, you allow yourself to feel all the emotions you repress in your day to day life.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” said Melanie and she grinned widely.

“You said I don’t let myself feel emotions.”

“Leanne—and I say this because I care,” she put her hand on Leanne’s hand, “you wear that ponytail to bed.”

Leanne had opened her mouth and then closed it.

“What kind of novels do you like?” asked Melanie, smiling, staring into Leanne’s eyes like a mother would, which eased the pain of the insult a bit, and reminded Leanne of why she liked Melanie, besides the comforting, matronly aspect: she didn’t dwell, and therefore, she didn’t allow Leanne to dwell.

“Oh! I like novels about… ladies traveling in foreign countries and… romances. I used to think if I became a doctor I would go to Nigeria and…”

“OMG, Lea! I never pegged you for the type!” Melanie put her hand over her mouth in an expression of exaggerated shock.

“Please don’t tell anyone,” Leanne pleaded.

“Your secret is safe with me,” said Melaine, nodding, and Leanne wasn’t sure that it was. She took a deep breath and let this go, a technique she had been practicing recently, along with eating more and working less.

“I bet you’d make a good agent,” said Melanie. “Like, a literary agent. That’s all high ambition and get the best deal and wear a pant suit with a ponytail and so on. Yes?”

Leanne smiled a little more fully now, recalling the conversation and how Melanie’s eyes always shone a little feverishly when she was on the cusp of uncovering something once hidden from her, like Leanne’s secret passions.

“We should look at it,” said Melanie.

“No. Melanie. We’ll be in Victoria in, like, 25 minutes. Give it to the steward.”

“So politically correct, Lea. What if there’s something really dirty on it?”

“Exactly. I don’t want to see some old man’s kiddie porn.” After she said this, Leanne regretted it and looked down at her runners and blushed as if she had made kiddie porn real just by mentioning it.

“Dude. Can you imagine if I found some priest’s kiddie porn?” Melanie grabbed Leanne’s arm and her fake nails dug in. “I could make, like, mad cash leaking story to the press!”

“You’re joking.”

“Duh. You think priests don’t know by now you don’t carry that kind of material on an airplane? But, we won’t know unless we loo-ook…”

“It could have a virus on it.”

“I’d have to open the file to get the virus.”

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t but I’m curious enough to try.”

“It’s an invasion of privacy, Mel.”

“Are you saying there may be a child molester out there and you have the chance to bring them down, but you’re too scared to do it? That’s next to aiding and abetting, Leanne.”

“What? No!“

“It’s probably not kiddie porn. Geez, Leaz. Hey, what if it’s vacation photos and they’re of this really hot guy and then we find out his name and then we track him down on Facebook and I say, hey, I got your USB, and then we go to coffee and fall in love and get married and have 3 babies?”

“Is that really what you want to tell your children? That you found your husband though Facebook?”

“I didn’t find him though Facebook! I found this USB on an airplane! Look. Whatever. You don’t want to look at it, but I have my own computer, so, scoot.” Melanie motioned for Leanne to get out of her seat with an action with her hands like a broom, the absurdly long, pink and white airbrushed nails (with rhinestones on the thumbs) making the bristles, and Leanne did, if nervously, while looking about her hoping no one had caught on to what they were up to. Leanne waited in the aisle, scanning faces, all of which were neutral, while Melanie went through the process of taking her carry-on luggage down from the overhead baggage compartment, laying it on Leanne’s chair, pulling her pink laptop out of her bag, bumping into someone, apologizing profusely, and then sliding back into her seat where she set the laptop up on her lap with a look that could only be described as “wicked.” Leanne sat back down and as the laptop booted up and looked at Melanie with a troubled expression: were they even allowed to open computers on such short flights? Why didn’t she listen to the announcements? She usually did…

When the computer was ready, Melanie inserted the USB into the drive, giddily biting her lip and clapping her hands. Leanne sighed audibly and then leaned over to look at the screen.

“A virus?” she asked.

“If it’s a virus I can probably get my bother to fix it.”

“What if it’s a mega virus?”

“What is this, the Zombie Apocalypse? It’s probably just some guy’s Power Point production for Systems Internet Site, or whatever. Ooh. Look, see: it’s a PDF file. Nothing to worry about. Double click open and... ‘SIS: Andrea Coates’ Splendid InSanity.’ Hm. Hey! It’s a novel! That’s pretty cool. Admit it, you like novels.”

“Andrea Coates’ Splendid InSanity? What is it about the Circus? Who’s the Author?”

“Andrea Coates, according to the header.”

“Weird.”

“It’s probably a student novel. It’s probably one of those self-indulgent I grew up in a small town and my boyfriend cheated on me this is my experimental prose type things.”

“Think she’s on Facebook? She’ll probably want it back, if it’s a draft of her novel.”

“Probably. But if it’s a student novel, we might be doing her a favour, not giving it back. I mean, if you’re serious about this English thing…”

“Shhh.”

“What, is it a secret? If you’re serious about this…English Lit, Literary Agent thing, and my Dad can hook you up, I tell you, you gotta know there are a lot of shitty, I’m so damaged, look at me, young novelists out there just waiting to peddle their utterly mundane barely concealed autobiographical relationship story at you. Trust me, my dad can be a real mean guy after three hours of marking and a couple glasses of red wine.”

“And if she’s a real writer?”

“If she’s a real writer and she’s lost the only copy of her book on an airplane? I’d have half a mind to publish it myself, just to punish her for being so stupid.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Of course I wouldn’t, Lea. Writers peg all their hopes and dreams on their novels. They’re not going to let anyone steal them from them. She’d probably sue my ass so fucking fast I’d have to wire her my savings account right now.” Melanie laughed a fluttering laugh.

“Is it finished?” Leanne asked.

Melanie scrolled down. “Looks like it is. The last line is, ‘I know, in the End, all you need is for me to prove mySelf.’”

“Oh. Wow. But what’s up with the capital letters?”

“Ah! Told you. Experimental prose. Student novel. Hasn’t seen an editor yet.”

“But… she’s trying to prove herself to us, right?”

“What?”

“I mean, isn’t that odd, like, how the last line seems to be addressing us? I mean, we doubted the book and now the book is trying to prove itself, to get us to give it a chance.”

“Whoa. You totally are an Arts Student in denial! What did you say? That you think it’s a sign? That you think ‘the Universe’ has summoned it to give you an indication that you’re meant to be an Agent? Pretty awesome, Lea. Does that mean you want to keep it? Read it at the House o’ Yawns? Bring it to Random House, make a Mill?”

“Maybe.” Leanne blushed, but enjoyably this time. “It is kind of… magical, isn’t it? The way we found it. Maybe she did it on purpose, leaving it in the magazine… And God, you are so spoiled, calling a cabin in Tofino a House of Yawns.”

“What can I say? Daddy married well.”

“This is what I think. I mean, there’s a better chance of something as small as a USB getting back to ‘Andrea Coates’ if we track her down on the Web than if we hand it over to the airplane, right?”

“Oh, of course. They’d loose it in a second. They don’t even know how to keep track of fully sized luggage, let alone anything that small.”

“Well then. Let’s keep it. We’ll read it. Then we’ll judge it.”

How many of us dutifully live our lives the way we are “supposed to,” forever looking outside ourselves for clues without questioning the source of those suppositions?

—Anodea Judith, Eastern Body, Western Mind

Intro

When she was Thirteen Years Old, Happy was un Happy.

She’d moved back to the Hinter Land of British Columbia after Two Years in Fashionable Montréal. Her Parents were Nice and Stable but too Much so for her. Authorities portrayed Young People as Good, Sober and Chaste, or Bad, taking Drugs and having Sx, but Happy mistrusted Binary Thinking (she was More of a His Dark Materials Girl than a Harry Potter Girl) and so she mistrusted them. School was a Factory meant to build Compliant Workers out of Free Children. Happy’s Capacity to think Abstractly—in French, where her New Quebecois Accent made her Suspect to All her (Former) Immersion Friends, she presented an Essay arguing the Western Linear Conception of Time was a Social Construction—meant Adults didn’t worry about her and Kids didn’t get her. Happy’s Class Mates hung out after School but didn’t invite her. Boys commented on her Big Tits but didn’t ask her out like they did the Other Girls who had Big Tits but Happy didn’t know why. There was a Boy who would tease Happy about her Big Tits until she cried or threatened him with Violence, after which he would threaten her with Violence. Happy went to see the Middle School’s Counselor to say she was being “Sxually harassed, or…Some Thing.” The Counselor looked up from his Paper Work to tell Happy he knew of the Boy in Question. “Just ignore him,” said the Counselor. “That’s the Best Thing to do.” So it was that what Little Trust in Adult Authority Happy had retained since Puberty succumbed to its Cynicism and xpired watching her Middle School’s Counselor shuffle his Paper Work back into his Desk.

Clever Happy would have to solve her Problems her Self.

Her Biggest Problem was that she had no Friends. She was un Happy on Account of being Lonely because she had no Friends. The French Immersion Kids pretended to be her Friends but they weren’t: Some Thing was missing from their inter Actions, a Vital Ingredient: Happy was tolerated, but left with the Losers when Kids partnered up for Activities. Was Happy a Loser?

There were Three Qualties that could make you a Loser, Happy thought. Being Really Ugly, being Really Smart, or being off in the Head.

Despite her Lack of Friends, when Happy looked in the Mirror she swore she saw a Girl as Pretty as the Popular Girls (with her Fresh Oval Face, Big Brown Eyes and Long Tawny Hair). Even Better Dressed than them, in her Opinion, what with her having spent Two Years in Fashionable Montréal and them wearing Sweat Pants and Hoodies to School All the Time. So it wasn’t Ugliness that was Happy’s Problem. The Opposite Maybe, she might have thought, cause Girls were Jealous and Boys were Scared, but Pretty Girls were AlWays the Most Popular People, festooned with Admiration from Both Boys and Girls like Confetti were being tossed over them as they walked down the Halls.

Perhaps the Problem with Happy who was Pretty, and not just lying to her Self, as Far as she could tell (from looking in Magazines and then looking in the Mirror and then looking in Magazines and then looking in the Mirror), was that she was Smart—interested in the World and Politics and Art and Stuff—whereas Pretty, Popular Girls were Dumb—interested in Makeup and Gossip and Boys and Stuff. So, as an Xperiment to find out if the Problem was she was too Smart to be Likable, Happy told One of her Class Mates she received a “C” on a Test when she Really got an “A.” The Girl said, “Wow. Good Job, Happy,” while touching Happy’s Arm, which Only upset Happy More for having been Real, and so she retreated to a Corner to feel Hurt.

But what about Elaine? thought Happy. Elaine was a Girl in the English Classes and she was Practically Queen of the Grade. She was Popular. She had dated All the Hottest Guys. She had dated them One after the Other, the Source of All Kinds of Gossip. But she was Also Really Good at Sports and had Straight As in All of her Classes—the Only Popular Girl like that. Elaine dominated a Clique Happy called the “Preppies,” whose Edges French Immersion Happy lapped against by Virtue of her Good Grades. So, it was not that she was Pretty and it was not that she was Smart, nor was it Even that she was Pretty and Smart, that Kids didn’t like Happy, or she would be like Elaine: Adored.

