The Consolidated "Slate Is Stupid" Thread

[elpollodiablo]

Yeah but 98% of everything has no reason for existing. Just look at Etsy!

[jebreject]

I write so slowly that it seems entirely pointless to think of myself as a writer the way a lot of people seem to think of themselves as writers (eat/sleep/drink/shit/fuck writing!). When I first started college I was all about being a Poet and oh my god I must have been boring to talk to. Anyway I don't actually have anything to say here, just that I like what Brad, CF and Pollo have said on the topic.

[Bernard]

Man I need to step up my coffee mug game. You can get em with photos printed on em nowadays, is that so?

YUP

YUP

[C of heartbreak]

about 98% of the writing produced into the world fundamentally has no reason for existing.

I am going to put this on a coffee mug and send it to fishjim

[fishjim]

My understanding that writing is a craft often interacts uneasily with my conviction that about 98% of the writing produced into the world fundamentally has no reason for existing.

Damn, CF, I thought that. How'd you get into my head?

[fishjim]

Honestly, guys, I posted that before seeing heartbreak's post. And I was about to make a joke about putting it on a coffee mug.

THE HIVE MIND LIVES

[coldforge]

My understanding that writing is a craft often interacts uneasily with my conviction that about 98% of the writing produced into the world fundamentally has no reason for existing.

Damn, CF, I thought that. How'd you get into my head?

I am a part of you, fishjim; I have ever been a part of you. I am the fish made flesh. I am the fish, and you are the jim. You have loosed me on the world, you of the dreaming, I of the dream, and now there is only blood to follow

[fishjim]

thanks for the earworm, dude.

I AM YOURS  YOU ARE MINE  YOU ARE WHAT YOU ARRRRRREEE
AND YOU MAKE IT HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRDDDDD

poetry, man.

[Anne the Man]

This is about the best thing ever.

[Little Sixes Little Nines]

i have a friend, and every year for his birthday we get him a mug with a picture of him holding the previous year's mug, and pulling the thumbs up. we're up to like five now!

[cold before sunrise]

i have a friend, and every year for his birthday we get him a mug with a picture of him holding the previous year's mug, and pulling the thumbs up. we're up to like five now!

brilliant.

[elpollodiablo]

Hanna Rosin is pretty glad Jan Berenstain died

The world today brings news that Jan Berenstain, co-author with her husband Stan of the 45 years and running Berenstain Bears series for children, has passed on to a better world. As any right-thinking mother will agree, good riddance. Among my set of mothers the series is known mostly as the one that makes us dread the bedtime routine the most.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/02/27/jan_berenstain_co_creator_of_the_berenstain_bears_is_dead_good_riddance_to_her_books_.html

[Greg Nog]

Holy shit! 

Also lol at "affections" where I'm reasonably certain brosephine meant "affectations".

[elpollodiablo]

I think this is a pretty decent response to this piece and most of Slate: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/02/berenstain-bears-and-when-say-nothing-all/49258/

A piece like Rosin's is a frustrating example of the daily blogging grind's creation of an ever-growing vacuum that needs constant filling, more and more and more all day every day. In a desperate attempt to not only fill this yawning void but to stand out in it, many writers/bloggers/whatevers like Rosin (and myself, on many more than one occasion) take it upon themselves to offer up something contrarian or needling or exhaustingly over-analyzed — in order to shock, to titillate, to lecture in cultural correctness. They're increasingly ubiquitous and thus increasingly dull; they've become so expected and yet so unnecessary. We should stop doing them.

please please please please

[elpollodiablo]

Also makes a pretty good implicit case for turning that capacious intelligence and writing talent towards an end perhaps more noble than perpetuating the existence of a content mill the maintenance of which requires that you take and then vociferously defend critical positions on stuff like Lana Del Rey and Go the Fuck to Sleep

[Thermofusion]

That Slate piece is dreadful but I dunno that the Atlantic Wire should be complaining about obsessive equilibrium-seeking in a blog-made culture vacuum

[elpollodiablo]

There's a good bit of self-recrimination on Lawson's part there, though probably not enough.

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

Hanna Rosin is pretty glad Jan Berenstain died

The world today brings news that Jan Berenstain, co-author with her husband Stan of the 45 years and running Berenstain Bears series for children, has passed on to a better world. As any right-thinking mother will agree, good riddance. Among my set of mothers the series is known mostly as the one that makes us dread the bedtime routine the most.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/02/27/jan_berenstain_co_creator_of_the_berenstain_bears_is_dead_good_riddance_to_her_books_.html

The Berenstain Bears were the first books I worked on when I started my job. They're totally well-written. Like, out-of-nowhere-gorgeous-similes kind of well-written

[elpollodiablo]

I know! They're great. The gender politics might be a bit fucked up, but something like The Spooky Old Tree (which I just read to Marin the other day) is kind of unfuckwithable as a kids' book.

[davy]

The Spooky Old Tree is a stone cold classic, absolutely first-tier. Up there with Green Eggs & Ham, and I'm not even kidding.

[dieblucasdie]

The Awl ‏ @Awl
Be Not Bored!
Followed by Miles

[elpollodiablo]

Oh we could go tit for tat on that one, friend

[dieblucasdie]

Well, I guess I spend much less time on things I hate than I did 7 years ago, and you spend much more time on things you hate that you did 7 years ago, so we've had a positive influence on each other

[hannah]

Slate headline #1: Stop Comparing Fukushima to Chernobyl
Slate headline #2: Stop Comparing Mike Daisey to John D'Agata
Slate headline #3: Judd Apatow and Mumblecore Have a Surprising Amount in Common

Next week I predict we will see this Slate headline: Stop Comparing Judd Apatow to Mumblecore

[Antero]

Stop Comparing Fukushima to Mumblecore