Must it be, then, that Happy was off in the Head? Nuts? Disturbed? Crazy? Out of her Mind? InSane? Mad? Delusional? Headed on a Frenzied Journey to Catastrophe or the Lonely Sad Befuddlement of the Town Bag Lady? How Scary.

Happy did have an Affection for Magazine Articles about Psychology. Rather than read about Pop Stars (who were too Simple, like White Sugar), or Kids who Participated & / Volunteered (who were too Ernest, like Christians), Happy enjoyed reading Magazine Articles about Kids who cut their Wrists. They were Miserable, just like Happy was, and they got Attention from the Adults in their Lives and from the Media(!) via Desperate Acts of Self Harm, which Happy found Fascinating in it’s Emotional and Physical Xtremity.

The Magazine Articles called these Kids “Depressed.” Was Happy “Depressed”? She Certainly was Sad Often Enough.

According to what the Adults said, the Majority of Teens and pre Teens suffered from “Low Self Esteem” on Account of their Hormones & / the Cruelty of Other Teens, whether you were Friends with them or not. And yet Happy observed that Even if they All had “Low Self Esteem” Issues the Majority of the Kids at her School Also had Friends, their Friends were the Basis of their Personalities, so what Happy had must be Even Worse than “Low Self Esteem,” like “Depression,” to xplain her Social Isolation.

But, besides not wanting to cut her Self, not Really, Happy did not have Many Other Symptoms of “Depression.” She ate Plenty and had a rapid Metabolism that supported this Appetite. She slept Eight Hours a Night and had no Difficulty falling Asleep. Even though she didn’t like getting up at Seven AM to catch the Bus, she AlWays did. And Truthfully, she xperienced Moments of Great Joy & Ecstatic Delight (upon seeing a Butterfly or a Cool Piece of Art, for Xample) to go along with her Xtended Bouts of Self Conscious Self Loathing.

Maybe I am “biPolar?” thought Happy. Being “biPolar” was Even Worse than being “Depressed,” because “biPolars” Also got “Manic”: According to the Magazine Articles, “biPolars” were Xhibitionists who were Some Times Outrageously Charming and Some Times threw Fits of Rage, who talked inCessantly or spent Money without Reserve, who as Well as being Depressed and cutting their Wrists when it All came cashing down like an Air Plane in a Tail Spin were Ego Maniacal and Sxually Libidinous, too. It All sounded Very Xciting and Free and Wild, and Happy thought she would have liked to be “biPolar” if the “Condition” didn’t AlWays End, in the Magazine Articles, with Suicide Attempts, Psyche Wards and Heavy Meds, which attempted to flatten the “biPolar” Teens into “Normal” Teens, Teens who didn’t do Things like Drugs or Older Lovers or Mental Breakdowns.

According to the Articles, being “Depressed” or “biPolar” was Some BIG NEW THING. Kids had Never been “Depressed” or “biPolar” before but Now Lots of them were and no One “knew why.” Happy laughed at these Articles. She knew why: it’s cause of the Stupid Boring sub Divisions and the Stupid Boring Schools and the Stupid Boring Mainstream Media being Hard to put up with for those People who aren’t Stupid or Boring, she said to the Magazines, but the Magazines never listened. Month after Month their Articles were the Same: Epidemics of Metal Illness among Adolescents! so that it got to a Point where Young but Critical Thinking Happy began to suspect the Answer as to why the Kids were so screwed up was known to the Authorities, but not being given for Some Sinister Reason that had to do with the Pervasiveness of the Stupid Boring sub Divisions and the Stupid Boring Schools and the Stupid Boring Pop Culture.

Happy was an Artist, and she knew Artists tended towards inSanity, Especially the Really Good Ones. Happy was Pretty Good, Certainly for a Thirteen Year Old: if Other Kids liked Any Thing about her, it was that she could draw, though Often they said Ignorant or Reductionist Things about her Drawings. But wasn’t a Condition of inSanity not knowing you were inSane? Was not Happy’s Attempt to decipher the Nature of her Madness Proof she was not Mad at All? None of the Kids in the Articles seemed Self Aware as Far as their “Mental Illnesses” were concerned. In the Articles, they offered no Xplanation as to how they got that Way, “Depressed” or “biPolar,” Xcept that their Brain Chemicals were out of Whack, this was what the Doctors said, and then the Doctors would prescribe Pills to correct the disFunctional Brain Chemicals, which was like treating the Kids like they were Machines, thought Happy, and not People. Like All their Feelings came from the Wiring in Side of them and could be fixed by tinkering under the Hood, as opposed to being a Natural Reaction to a Stupid & Boring Environment out Side of them, after which the Teens would say, “It took a Long Time to find the Right Combination of Pills for me but now I am on the Right Combination of Pills for me and this Combination of Pills helps me,” just like they were Robots now if they hadn’t been before. Maybe they did complain about the Stupid Boring sub Divsions and the Stupid Boring Schools and the Stupid Boring Pop Culture making them Crazy and Sad and Angry by insulting and abusing their Intelligence and Sensitivity, but the Journalists didn’t write that down or the Editors cut it out because they were in League with who Ever it was that Benefited from keeping the Population Stupid and Boring.

In Support of this Hypothesis, the imPression Happy got from her Research into the Meds that you were supposed to take to help with “Mental Illnesses” like “Depression” and “biPolar disOrder” was that they were as Questionable as Mental Illness its Self, their Effect a Numbness as Bleak as inSanity but with the Emotional Vapors that Once wafted up from the un Conscious to whisper Radikal Thoughts in the Ear of the Attuned Listener pressed down by the Sanitized and Obedient Hand of Pharmacopeia.

“Get Normal” Pills, thought Happy. Not meant to treat the Cause but the Symptoms of Misery and Rage so that Kids who dare fight the Stupid Boring System with the Only Things they’ve got to protest with, their Bodies and their Minds, stay subServient to it. There is no Way to fix the Pain of living in a World of Stupid Boring Things, but getting rid of those Things and replacing them with Better Things: Freer, More Complx, More Beautiful Things. Authorities make their Money and get their Power off Stupid Boring Things and that’s why they need us to conform to them. So, those aren’t “Get Better” Pills they’re feeding those Kids in Magazines, no, they’re “Don’t Complain” Pills, “Don’t Question” Pills, “Follow the Crowd” Pills, “Keep your Head Down” Pills, “Obey the Law” Pills, “Work your Job” Pills: they’re “Lamb to the Slaughter House” Pills and Even if I am Crazy, I’m not going to let them make me take them.

But if I am not Actually inSane, thought Happy, I ought to go inSane. Like it was Some Kind of Performance Art. Go inSane to show the World Madness is the Sanest Response to being forced to participate in a Stupid Boring World run by Adults that are Either Dumber than me or lying to me, where the Kids who are rewarded are the Ones who shovel Shit (School Work) without Complaint and a Person’s Life is the Transfer from One Kind of (Increasingly Abstract) Institutional Prison to an Other: Elementary School, Middle School, High School, University, Job, Marriage, Mortgage, Children, Old Age: Death is the Only FreeDom in this Society: Death or inSanity.

The Proposed Course of Life in this, the Beginning of the 21^st Century, is One of enSlavement to a System I hate and so I swear I’m going to get Free of it while I’m Still Alive Even if that means going out of my Mind. It’s Worth the Risk, because if driving my Self Mad for Creativity and FreeDom doesn’t kill me, doing what I’m told to by Idiots and Liars for the Sake of Meaningless, Repetitive sub Divisions, Schools, and Pop Culture Most Certainly will.

But I must be Very Careful in my going inSane. I must go Very Precisely inSane— Systematically, Surreptitiously, Subversively inSane—or Else the Authorities will blame me and my “imBalanced Brain Chemicals” for my Behavior, as opposed to their Selves, their Attempt to enslave me to their Stupid Boring System and the Hypocrisy streaming from their Mouths to achieve it, because Even though that Hypnosis doesn’t work on me, it is Really what is making me so un Happy, it is so Inane, Manipulative and Pervasive and for what? Sub Divisions? Schools? Pop Culture? Bureaucracies? Governments? Corporations? Armies? Coercive Conformists, Every Last One of them.

Yes, thought Happy, to her Self. I must be Very Careful in my going inSane, or I might dive so Deeply into it, I can Never resurface.

YOU WANTED IT

MACLEANS?

CUZ NOW

YOU GOT IT

SLUTWAAV

GIRLKOR

It's

the
Fulfillment
of
Promiscuities
by
Naomi Wolf

A Coming of Age Novel

ABOUT A GIRL

as
Meaningful as those
of
Stephen Dedalus
or
Holden Caulfield

and noLess
Controversial
in it's Time

The
Novel

bringing
an
End

to the
Masculine
Monopoly

on
Literary
Grandiosity

is about a Girl who wants to be a Philosopher

Her name is

Happy Blue

and she Only has 1 Problem:

She is the

Femme Fatale

as Protagonist

and her 2 Big Interests are

&

meaning that

includes

Happy Blue

while
getting fucked up on (or around)

and

Whew!

But I feel like I’m...

forgetting

SomeThing...

Oh Yeah!

\\\\ !!!! ANARKY!!!! ////

is an
Anarkist
Novel

the Anarkist Novel

a Novel of

Novel

begins in a Small Town in Northern Canada, where BiPolar TeenAged Goth Girl, Happy Blue, becomes involved with the Drug Scene via her on again/off again BoyFriend, Stoner Caleb McEwan. By 17 Years Old, out of her Parents' House and living with 2 Other TeenAgers in the Deserts of Central BC, Happy Blue suffers a Nervous Break Down and has to return to her Small Town Home, where she receives a Vision of her Future from the Gods of MDMA.

By the 4th Chapter, Happy Blue is a 19 Year Old Philosophy Student tree planting Even Further North, and in Love with her Masculine Mirror, the 25 Year Old Alcoholic Philosophy Major, John Collins. By the 5th Chapter, Happy Blue is tree planting again, Only her Lover is made Present Only by his Absence.

SIS: is told in 2 Parts: The Forest and The City. Backtrack 2 Years to see what Happy Blue Really got up to in 1st Year University.
Seen in the Urban Environment, the Reader is Left to wonder, along with an Especially Tenacious Psychologist she meets in a Club in Brooklyn, NY, is Happy Blue just fucked or what?

A Mystery to be revealed in the ups and downs of her Adventure, which spans Western Canada from Fort Nelson to Haida Gwaii to Jasper to Kamloops to Victoria, and makes stops in Toronto, New York City, the Caribbean and Japan while referencing EveryThing in between.

It's
Jack Kerouac

for a Feminist Generation

Bret Easton Ellis

North

What MIA would have written

if she was a White Academic

or Allen Ginsberg

if reincarnated a Straight Canadian Girl

And
if you're wondering,
is

Happy Blue

you

Andrea Coates?

the Answer is

That's who's who

Or,
if this were a Movie,
the Trailer would say
like James Fey's
A Million Little Pieces
it's

"Based on a True Story"

It's my Life

turned in Side out

ANIMA

ANIMUS

I
Andrea Coates
MediaSavvy Author of SIS:
and SomeWhat of a Oracle
believe it tobe a Classic Novel
a Novel that will catapult me to

International Literary Fame

(and so Young)

which lookslike

Andrea Coates being Interviewed by Magazines

You call yourself an "anarkist," what exactly does this mean?

I donot Submit to any Authority that is not my Own. I express mySelf at MaximumFreedom.

You're renowned for being the world's bestdressed writer. Could you describe your style influences for us?

CyberGothicLolita RaverHippieDrugPunkAnarkist BusinessSlutBitchLady

Whoo

Andrea Coates meeting Jonathan Franzen at a
Literary Conference
and being like,

"JF, What wp?"

"Oh, Hello. Was this supposed to be a dress-up party?"

"Nah, Man. Iz Cool. Iz just me."

"And who are you?"

"I'm Andrea Coates. I wrote that, uh, Book, uh, Splendid InSanity."

"The one with the drug dealing teenagers?"

"That's the One. I wrote you a Letter, Once, too, when I was 18. You sent me a PostCard in Return."

"What did it say?"

"Your PostCard or my Letter?"

"Your letter."

"That I thought you were a Misogynist and wanted to hit you in the Face with a Copy of The Corrections. Then I attached a ShortStory about a Young Man suffering from Erectile Dysfunction in Mexico."

"How did you...get in to this conference...again?"

"The InterNet."

j/k Mr. Franzen. I would never hit you in the Face

Andrea Coates attending the Giller Prize dressed as Lisbeth Salander from the Millennium Trilogy

"Word"

So,

!PUBLISHIT!
!PUBLISHERS!

I got the Psychedelic Realists to provide for

Andrea

Call me Spiros- from 'HappyScapes'

2011-12-27T17:27:00.000-08:00

I called him Sabotka cause he looked like Nick. I met him cause of the Patron Saint of Diplomacy and Children, whom I First encountered out Side 50 / 50 Art Gallery, when he was drunk on Red Wine and quoting from the Bible, his Face as Beautiful as a Child's; or maybe it was cause I’m Horny a Lot; it’s Hard to say. What I can say for Sure is Every Time I watch The Wire, Life turns into it.

Mr. H was out of Town and there was a Festival in the Square. Mr. H told me not to go smoking up Every Hippy I saw while he was gone, but come on, Man, there was a Festival in the Square.

I’m a Smart Person, you know, no Worries. I kept my Eyes out for the Good Ones, for the Assets. And fuck if Sabotka weren’t Cute, too.

The Greek didn’t get it, but that’s cause I got my Style and he got his: he likes dem Little Brunettes, I like dem Tall Brunettes.

It’s on Account of my Father, Probly. Tall Skinny English Man with Brown Hair. I go After them over and over. Freud is a Creepy Mofo but there ain’t no denying Genetic preDisposition.

Any Way, there was a Festival in the Square. At the Festival were Plenty of Hippies, Plenty of Ruffians and Plenty of Hot People. I got High on as Many Things as I could pilfer from the Stashes in the House: Weed and Mushrooms and E. At the Festival, in the Square, Every One was getting High and the smoking didn’t stop: as soon as One Cigarette / Joint was out, an Other One was lit.

Mr. H is gone Two Days and I go Crazy. Reminded me how I used to be, before he came along, and that made me feel Good, but Also Scared, like there’s this Whole Wild Self Still in me, lurking, waiting, Ready to cause Trouble at the Slightest Allowance.

I respect Mr. H’s Feelings though, so I knew I wasn’t gonna fuck no Body that Week End, Even if I thought about it. Worst I was gonna do was make out with Some One. Mr. H knew he had the Right to do the Same where he was. See, I trust Mr. H and I have a deal worked out where are we’re in love for Ever and were gonna to have Children, and I ain’t going to upset that and Neither is he. Right?

I’ve Always been a Forceful Lover. That’s why Mr. H and I work: because we Both want it now and we Both want it Hard.

Sobotka, on the Other Hand, is a Slow Burn.

I followed that Mother Fucker around Two Days, I did. Circling, watching, like a Predator from High Places. Used All my Skillz picked up as a Bar Huntress intent on finding Tasty, Tall, Brown Haired Philosophers to play with. Me and the Tall, Brown Haired Philosophers ain’t Never going to move in together and make promises to have Babies, but Damn if they ain’t Tasty.

Sobotka’s a Bit of a Philosopher, yeah, but a Better Hustler.

After I xplained about my Money and my Investments and my Plans coming out the Wazoo—“I AM SPIDER FINGERS” I said in a Patch of Woods behind the Square and made the Wiggly Fingers—and as we was walking back to the Square, Sobotka whispered to the Patron Saint, he said, "Fucking Rich Kids" and I turned around and smiled. I’m Wealthy, Darling. Rich, that’s just Money.

The Patron Saint is Awfully Cute, but he reminds me of a Child. I love him and I want to protect him like I would a Child, but I don’t want Sxual Activity with him because that to me is inAppropriate.

I love him, though, and I hope he loves me.

I hope Sobotka loves me. I tried to give him Affection, but I scared him. I think a Lot of Dudes are Scared of me. It’s cause I’m Hard Kor in a Way reserved for Men but Still Very Much a Lady. My Brand of inSanity is a nut to Crack: you have to realize it ain’t inSanity at All: it’s Analytic Intellect combined with Fore Sight in a Lady with Ambition Powerful as Mountains. Then it becomes Clear what I’m up to: I’m building a Dynasty.

But Sobotka, he don’t get that. Or Maybe he do and he understands it’s beyond him at this Point. He don’t Even have a Beard. He must be 20 Years Old. He ain’t Never met a Lady like me, Probly.

I think I scared Sobotka and I feel Bad for it because I like him. I figured at the End of Night Two, he’d had Enough of me popping up and telling him he was Priddy. “Hey Priddy!” I’d say, trying to draw out his Humor. Get him to see how Powerful he could be if he took ownership of him Self. You can’t do that when you’re that Young, I guess. I surer couldn’t. Ain’t no Thing to do but wait on that account. Wait and tease a Bit. As it was, I was putting More into him than what was there: I was putting my Self into him.

Sobotka responded with Humor Even if it was Put Down Humor. I Usually get Sad when Ppl put me down, but it bounces Right off when I know they’re Wrong about it. Besides, dey Boys. Boys dey talk like dat. He knew he was Wrong too, Sobotka, putting me down, that’s why he had Such a Bashful Tone when he did it. He doesn’t understand me, Sobotka. I don’t Register as Possible. He knows I’m Some Thing and he knows he can’t handle it, not now. He’s looking for Enlightenment, he told me, and I’ve got Answers, Yeah, and Maybe that’s the Problem. Maybe he ain’t Ready for Answers. He could get in Way over his Priddy Head with People like me. Just like Sobotka did, Eh?

Sweet Girls are Precious Crystals and you’d love One who could be Pure for ya, don’t chya? A Little Blonde who cooks and don’t get your Business. Some One you can lie to for their Own Good. Just like Sobotka did, Eh?

Ladies of Power ain’t Some Thing you planned on contending with, did you? You’d like to think you could dismiss Dirty, Willful Girls like they were Inferior, like Only the Pure Ones are Worthy of you, and that’s why I disturb you: I refuse to be Inferior.

Or Maybe it’s because yo Momma was a biPolar. You can see Trouble coming. You crave the Simple Ones. The Little Brooks to my Waterfall. You want Eve, and I am Lilith. Wouldn’t want to upset those FeminEnergies. They come at you from All Directions. They’ve got a Million Arms. They’ve Men’s Heads hung round their Necks like Honors. Ladies of Power can be Scarier than Men with Power, because you don’t understand how they think, Sobotka, and this is how I get ahead in the Game. No One sees it now, Every One is like you: they like to pretend I am no Thing: Easy to dismiss. A Morally Inferior Lady. A Back Ground Image, like a Potted Plant. They underestimate me, Sobotka, and that is their Failing.

It’s Okay. I am Very fond of you, Sobotka, and I am a Benevolent Spirit, here to spread Peace, Love and Well Being among People (“Yeah Right,” you said). That’s the Only Thing I will defend with my Life, Sobotka, and I am Perpetually forced to defend It. I am a Warrior, Sobotka. And I have a Cause and it is my Sovereignty.

I want to work with you, Sobotka. You know this, even if it scares you. You live not Far from me, and Both of us know how Good a tracker I am, Both of us know I could find you and have been having Fun the Whole While. I might print this Story a Hundred Times, distribute it about the Neighborhood like Flyers- see how Long that takes to draw you out. Or, to keep things Anonymous, print a Picture of Nick Sobotka from The Wire and make it up like a Missing Persons:

That’d fuck with your Shit, wouldn't it, Sobotka? You've stirred up Some Shit with me. See, I like to be taken Seriously.

But maybe I am inflating Things. Maybe I'm lying to you and to me. I’m a bored Smart Girl with Money who sees no Reason to limit her Desires the Way a Proper Bourgeois Lady should. You've come seeking Enlightenment, Sobotka, well I’ve been to Hell and back and I’ve seen the Light of Fate. I love you, Sobotka, the Way I’m able to love so Many Men, and I return Good to All who give Good. I want to flatter your Soul, Sobotka. I want to sing for you, the Song of a Journey you’ll take. I want to come off as the Kitty Cat I am, the Kitty Cat behind the Curtain, a Sneaky Kitty who don’t need to be known, because her Real Power is Psychic, but she Still Cuddly and she still Purrs for you, Sobotka.

I just want to talk, Sobotka. I want to have Coffee Some Place, take a walk through the Park. Just talk, that’s All I do. I’m Only Middle Management, Sobotka. Wait ‘till I you start playing in the Big Leagues.

You’re Scared, you’re Scared because you met the in and she’s a Lady. That’s not what you xpected. That’s a Tougher Initiation than you xpected.

But you should come talk to me, Sobotka. We could help Each Other a Lot.

And I know why this is the Best Thing to do on Account of the Way you nursed your Whiskey All Night the First Night, on Account of how you stayed Sharp when your Friends were Fucked, and the Way you played so Sweet and Kind with those Blonde Girls at the Barbeque the Second Night, but Mostly, Sobotka, it was the Gum you gave me.

The Synchronicities piled up with you, I mean it. A Real Synchronicity Cluster, and when that happens, you got to stand up and take Notice, or Else your Fucking Daft and God’s gonna give up on you. I don't let down my God, Sobotka.

Your Gesture of Kindness, you tossed a Piece of Gum on me while I was lounging on a Bean Bag Chair at an After Party, talking to the Greek about Chicks we wanted to do and Movies we wanted to make. You came to sit by me for a While and I was Happy for that, Priddy Sobotka. The Gum sat on my Boob for Ten Minutes before you said, “Hey, did you see what I threw you?”

I was Stoked, in the way I am Genuinely Happy, Even though I said, at One Point, “I am More Faithful than Either you or I know,” and you walked out of the Room after and you splintered from the Group on a walk from that Party to an Other One, Maybe on Account of me; I thought I heard you say, "I can't take this Any More," but Damn Man, I said to the Greek as we walked back to my House, Totally Lucid, Xactly the Same as the Night before, when I sat with the Patron Saint on the Steps of the Church in the Square: Damn if that Gum didn’t last Longer than Any Gum I’ve had since I was a Little Kid. Even Longer, on Account of the New Technologies, Perhaps. Chewed it all the Way to a Party that didn't xist and back to my House, I did. Swallowed it Accidentally while writing this Story down, All blitzed on E, and it Still had Flavor then.

Slow Burn Baby, Slow Burn. Those are the Best Fires. The Ones you keep Lit by poking at but which are All the Hotter for it.

Eh, Sobotka?

My Feelings for Sobotka are summed up Perfectly by this Lady

Desirous - The Video!

2011-12-13T20:10:00.000-08:00

Andrea Coates performs "Desirous" from Oh Serotonin, Where Are You? in Poems by Andrea Coates

Video and Sound by jody franklin
A LotusLand Warrior ArtMedia: Films Production
Set VanCity, BC, Coast Salish Territory

|||||| Wastescapes |||||| Dump 2 ||||||

2011-12-08T17:32:00.000-08:00

Don't want to work for your Stupid Fat Boss who Only cares about Items / Money? Say you have Suicidal Depression. You Probably alReady do, but just in Case you need yet an Other Reason to call the Doctor weeping about how Urban Living under Wage Slave Capitalism is like being tazered into standing on a Conveyor Belt to Death handing out Sandwiches to Equally Doomed, Dead Eyed Strangers beneath the Vicious Techno Eye of Violent, Vapid, enTitled Managers, check out these Wastescapes for Inspiration. Maybe they will make you so Angry at how Generations have misused the Beautiful Privilege of Technology, you'll throw your Smock in your Stupid Fat Boss's Face while screaming, "I deserve Better from the Company I keep Eight Hours a Day!" and then walk out onto the Street where you Suddenly realize EveryThing you were taught in School was meant to mold you and your Fellows into a MonoCulture Obedient to a 10% Elite who are sitting on Totally UseLess $15000 Diamond Chairs Right now snickering about how that makes them Cool and Special and declare to God, the Sky, "I don't need to support this! I'm Intelligent and Loving!" and dedicate your Life to demanding we as Sapiens be More Loving, because no Amount of Wastescapes for the Many are Worth a $15000 Diamond Chair for the Few. I don't know. I don't know what People should do. But isn't it Time we grow up and stop thinking Luxury Material Goods make a Person Interesting or Good or Special or Loving or Smart or Any Thing Other than a Jerk feeding a Skin of Pavement and Oil that is reaching its Greedy Fingers to the Ends of the Earth? When will we Realize no One's Material Comfort is Worth the Misery of Wastescapes? The Ones who should be weeping are Ones who think Manufactured Property is More Important than Natural Landscapes. I wish People would be Less impressed by Goods and More impressed by Plants / Animals.

The Rulers know Property Crime will inCrease as the Economy falters. They are preparing their Omnibus Crime Bills. They will make our World a Prison that they might live on the Spoils of its Labor. We cannot let them. We must tear up the Pavement and replace it with Life. We must tear up their Authority and replace it with our Hearts. We must understand that Diversity and Multiplicity is Beauty. The Hideousness of the Wastescape is its Monotony.

These Photos were taken in and around Victoria, BC, a Small, English Tourist City on Coast Salish Territory.

Click to enlarge the Horror.

Andrea

This Sign says Some Thing to the Effect of
if you respect your School you won't draw on this
Pea Soup Diarrhea Color Wall
because that would be, like,
defacing it.

To be continued....

{ ### Slutty Teen Aged Girls ### } with a Bonus Section on Teens & Drugs

2011-12-01T17:14:00.000-08:00

Andrea Coates (Right, 16) and Friend (Left, 15)

Your Reaction to this Title, "Slutty Teen Aged Girls"—Pleasant or un Pleasant, Offensive or arousing—provides the imPetous for this Essay. In Contemporary Times, there is no Sxuality More problematized, nor More fetishized, than that of the Teen Aged Girl: Every where she is told not to have Sx and yet Every where she is told she is Sxe. No Sxuality is so Roundly discouraged in One Place Only to be so Wildly encouraged in an Other: Purity Balls and Miley Cyrus xist Side by Side. No Sxuality is presented as so Powerful, inToxicating and overWhelming for the Beholder and yet is its Source so Alienated from its Own Power: Men cannot resist her and yet she is Ignorant of how to have Sx with them. The Sx Drives of Teen Age Girls are treated as Dangerous to her Self and Others, to be quelled, controlled, repressed, the Source of Familial Shame, while the Man’s (Both the Grown Man’s and the Young Man’s) Desire for the Teen Aged Girl is viewed as a Natural, un Questionable Reality, Picturesque, Even: the Man's Desire for the Naive Teen Aged Girl has been the Subject of Many of the Most Decorated Films, Books, Photographs, etc. This Attraction Men feel to the Teen Age Girl is derived Both from her Youthful Body and from her Lack of Self Understanding—she is “Charmingly Naïf” and “Corruptible” at the Same Time as having a “Better Body” than Many a Grown Lady. A Cocktail of Desirables is the Teen Aged Girl. She is Helpless, yet Sx with her is Dangerous. She bestows Eternal Youth upon the Man who would fuck her. Probably he is stealing it from her. Is this not the Message of Lolita?

In the Culture I live in (Canadian, which is influenced to the Point of being inDistinguishable from American), it seems the Loudest Voices jockeying for a say over what is the “Proper” Sxuality for the Teen Aged Girl to practice are the Religious Conservatives who would see the Teen Aged Girl Chaste and Married and the Liberal Media who would see the Teen Aged Girl Permanently Sxualized if Primarily Monogmaous- for her Own Good. I would add to this, though they do no have Access to Public Discourse, the Teen Aged Boys, whose comfort with Sxual Terminology and Sx its Self often Far surpasses Girls' of the Same Age and who, thereby, dominate the Dialogue on Sxual Activity as occurs between Teen Agers. What is Desirable to a Teen Aged Boy is a Powerful inFluence on the Teen Aged Girl's Sxuality, perhaps the Most Powerful of All, but it is structured, in the Teen Aged Boy, by the Voices of Moral Authorities and of the Media. Small and Meek and in the Corner is the Voice of the Liberal Sx Educator, Male or Lady, who seems to react to the Glut of Others' Desires surrounding the Teen Aged Girl by saying: "Your Best bet is to say no. But if you do say yes, here's how to avoid getting Pregnant."

All of this is to say that for the Most Part, creating the Range and deciding on the Nature of Sxual Activities permitted to and Desirable in—the Very Concept of “permitting” a “Desirable” Sxuality—the Teen Age Girl in the Early 21^st Century, Even post Feminism, is the Purview of Males: their Fathers and Religious Leaders on the One Hand, their Pimps (a Record Xectutive controlling the Sxualized Content put out by a Teen Aged Star is a Kind of Pimp) and would be Lovers (Men and Boys) on the Other.

No where is here is the Voice of the Teen Aged Girl her Self. And no where is here is an Affirmative Voice for Sxual Activity by Girls from their Fellow Ladies.

Let's break it down a Little More.

The Teen Age Girl from the Strict Religious Background is Often required or at Least encouraged to stay “Chaste,” a Term that Typically means not having Sx until Marriage: ie: an Acceptable Sxual Partner is found for her, with whom she must promise to remain for the Rest of her Days on Earth: a Heavy Task, Heavier in the Globalized Information Era when Millions can interact, in Cities and on the Web, on a Daily Basis.

A Teen Aged Girl with a High Sx Drive, here After called the "Slutty" Girl, an Attempt by me to reclaim a Positive Meaning for this Word, born into a Strict Religious Environment can go Only One of Two Ways: repress her Sx Drive and channel it into a Feverish desire for Marriage, or indulge her Sxuality and be vilified for it, Possibly to the Point of Xpulsion from her Family, or in Some Religious Communities: Death.

A Secular, or Liberal Sx Education, how Ever, does Little Better for the Slutty Girl. It is implied, Even in this Environment, that Chastitiy is Always “Right,” and Sxual Activity is Very Often “Wrong.” These Educations place Emphasis not on the enJoyment of Sxuality as an Aspect of being Alive, but on Disease, un Wanted Pregnancy and Rape. Only a Slow & Secretive Kind of Sxuality is acceptable for the Girl raised in the Liberal or Secular Environment. This is what I call Sxual Neutrality. Sxual Neutrality is a Sxuality that grows after a Long Relationship. It is a Sxuality that cannot be seen.

The Acceptable, Sxually Neutral, Teen Age Sxual Relationship

It is a Sxuality that remains at All Times under Control, Adult Control Specifically. It is a Reserved, Responsible, Even non Xistent Sxuality. The Slutty Girl is as Objectionable to the Liberal as she is to the Conservative.

Too Risque for American TV: Non Judgemental, Realistic Depictions of Teen Aged Sluttiness

Yet, All the While the the Adults Close to her are feeding her Messages of Sxual Restraint, the Teen Aged Girl is bombarded with Media Images of Sxual Teen Aged Girls that imply that offering her Body to the Male Gaze is a Good Thing to do—it will make her Popular, Even Rich.

The Message sent to a Teen Aged Girl via a Sxual Teen Aged Girl in a Music Video is, “Desire to be like me because I am Desired.”

Who would you rather be?

Finally, the Boys at her School, if they are not buying into Castity or Sxual Neutrality as the Only Acceptable Sxualities for Teen Aged Girls, are Often as Loud, and far Dirtier, in their Calls to Sxual Activity by Teen Aged Girls than the Media. But these Teen Aged Boys live in the Same "Sluts are Bad" World as the Girls do, creating One of the Most Painful Paradoxes known to Teen Aged Girls: Guys want you to have Sx, but Once you do, they don't like you Any More.

In this Sad Reality, the imPosition that the Teen Aged Girl remain to the Chaste Side of Sxual by Sx Educators makes Sense: they want her to feel Love and Acceptance, and if squashing her Sxual Desires is All that takes, the Better for her, no?

The Pressure on the Teen Aged Girl to be Both “Chaste” and “Sxually Desirable” at Once is Great. It seems that the Hottest Girls, as manifest in the Media, which, though it makes a Great Deal of Money off Sxe Young Things, is operating in the Land of the Religious Conservative and must pay Lip Service to his Ideals, and as manifest in Horny Boys who want Girls to be Sxe, want Girls to be Sxually Available, but vilify Girls who fall too Easily into Sx, is the Girl who is “Desirable in her not having Sx,” or, as I will call it, Desirable in her "Sxe Chastity."

The Essence of Sxe Chastity

The "Abstinence Porn" of Twilight is a Perfect Xample of Sxe Chastity for Teen Age Girls as promoted by the Media

Jessica Simpson was, in the Early 2000s, an Icon of Sxe Chastity: a Pop Star who promoted her Self Both on her Sxe Looks and on her Promise to "save Sx until Marriage."

Under the inFluence of Sxe Chastity, the Teen Aged Girl is compelled to show off her Boobs, put on Makeup and tease Teen Aged Boys for Attention, but she isn't supposed to have Sx with them. It is Clear from this that Sxe Chastity is a Dangerous Balance. Have Sx and Suddenly, your Chastity, and thereby, Both your Moral Standing and your Sxiness, are gone. The Girl is, post the Loss of her Virginity, "Damaged Goods." That Sxiness should end so Soon after having Sx is the True Tragedy of Sxe Chastity, and it reveals the Sxist Inner Core of the Paradigm. Under Sxe Chastity Only the Virginal Teen Aged Girl is Sxually Attractive. Grown and Sxually Active Ladies are a Kind of Sour Milk (we All know what happened to Jessica Simpson after she got married and had Sx).

Sxe Chastity is an imPossible Paradox. It is an imPossible Paradox in the Same Way that telling Girls to be Really Skinny to be Sxe is an imPossible Paradox. Fertility is the Source of Beauty, and Fat is the Source of Feminine Fertility. A Girl who makes her Self skinny to be Sxe is dwindling, along with her Fat, her own Sx Drive/ability to proCreate. The Girl who engages in "Sxe Chastity" has set her Self up to be compromised in her Very Ambitions: to be Sxual and respected at Once.

While Libidinous Sxual Activity by Teen Aged Girls is discouraged by the Same Media that traffics in it, creating the Myth of Sxe Chastity, without Sensible Mooring, chasing a Contradictory and Easily defeated Sxual State, the Teen Aged Girl becomes Lost in the Sea of her Sxuality. In this Confused Position, Sxe Chastity, the Teen Aged Girl is Easily disEmpowered and Easily Objectified. Once she has lost her Virginity, she can no Longer hope to be as Desirable again. She might as well give up and let Boys do what Ever they want to her, now. This might be her Only Way to get Sx.

One can see, Again, where the Liberal Sx Educators are coming from when they suggest a Sxual Neutrality. Hold back on Flirtatiousness, hold back on Sx, build a Relationship based around Love and there is a Greater Chance you will be respected as a Person Once you have Sx. The Problem with this Out Look is that is Still implies that Sxual Activity, and Especially Slutty Activity, is damaging to the Reputation of the Teen Aged Girl.

Why should this be so? Could it be because the Way our Culture, Subvertly and Overtly, teaches a Girl to attract Men, whether she is under the Spell of "Sxe Chastity" or not, is to affect Docility, Malleability, Vulnerability, Even Stupidity, creating an Association between Feminine Sxuality and a Lack of Intelligence and Self Possession?

How to attract a Guy: be Vapid/Vulnerable. Define your Self as an Empty Vessel into which he can pour him Self. Be doting to the Point of Self Negation.

It seems that if a Girl wants to attract a Boy, she is to pretend she had no Mind and no Will beyond that Boy if she wants to attract him, Sxually.

And so Teen Aged Girls grow up Alienated from their Bodies and their Minds, Never at Home in their Sxual Skins or their Sxual Thoughts. If they give in to their Sxual Feelings, they are rejected by their Cultures, dismissed as Sluts and left to languish where Ever they First dared fuck out Side the Acceptable Boundaries of Sxe Chastity or Sxual Neutrality: the Ghetto, the Small Town, the Marriage, the Affair.

And, if they do want Sx, they are taught to behave as Idiots, and in that, stigmatizing them is Justified.

Outward Xpressions of Libidinousness, our Culture tells the Teen Aged Girl, will be met with Punishment- for your Own Good.

This Dire Situation for the Authentic Xpression of Sxuality by the Teen Aged Girl- that is to say the Sxuality of the Teen Aged Girl as she would Xpress it without imPossible Paradoxes, Dire Warnings or Ghastly Punishments to think about, is Terrifying in its omiPresence.

For this Reasons I have found it Necessary to comment on, now, before so Many Years pass I forget what it was Really like to have been that preCarious Creature, the Teen Age Girl, and Specifically, that Most vilified of the Teen Aged Girls: the Slutty Teen Aged Girl. For I have found that Much of the Ignorance and misInformation that plagues the Sxualities of Teen Aged People in General and Teen Age Girls in Specific can Only be accounted for if we understand that the Adults who create the Frame Works within which these Young People are permitted to behave have Either forgotten or have Never known what it was like to be those Very Young People. They have forgotten that Once they willed and desired and were curtailed in their willing and desiring. They have had their Wills and Desires crushed by those who would protect them or those who would control them and would crush yours for they know no Other Way. Or, Lastly, they see Gain to be had in repressing & controlling the Sxual Wills and Desires of Others. Only in Teen Aged Girls speaking out about what it is like to be Teen Aged Girls, to be trapped between Two Rigid, Culturally Reinforced Poles—the Perfect & Chaste but Sxually Naive Girl on the One Hand and the Slutty, disGraced but Sxually Xperienced Girl on the Other—will we put the Immense Power of this Sxuality—its Very Youthful Vigour—back in the Hands of those who deserve it Most, for their Self Protection within a Culture that would shut them off from the World and from their Selves or fuck them like they were created for that Purpose Only: the Teen Aged Girls.

I will be making reference, in this Essay, to my Novel SIS: but I will make Sure that All References are Comprehensible without Any One's having read the Book.

The inCeption of SIS:, my First Novel, can be traced back to my Own Teen Aged Years, as I struggled to gain a Foot Hold on my Rapidly changing Body and the Realities, Responsibilities and Powers entailed by it. The First Thing that struck me, in searching for Guidance, was the Hypocrisy of the Messages being fed me in regards to my Sxuality. As a Young Person Fully immersed in the Culture of my Day, I became Aware of the Contradictory Nature of these Messages, Overtly or subConsciously, being given to me by the Various Sources: Parents, Teachers, Other Students, the Media, Companies, and the Government. On the One Side, Almost Every “Voice of Authority”—besides my Parents, who were Mute on the Subject, and this can be taken as the Source of my Eventual Sxual FreeDom—seemed to desire that I remain as Chaste as Possible & yet being a Sxually Active Teen Aged Girl looked Xciting and Glamorous, Especially to me, who had a High Natural Sx Drive and was More inclined, by Nature, in this Direction than towards Chastity or Sxual Neutrality.

By the Teachers of Sx Education in my School, it was understood, if not stated, that no Thing could be done about the Sx Drives of Teen Age Boys; these were Simply too Powerful—Boners All the Time!— to be negated. The High School I attended (between 2001 and 2006), a Thoroughly Average Place, was Full of Teen Age Boys who wanted Boobs, Asses, Blow Jobs, Pussies, Nudity, Sperm & Sx and were comfortable telling you so, and in Far Nastier Terms. The Burden of dealing with the Apparently non Negotiable Sx Drives of the Teen Age Boys fell onto the Teen Age Girls they pursued. By the Teachers of Sx Eduction is was assumed we Girls did not like this Attention, or that we shouldn't like it, and this was framed in "Feminist" Terms: this Attention was "Sxist" and "Objectifying." This was not said in a Way that implied All us Girls agreed, it was Clear Many didn't, but in a Way that implied Only those who did agree (that Sxual Talk by Boys was "Sxist" and "Objectifying") were Worth talking to, Evidence of a Bias in the Canadian Education System. The Way the Situation was laid out to us Girls, Either Consciously or subConsciously, by the Teachers of Sx Education, was that us Teen Age Girls had Much Lower Sx Drives/Much More Control over our Sx Drives (and were More Obedient to the requests of Adults) and therefore, it was up to us to deny the Boys Apparently un Yielding Desires for Sx. Boys will push. Girls should resist. This was the Message of my "Liberal" Sx Education.

How Safe Sx Works

To Drive this Point Home Further, if they did not think we Simply agreed by Default, that you, as a Teen Aged Girl, do not want to have Sx, and if you do, you want it to be Sxually Neutral like in Twilight, with Romance and Love and Eons of Fore Play (though based in Deed, on a True Set of Desires or Lack thereof among the Feminine Gender), the Teachers would then inform us Girls of the Tremendous and Terrible Misfortunes that Sxual Activity could incur upon us if we did not contain it within Socially Acceptable Chastity or a Socially Acceptable Sxually Neutral Long Term Relationship: Rape, un Wanted Pregnancy, disRespect. This Information was given as if the Sx Educators wanted us to have an Arsenal of Facts with which to deny the Teen Aged Boys, who their Selves might ignore Any Evil in their Compulsive Search for Sx.

Even now that "having Sx before Marriage" was not a Stamp of disHonor, Even now that Sxual Aggression by Boys was called "Sxism" and "Objectification," the Easy and Moralizing Sxual Categorizations, Clearly tied to Economic Standing, Whore/Madonna, remained. The underlying Message of my Sx Education was that Girls who wanted Sx and Actively chased it were “Bad,” Sluts doomed to Poverty and disRespect, while Girls who turned down Sx or Only had Sx after a Long “Relationship” with a Partner (and still didn't Really want it, but wanted Love in Stead, but Okay, if it would get them Love and he was a Really Good Guy and they used a Condom) were “Good,” Respectable Girls who would have Quality Lives, Full of Positive Relationships with Men. The Progression of Sxual Activity, whether in a Long Term Relationship or in the Moment, was Consistently presented as a Bartering Process that would occur between Teen Aged Girls and Teen Aged Boys, with More of Less Violence xcercised by the Boys depending on the Length of the Relationship, and with Girls AlWays Either the Gate Keepers of their Chastities and Reputations, or the Victims of Sxual Violence. Yet, at the Same Time, I xperienced among Friends, Even in Acceptable Sxually Neutral Relationships, an Equal Degree of Pressure to have Sx coming from the Girls as from Boys. I felt Sympathy for the Boys, who were Sensitive and Loving and Frightened, and whose Culture had pegged them as Mindless, Heartless Potential Rapists acting under the unwavering Command of their Dicks. It seemed Very Obvious that my Teachers, with their "Good Girls don't want Sx" Message, were out of Touch with the Times, or with Reality, and this was to the Detriment of their Safe Sx Message.

Desirable or unDesirable?

But, for All the Pressure, from the School System, from the Government, from Churches, from Parents, on me as a Girl to stay Chaste, or at Least in my "Liberal" Canadian School, as Chaste as Possible within the Purview of a Sxually Neutral Relationship,

1) the Media was Full of Images of Sxualized Teen Age Girls & / Grown Ladies pretending to be Sxualized Teen Age Girls, and these Media were Clearly directed, not at these Girls’ Fellow Teen Aged Boys, but at the Same Male Demographic that Either told me as a Teen Aged Girl not to have Sx, or implemented the Social Policies that told me as a Teen Aged Girl not to have Sx.

2) Teen Aged Girls who had Sx, who flaunted Sx, were Wildly Popular among Boys at School and in the Media, Even when those Same Boys and Same Media referred to the Girls in Derogatory Terms. The imPression was that being a Teen Aged Slut was Desirable so Long as Once a Male fell in love with your Sluttiness, you were Slutty with no One but him.

What had created this Strange Stew of Contradictions? And how, on that Account, should One, as a Teen Aged Girl, behave?

Lets call Both the Assumption by Sx Educators that Teen Aged Girls don't want to have Sx (or that if they do they want it to be after a Long Courtship), Either because the Sx Educators believe it is True or in Oder to make it True, along with the Active Punishment of Sxual Activity by Teen Aged Girls by Adults and Teen Aged Boys, Sxual Repression. The Original Source of Sxual Repression of Teen Aged Girls by Adults is, Obviously Enough, Breeding Control. This is Clear: being a Teen Aged Mother, in this Day and Age, perhaps More so than Any Other, is Difficult. Far More Difficult than being a Teen Aged Father. The FreeDom to escape, to run away from Ones Responsibilities, as a Teen Aged Father, is Far More Pronounced. In repressing the Sxualities of Teen Aged Girls, Adults believed they were preventing un Wanted Children and this Aim seemed to them Righteous. Perhaps it is. It Certainly is within the Modern inFormation Economy, where “Flourishing,” to say no Thing of Survival, requires an Advanced Education and Apprenticeship Process that goes into the Early 30s is made Far More Strenuous if One Also has a Child to care for. Where Once Girls as Young as 9 had been Sold into Marriages with Men in their 50s with Cause for Celebration among the Family Members, now, in the Western Civilized World, it was seen as Desirable to maintain, if not the Chastity out Right, then the Sxual Neutrality of Young Ladies up until their Twenties or Further, so that they Might Focus on School and Work- and this is called Feminism. It is not the Aim of Sxual Repression that is Wrong, but the Approach. There is a Parallel between the Christian Will for Virginity among its Young until Marriage and the Desire for a Sxual Neutrality in it’s Girls by the Secular, Liberal & Feminist Communities. Sxual Neutrality in Teen Aged Girls means having Sx, Perhaps, but not being into Sx. Absolutely Shocking to Many Feminists, Liberals, etc, is the Idea that a Girl would base her Identity Entirely around Sx. A Teen Aged Girl can have Sx, this is Okay to the Liberal, the Feminist, etc, but it should not be Evident that she is having Sx, and this Requirement—that Any Sx that is being had be kept Quiet—is perpetuated past Teen Agehood, Past a Career Apprenticeship and into Marriage by Both Secular and Feminist Liberal, and Religious and Patriarchal Conservative Communities. Because this Repression is directed More so towards Girls than to Boys, it is Sxism, to say no Thing of the Evil of Repression in and of its Self. It is not considered "Appropriate," in Any Common Modern Canadian Community, upon having Sx for the First Time or having your Sx Rightfully Acknowledged by the Community through Marriage, to begin dancing about in Public in the Nude or Nearly Nude, making Sxually Graphic References, or talking, un Self Consciously about the Details of your Sx Life. It is Widely assumed that Ppl, “just don’t want to know.” A “Professional” Modern Environment is One stripped of All Reference to the Sx its Members may or may not be having. Dov Charney, Silvio Berlusconi, and Any Lady making Sx her Profession are considered Lewd by the "Civil" Canadian Masses.

The Fact is, we are a Society Afraid of Sx.

But Even More Specially, we are a Society Afraid of Teen Aged Girls having Sx. It is Frequently assumed that what Ever Sx Young Girls are having is out of their Control and that this- the Teen Aged Girl's "Innate" Sxual Vulnerability- justifies preventing her from having Sx or xpressing a Sxuality. Besides the Obvious Fear of un Wanted Pregnancy, we fear the Teen Aged Girls are being manipulated by those who would have Sx with them. We fear the Teen Aged Girls are going to sell their Sx for Money if they get hooked on having it too Soon. We are Afraid the Teen Aged Girls who are Clearly having Sx are Bad People, un Able to maintain their "Reputations," or un Able to create a Personality beyond their Sxuality. We are Afraid they are Tarnishing us/their Selves. But is All Sx had by the Teen Aged Girl out of her Control? Is it Really Only Ever the Man or Boy who has to gain by the Teen Aged Girl's Donation of her Sxuality? Is the Willful Donation of her Sxuality, for Money or Fame or Neither or Some Thing Else, Necessarily Wrong? Is a Teen Aged Girl who has Lots of Sx, and Willfully, a “Bad” Person, doomed to a Life of disRespect?

For All the Negativity heaped on the Teen Aged Girl who has Sx—implying Either that she is being used or that she is an Evil Slut—Images of Teen Aged Girls having Sx and this being Desirable, bestowing of Great Privilege, Even, are Every where—Most Specifically, Every where in Media, and Notably, disTurbingly Frequently, in High Art. For All our Fear of Sx, we Still want it, un Controllably, and Many of us want it with the Teen Aged Girl. And she is fetishized and idolized above All Others in her Very Culturally reinforced Sxual Naivete. We want what we are not supposed to have.

In Media, All the Sxual Desires of the Public are laid Bare. In the Era of the Internet, but Only, and I must insist on this Point, if you are a Man, Any Thing you want to see can be found to see, you just have to go looking. In the Chaos of Media, but Relevantly and Quite Specifically, in the Realm of High Art, One Image of the Desirable Feminine, the Feminine portrayed as a "Self," and this is imPortant, as a Creature with a Persona, as opposed to a Mere Body Part or Series of Body Pasts, pops up Again and Again, laden, above All Others, with an Aura of the Dangerous, the Mysterious, the Desirable, the un Obtainable, the Adorable, with an Aura that suggests Mystique and Intellectualism, of being, Almost, the Ultimate Achievement in fucking the Feminine Person. This Particular Feminine Persona, in its Volatility, its Nubility and its Innocence, is offered as an Apex of what is Desirable to Men in a Lady Muse/Lover.

Bebe Zeva, Muse, 17

Cory Kennedy, Muse, 17

It is sold to Men as the Ultimate in Sxual Adventure, Danger and Control. It is sold to Ladies as the Ideal of “Fashion”- that Watered down World where Repressed Feminine Sxuality goes to find its Inspiration. And it is the Much Younger Girl- Very Often, the Teen Aged Girl.

What makes the Teen Age Girl so Sxually Desirable? So Sxually Desirable that her Image is offered for Emulation for Ladies far beyond her Age and Xperience, should they want to seem Sxe or Cool or Fun?

Marc Jacobs, featuring a Teen Aged Dakota Fanning

Why are Grown Ladies taught to emulate the Teen Age Girl in her Mannerisms and Follies if they want to be Sxe, while the Teen Age Girl is not taught to Emulate Older Ladies in Sxual Accomplishment, but taught to stay Chaste or Sxually Neutral so that Others don't think her Slutty? to Deny her Sxual Feelings for Fear of Ostracism or disRespect, while Simultaneously living in a World where her Sxual Desirability is made Abundantly and overWhelmingly Clear by Both the Boys in her School and the Men in the World beyond her School?

We live in a Culture were Feminine Sxuality is compromised the Minute it flourishes, made to see its Self as in Constant Threat from Moral Judgment on One Side and the Hairy Eye Balls of Men on the Other. If a Girl with a High Natural Sx Drive chooses to be Sxually Neutral or Chaste in Order to be Respected, she is repressed in her Self. If she becomes Sxually Available, as her Hormones tell her to be, and she is harassed & disrespected for it. We can see why Many a Girl would choose Chastity or Sxual Neutrality. And then, when, after Years and Years, a Sxually Repressed Lady comes to find her Self as her Self, Sxually, at 30, 40, Maybe, what does she realize in looking about her Culture? That Men still idolize & fetishize, in their Art, in their Media, the Innocent, Sxually Naive, Emotionally and Xperientially imMature Teen Aged Girl. What an Insult.

“They Only want you when you’re 17 / When you’re 21, you're no Fun,” goes the Ladytron Song.

This is a Shame and a Waste and it has, if not Alone, but as a Major Contributing Factor, caused a Prevalence of Air Headedness among Ladies who could do Better.

"Okay, make a Face like you have Limited Life Xperience"

Why do Men find Teen Age Girls, or Grown Ladies pretending to be (as Naive as) Teen Aged Girls, so Attractive? Attractive to the Point where the Fetishization of the Young and Capricious Teen Aged Girl is a Hall Mark of High Art as Well as of Pornography? While the Mature and Head Strong Anna of Anna Karenina is punished for her Sxual Will Power with Ostracism, Depression, and Finally, Death, the Lovable, Naive Teen Aged Natasha of War and Peace is blessed with a Family, a Man who loves her and Respect as a Mother. While the Ladies in "Barely Legal" Porn Spreads after Often, Obviously, in their 20s or 30s, why are they Still so Popular? Why is a Teen Aged Wide Eyed Innocence One of the Most Popular Attitudes for Lady Media Stars to emulate?

Here is the Crux of the Fetishization of the Teen Aged Girl in Art and in Media: it is not so Much Youth Men are looking for in her, but Control. Power. The Teen Aged Girl, for All her Willfullness and Moodiness, is Small and Ignorant of the World. Her Wills and her Moods are therefore Containable, Even Charming, where the Wills and Moods of Grown Ladies, Especially Grown Ladies who have not been taught to repress their Sxualites, are Terrifying Forces of Nature. It is Easier for a Man to get a Teen Aged Girl to do as he pleases. It is Easier for the Emotionally imMature Man to Deal with the Teen Aged Girl. But Also, as it has been Our Storicaly seen, if a Man plucks (and that is what he is doing, he is plucking—think of Tolstoy’s Family Happiness) a Teen Aged Girl at that Tender and imPressionable Age, to be his Lover, it is All the Easier for him to set in her his Values, to make her Economically Dependent on him, and thereby, inCapable of standing up to him with her Own Rights and Opinions, or preventing him from doing Many Other Things he would like to do, Such as take Other Teen Aged Lovers. Under a System Such as this, Virginity is Important. A deFlowered Girl is Damaged Goods, and Less imPressionable. And if a Girl in a Marriage based in Male Control were to have Desires to Sxual Variety her Self?—Ho Ho! A Beating or Death awaits her. So the Man is the Big Man, King Lion, orchestrating Over his Pride with Complete Control, and this is a Very Appealing Position to be in, the Same Way being High on Cocaine is a Very Appealing Position to be in. Men, over the Centuries, have become Addicted to their Power and Control over Ladies and so Ladies have languished, Sxually and Intellectually, in the Prison of the Whore/Madonna, Permanently Teen Aged Complex of Sxe Chastity.

The Wife has AlWays been a Trophy and a Thing for the Mantle. And if the Grown Lady wants to make her Self Desirable, Even in this Day and Age, when Economic FreeDom is Granted, though Begrudgingly, it seems she must make her Self a Trophy and a Thing for the Mantle: Empty of Xperience.

Rich Men don't want Ladies with Personalities, we are told. They want Ladies who look Good. And "look Good," these Days, means "look Young." And what is Youth if not an Emptiness of Xperience?

My Self a Teen Aged Girl with a High Natural Sx Drive, I was not aware, in Such Specific Terms, of the Social Forces tugging at me—from the Adults who would Protect me and the Boys/Men who would fuck me—but I was Aware of the Double Standard of Sxuality enforced for Boys and for Girls, and enraged by it. Here the Promiscuous Boy was a Lady's Man (Positive), and the Promiscuous Girl was a Slut (Negative)? Here Boys objectified me—they turned me into a Sxual Object, Even if Adults discouraged this (in a Way that had, Detrimentally to the Message, the Ring of More calls to Chastity)—and yet I was not permitted to Objectify my Self in my Own Body? I was not permitted to turn my Self into a Creature of Sx, or I was warned Severely against it. For Xample, I was not permitted to wear Revealing Clothing, or I was warned Severely Against it. I reacted to these Pressures in the Way Any anti Authoritarian Teen Ager who Also Desperately wanted to have Sx & Lots of it would react: I said fuck you to the Adults who would protect me from my Self and from Others and became a Slut.

This Choice could have gone in Any Number of Stereotypically Awful Directions, and inDeed it did: I was used, abused, imposed upon, raped, fucked and tossed way. I was degraded, mocked and vilified. But I was Free. Men and Boys were not Nice to me for giving them what I assumed they wanted: Sx, Lots of Sx, and without Commitment; often they avoided me after, laughed at me, or treated me like a Sx Thing and not a Person. But I was Free. I was in Pain, but I was Free. Had I taken the Words of the “Protectors” Seriously, had I pushed my Sxuality to the Bottom of my Gut and forgotten it there, had I reacted with Offense to the Come ons of Boys in Stead of Encouraging them, I would have been "Good," Yes, but I would have been Good on Some One Else's Terms. The “Protectors,” though they may not have wanted to have Sx with me, wanted me to treat my Sxuality in a Particular Way, a Repressive Way, and I had no use for this. As a Slut, I was no One's, I was dumped at the Fringe of Society, and there I was Free to do as I pleased with whom I pleased, so Long as they would have me.

And I did a Great Many Things that I would not have done had I accepted the Visions of Sxe Chastity and Sxual Neutrality. Even if my Idea of what my Sxuality should be, as a Slut, was based on the Desires Boys and the Media, it was I who made the Decision what to do and what not to do and it was I who decided after the Act if it was a Good Act, to be repeated, or a Bad Act, to be avoided. And this made me, Even in my Most Degraded Moments, Moments when I felt the String of the Senseless Disdain that the Vilification of the Slut has created in our Culture, Proud of my Self.

SIS:, my First Novel, will become a Famous Novel in no Minor Part because of the Second Chapter. The Second Chapter will become Famous for All the Reasons I have described above, that the Sxuality of Teen Aged Girls is at Once the Most problematized and the Most fetishized Sxuality in our Culture: it gets the Most Attention, Negative and Positive. The Second Chapter of SIS: Chronicles the Teen Aged Sxual Adventures of the Book’s Protagonist, Happy Blue, and these include Anal Sx, TreeWays, Orgies, polyAmory, Sx with Older Men, Sx while on Drugs, and Plenty of Physical and Emotional Abuse, perpetrated by Both against her and by her. These Adventures carry on into the Thrid Chapter, but by this Point, Happy Blue is out of her Parents' House and though Shocking, these Actions, committed by a Seventeen Year Old, do not carry with them the Aghast Revelation that “All this was going on under their Parents’ Noses! For All the Work we do to protect them!”

The First Reaction Adults have, I have found, to the Knowledge of a Teen Aged Girl acting Sluttily, is to crack down. Separate and Punish. Fill the Girl's Time with School Work. Their Second Reaction, I have found, is to blame the Media. From here come All the Images of Sxualized Teen Aged Girls, so here we must place our Anger. Were Girls Ignorant of these Acts, they would not behave in these Ways. So the Myth goes.

Though the Second Chapter of SIS: is based on my Xperiences with Promiscuity as a Teen Ager, I will not say how Much of the Material as it is described in the Book happened to me Personally. I will say, how Ever, that my Motivations in Xperiencing the Amount and Variety of Sxual Activity I did as a Teen Ager were the Same as Happy Blue’s. I wanted to know what Different Kinds of Sx with Different Kinds of People were like, and so I performed those Acts. From this I can say that Both Usual Reactions by Adults to Knowledge of Promiscuous Activities performed by Teen Aged Girls miss the Point. Happy Blue’s & my Actions, though informed by the Media, came from no One but our Selves. It was I who wished to Xperience what I did, and so it was I who sought out and achieved these Goals. To Punish Such Natural Instincts is to leave a Permanent Scar on the Authentic Sxuality of the Teen Aged Girl. It is to make her feel as if her Sxuality, as it grows in her, is Somehow "Wrong." Beyond the Possibility of un Planned Pregnancy, is it Really? Or does the Stigma around the Sxuality of Teen Aged Girls have More to do with our Fear of it than of Any Real Consequences? Do the Negative Consequences of Behaving in a Promiscuous Manner, as a Teen Aged Girl, have More to do with People's Perceptions of those Actions than of the Actions their Selves? I would argue, from my Xperience, that this is in Deed the Case.

On the Other Hand, in this Day and Age, with the Teen Aged Girl xposed to so Much Evidence of the Desirability and Possible Benefits of xploring her Sxuality, the Act of Punishment for these Activities by a Parent might lead to the Teen Aged Girl for Ever loosing Trust and Respect for that Parent. Unlike what is assumed by Many of those who would protect Slutty Teen Aged Girls from their Selves, Ignorance of Sxuality does not create the Sxually Neutral or Chaste Child. Even though I was Later to become a Slut, I didn’t know what Sx was until I was Twelve. Though, by Seventeen, I had tried Most Varieties of Sx (Vaginal, Anal, Oral, heteroSxual, homoSxual, biSxual, Orgiastic, etc), I didn’t look at Pornographic Films until that Year. Perhaps Most un Usual, was the Fact I didn’t Masturbate until I was Twenty. My Sxuality was so Focused on Men- their Bodies, their Attention- I didn't enjoy it. I didn't Even know how to it. No One taught me. No One taught me Any Thing. I improvised. Porn, as it xists, is not of Men, but for them, and held Little Interest for me as a Girl attracted to the Attention and Bodies of Men. When, as a Teen Ager, Various Sxual Situations presented their Selves for me to participate in, I dove in Willingly and Ignorantly. For this Reason, and homoSxuals will Agree, I'm Sure, I believe our Sxualities are Born with us: I was born a Slut. Xternal Forces do naught but shape that which is Already Present as Authentic Desire. My Greatest Critique of the Media and of my Teachers—besides their relying on Limiting and Sxist Stereotypes— is that they did not give me ENOUGH Information. Had I Better understood what I was getting my Self into, wanting to try Sx of Various Kinds with Various People, I could have avoided Much of the Pain I xperienced. I was going to do it Any Way, but I could have been Better Prepared. Knowing how to put on a Condom doesn't cut it when you're Navigating Tangled Emotions Post Orgy. Because we had not have the Language with which to discuss the Acts we involved our Selves in, my Self and the Kids I did these Things with Simply did not talk about them, and from here Sprang Most of our Issues: we were in Denial.

So swallow your Fears and inStead of hoping imPositions to Sxual Chastity or Neutrality in Teen Aged Girls will work, accept that Teen Agers want Sx and allow them to have it, with All the inFormation Such a Responsibility requires.

The First and Most Important Lesson I would give a Teen Aged Girl interested in Sluttiness is STAND UP FOR YOUR SELF: and this does not mean in turning down Sx Soley, but in asking for Sx of a Particular Kind and defending your Honor post Sx to Both Adults and Other Teen Agers. Take the Shame they are trying to pin on you and throw it in their Faces.

I think this is Important because, as a Teen Ager in the Early 21st Century, Even living in a Liberal Culture, my Genuine Belief, as transmitted to me by that Culture, was that the Sxual Desires of Boys were Some how More Real and More imPortant than the Sxual Desires of Girls. My Culture taught me how to say no and how to use a Condom, yes, but it did not teach me how to say yes, to be Sxually Adventurous and Willful and Proud of it and Respected for it. As a Girl who didn’t want a Monogamous, Sxually Neutral Relationship that would crawl along at a Snail Pace, I was made to feel that I was Bad. I rejected this Label out of a Sense that the Intensity and Variety of my Desires were not un Usual or cause for disGrace among Boys and therefore, should not be so for me. And this is where Things went Badly. Because Girls and Boys were not held to the Same Sxual Standards, because Girls who had a Lot of Sx were "Sluts" and this had a Negative Connotation and Boys who had Lots of Sx were "Studs" and this had a Positive Connotation, Even though my Willing to Sxual Variety was what Many Guys were rewarded for Socially, I was vilified for it.

From the Assumption, by Others, of my Inferiority came my Suffering. To avoid disRespect form Guys, which I did not Think I deserved, I set up a Kind of Precarious Pattern of Behavior, Some What like a Backwards Sxe Chastity. Let's call is Passive Sluttery. My Tactic to get Love and Respect, Even in Sluttiness, without a Paradigm for a Positive Teen Aged Sxual Promiscuity for Girls, was to Feign like I didn't Really have Sxual Needs, more that I was "Passively" letting my Self fall into them. The Way to feign Sxual Passivity (respectable to Guys) while Still getting Laid (what I wanted), I figured, was to give Guys what they wanted, how they wanted without Argument. I had been led to believe that Love and Respect were the Rewards Only of the Sxually Passive Girl, the Chaste Girl, the Sxually Neutral Girl, and so I feigned that I was her, Even in having Sx, by keeping my Mouth Shut to the Things that were being done to me. I let my Self be fucked, feigning Passivity, trying to find in that Approach the Two Things I thought Sx should give me and I was taught this Kind of Self Negation would provide, whereas taking Lots of Sx from Men Willfully, as I was inDeed doing, would rob me of: Love and Respect.

Of course I did not find Love or Respect. My Behavior was a Perversion, but you can see how it made Sense to Act that Way to a Girl raised to believe in the Sxual Attractiveness of Passive and aSxual Girls. You can see how this Contradiction, pretending to be Sxually Passive when I was a Sxually Desirous, would lead to Psychological disTurbance, to an Xcessive and Obsessive Attachment to Sxual Attention from Males as a rePlacement for Love and Respect, and thereby, to Mania and Depression, Self Negation and Self Harm. My inAbility to reconcile the Respect for the Sxually Neutral or Chaste Girl I wasn't and the disRespect for the Slut I was created in me the biPolar Nymphomaniac: Other Wise, I might have been let off as Adventurous and Passionate. And as we All have been led to believe would happen to a biPolar Nymphomaniac, I was rejected by Men for Both my Intensity of Desire and Emotion and for the Sxual Promiscuity I attempted and failed to masque. I felt the Abandonment, the Post Coital Rejection, the Lack of Respect, the Mockery, and Mean While, thinking Passivity would make me Sxe, I said and did no Thing. There was no Respect for who I Really was in my Culture and so I was made Worthless, First in the Eyes of Boys who fucked me, and then in my Own Eyes, via their Lack of Respect of me.

My Reaction to this Painful Scorn from the Boys I desired and loved and wanted Respect from was to go just as Far the Other Direction—at Eighteen I began a Fully Monogamous Relationship that aspired to Marriage. Here, I thought, is a Safe and Acceptable Capsule for my Sx Drive. Only when that failed, in no Small Part due to my Continued Promiscuity (and my Sincere inTernal Conviction that this Promiscuity was Morally Acceptable), did I begin the Journey of trying to find a Balance between Vilified Sluttery and Socially Acceptable Sxual Neutrality, Often and Still Oscillating between the Two, as I see Many Young Ladies do these Days. This is called, in acknowledging the “Short Term” Monogamous Relationships it creates: Serial Monogamy.

I am Twenty Three Now, and I can see the Sources of my Actions as a Teen- my Attempt, in Face of my High Sx Drive, to live up to an Impossible Paradox of Sxuality: to be Sxe and Sxless at Once. And I can see that Boys' Acceptance of this Paradox, Even in Face of their Own Desires, or the Desires they faked for their Friends, created the Stigma that hurt me Most. Without Xternal Judgement from Others, Boys and Girls, Teens and Adults, who perpetuated the Myth that Sluts were Bad, my Actions would have been able to go on in a Far Lighter Manner.

But what I can Also see, and what redeems it All for me, is the Foundation of a Superior Paradigm than the One I was brought up under for the Sxualities of Teen Aged Girls. What is so Important about the Story of me and the Story of Happy Blue, which reflects Mine, is not that she or I are Sluts, but that we chose to be Sluts Even in Face of Tremendous Social Pressure to do Otherwise. This makes Happy Blue perhaps the Only Literary Heroine who has made this Choice and defended it. For the First Time the Whore, and not the Madonna—like Elizabeth Bennet, Dorothea Brook, or Mrs. Dalloway, Perennial Wives—is telling her Tale. Finally, she is not the Prop of a Male Fantasy, nor Vilified for her Actions, but an Adventure unto her Self, and in that, she makes Righteous her Actions.

The Outrageous Sx in SIS: is not meant to titillate, though it will. It is meant to inform. It xists to say, “These are the Things that Teen Age Girls do, and do Willingly.” We have seen Teen Aged Girls acting Promiscuously, yes, we have seen it a Million Times, but we have Always seen it as to the Benefit of Some One Other than the Teen Aged Girl her Self: through the Eyes of the Male for the Sake of the Male. In Happy Blue, my Heroine, Teen Aged Sxual Promiscuity is portrayed through the Eyes of the Girl who xperienced it, for Good or Bad, and from this it becomes Evident that the Pain she is suffering is not so Much because she is Sxually Promiscuous, but because Others have deigned so Hard to make her Sxual Promiscuity look Bad. Happy Blue is the Victim not of her Self and of her Desires and Actions, but of Other People's Perception of her Desires and her Actions. Her Self Loathing is not Genuine Self Loathing, but the Self Loathing of a Girl who has been told to hate her Self for who she is.

To see a Tale of Sxual Promiscuity through the Eyes of a Girl who lived it affirms her Actions and takes them out of the Hands of the Men and Boys who were suspected of manipulating & using her for their Advantage and puts them back under her Own Power and for her Own Sake. Long has it been that the Teen Aged Girl’s Sxuality has been wrenched from her, and she is told that this is Either for her Own Good or for Some One Else’s. In Either Case, the Girl’s Sxuality goes into the Hands of Men who would play with her, often just to be done with her After, like a Toy, or repress her, that their Honor remain intact. They do not have to feel Bad about this, for she is just a Slut, just a Girl. She is passed like Currency and treated like an Animal. Men determine the Boundaries within which she is to behave, they determine what she is to like or dislike, do or don’t do, tell or not tell, and to their Own Advantage. Even under 21st Century Feminism, this Trend persists. As Long as Neutral to Suggestive Monogamy is the Only Acceptable Form of Sxuality for Ladies in General and Teen Aged Girls in Specific, the Slut will continue to be used and her being used will continue to be held as the Basis for her being disRespected- a Double Bind meant to keep Ladies and Girls in Sxual Submission: as it did to me. I did not complain about how I was treated because I was afraid complaining out Side of a Relationship would reveal me as a Slut. I should have complained. I should have stood up for my Self. I should have said that no One had the Right to disRespect me for being Libidinous. I should have demanded Respect for that Very Fact, and now, with this Essay, with SIS:, I am doing so.

The Slut must be liberated for the Sake of All Ladies, who would Never Again have to fear Outwardly imPosed Negative Emotional and interPersonal Consequences for their Sxual Desires. And to free the Slut we must free her where she starts, free her in the First Days of Sxual Feeling, free her in the Teen Aged Girl. The Only Way to help the Teen Age Girl, the Only Way to make Sure she grows into a Strong and Independent Lady, the Only Way to make Sure Boys and Men don't use her is to give her Sxuality back to her to do with what she will with it, come what may. And that is done by throwing open the Doors to Sxual Desire and Diversity. Giving the Teen Aged Girl her Sxuality back is done by saying, “What Ever your Desires are, Sxually, whether they are Monogamous or polyAmorous, heteroSexual, Gay, biSxual or panSxual, into this or that or Totally grossed out by it, into Long, Steady Relationships or into a Rotation of Partners, sadoMasochistic or Vanilla, into selling your Body's Skills or into saving them, it is your Choice, based on your Dreams and the Only Thing I can say about that is be Kind to your Self and those you share your Body with.” All Else is an Illusion of Control that hurst Most those it was meant to "protect": the Teen Aged Girls.

Only then will Men come to understand that Ladies are not their Objects, not their Trophies, not their Due, but Beings like their Selves, Full to the Brim with Ambition, Even if that Ambition is to Sxual Submission: I am and was a Sxually Desirous Girl who is Also a Sxual Submissive. Only then will the Sxually Practiced Lady be respected by her Culture for her Skills, rather than vilified, judged and criminalized for them. Only then, with the Rise of the Strong Lady, with a Sxuality to be Proud of, what Ever its Form, will the Malleability of the Teen Age Girl be seen as the Weakness it is, rather than her Most Desirable Aspect, and the Determination, Even in Submission, of the Grown Lady be given its Due as the Sxual Ideal.

I have written and Published this Essay Previous to the publication of SIS: because I have desired that Mine be the First Word on the Matter of the Teen Aged Sx in Chapter Two. For it will provoke Debate, and like the Teen Aged Girl who must be given the Right to speak her Sxual Mind and act with her Sxual Body the Way she desires, free of Stigma, I must not let Any One put Words in my Mouth.

As for Drugs,

This Anti Drug PSA, brought to you by the Canadian Government, is an Xample of the Kind of Histrionic, Hyperbolic Bull Shit Often used, to the Detriment of its Message, to get Teens to stay off of Ill Defined "Drugs"

The Truth is that Most Illegal Drugs will not bring out in your Life Any Problems that were not Already Present. The People who tend to get hooked on Dangerous Drugs (like the "Drugs" this Girl is taking) are the People who are turning to these Substances to fill a Void created by a Lack of Love and underStanding in their World (for the Science behind this, which is known to me as Fact through Xperience with Drug People, check out In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Admirable Down Town East Side Van City Dr., Gabor Mate). As with All Addictions, Drugs help People Deal with what would Otherwise be inSurmountable Issues: they give People a Reason to live. From the John Waters Film Cecil B. Demented: "Once I had All Kinds of Problems. Now I Only have One Problem: Drugs. They've given my Life Real Focus." People who are Addicted to Drugs aren't suffering because they're Addicted to Drugs (Many of what we consdier the "Negative Physical Side Effects" of Drug Use are caused by Poverty), they're Addicted to Drugs because they're Suffering.

One of the Best Reasons for a Sane, Healthy, Self Aware Person to do Drugs is to get an Idea where the Problems their Life lie so they can Better go about fixing them. An Empathetic Drug like MDMA is Great for talking out Any Personal Issues you may have with a Romantic Partner. A Psychedelic Drug like Acid can show you Ways in which your Perception of the World is being skewed by Popular Conceptions and bring you Closer to a metaPhysical or Religious Understanding of the Universe. The Only Drugs I would recommend staying away from, as a Young Person, or Any One, Really, are Meth, Heroin, and Crack, which have Rapid Addiction Forming Qualities and Nasty Withdrawal Symptoms that Account for Much of the Addiction Factor: these Drugs demand your Life. To be Fair, I have met a Number of Well Adjusted People who did these Drugs in their Youths and got Over them, but None of them recommends the Xperience to Others, Quite the Opposite, in Fact. Again: these Drugs demand your Life. Some People are willing to give their Lives. Ask your Self if you are. Cocaine is a Slightly Different Deal. Cocaine can be a Great Drug, but Cocaine is Also a Drug whose Enjoyment can Easily spiral out of Control if you do not have Any Other Activities to motivate you in Life, or if you have Deep, un Resolved Emotional Issues. As a General Rule (the Only Kind of Rule that is Real), I'd say don't take Cocaine until you feel you are a Fully Formed, Confident Adult Person with a Good Sense of your Worldly Ambitions. Never do a Drug if you don't know why you are doing it. Doing Drugs is a Lot like Climbing Mountains: its a Good Idea to go in Prepared. Do Research before you do Any Drug so you know what you're in for/how to Deal with Any Problems that may arise.

Remember: Drugs are Powerful: respect them.

A More Realistic, and, therefore, Perhaps More Helpful, Xample of the Kind of Personal Progression you may Xperience as a Young Person who does Drugs in a Respectful Manner is this:

Andrea Coates before doing "Drugs," Age 14

Andrea Coates after 4 Years of doing "Drugs,"Age 18

Andrea Coates after 8 Years of doing "Drugs," Age 23

I'm not saying go out and get Wasted Every Day, I'm just saying it would be Nice if Young People had Access to inFormation on "Drugs" that was Accurate, Balanced and Useful, as Opposed to Xcessive, imPrecise and misLeading.

Shape up, Peeps.

Andrea Coates