Monday, May 26, 2008

Like Olives


A lot of you may know Drizitche from his frequent comments here at Ask, and those who do also know that a little Driz goes a long way. As desensitized to conflict as I am, I still suck air in through my teeth when he plops down a particularly spite-filled comment, waiting inevitably for others to tear into him like barncats surrounding a bag of milk.

Good times.

On his own, he’s not "accessible" or "user-friendly", but he is clever...he’s also, at times, both poetic and extremely emotive; the blackness of his template reflects the blackity-blackness of his black, black heart, and this blackness expresses itself with a tremendous amount of wordiness.

Hell, calling Driz "wordy" is like calling an international jewel-thief "sneaky": neither description fully conveys the true nature of the beast. Some of these posts are long enough to unfurl and let roll from the top of a building with enough left over to pool in a rumpled mess on the sidewalk. I, though, can’t fault him for his loquaciousness; I was guilty of many of the same things when I submitted my own blog for review: over-intellectualized (in my case, though, it was pseudo-intellectualized) writing that had to be more RIGHT than readable, a need to not just find the proper word but also the least recognizable one, and a problem wherein I was taking life just a little too seriously.

Once I had figured out what I was writing for, I figured out how to write what I wanted, and this only came in retrospect; at the time, I believed that I was a god among men, writing REAL works of art with unmatched sincerity and leaving footprints of patronization and elitism whenever I posted. I would say that Driz feels the same way if I wanted to speak for him, which I don’t, and that the similarities I personally see in our writing might just be my own solipsistic leanings sashaying out into the light. What I DO know is that once I got a bunch of those I-don’t-give-a-flying-fuck-whether-you-like-me-or-not posts out of my system, I moved on and found that my writing had become looser, freer, better.

This is going to look patronizing now matter which way I try to spin it, but Driz has a bucketload of talent - I think he just needs to figure out who he wants to read his work, and how he wants to hold the attention of those readers. To alienate an audience of any kind is one of the more enjoyable aspects of writing, strangely, and though sometimes the wheat does indeed need to be cleared from the chaff, an unrelenting onslaught of slight punches to the gut isn’t quite as effective as one well-aimed hammer-crack to the sternum.

Driz can rankle, oh yes, but he’s sincere, and his misery seems to stem from longing rather than just grouchiness; he wants things to be right, and writes from a hole of contempt because they aren’t. And it’s not like he isn’t funny; I just wish he was funny more.

I’m going with on this one because, on top of everything I’ve mentioned in that mixed-bag of compliments above, he is in possession of a gorgeous header...but knowing that the above-rating might make him next-to-insufferable on our comment-boards, I’m also adding an ‘cause, you know, tough love, brainiac.

29 comments:

  1. I think I missed the comment fight, so I don't really know anything about our boy Driz. His writing was incredibly long-winded. You were not kidding with the scroll off the top of the building. But it's good. Loved the shop owner story.

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  2. I reject this review outright on the grounds of not knowing what the word 'solipsistic' means.

    You can't properly condemn a wordy fuck by using wordier words.

    Still. I got Nutjobbed, and now I must emote. With oomph. You were the worst person to review it of the whole crew, but I assumed I'd get you, so I'm not *terribly* disappointed.

    Word.

    ~ Driz

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  3. I know what 'solipsistic' means, but not 'nutjobbed.' However, I like it and am going to start using it.

    I'm not very bright; the only reason I know what solipsistic means is from the accusation of an ex-girlfriend.

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  4. Actually, Drizitche, you should be grateful that you got Nutjobber. 4 Stars is hella generous for a blog in which I couldn't have been assed to finish a single post. Maybe it's just me, but I don't want to dedicate the kind of time it would take to get into this blog. Wordy and kinda dull, the double trouble.

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  5. I actually liked the guy's blog, and I read it often. That is, until he decided I wasn't worthy of him.

    That's fine. You should get to pick and choose who you want to appeal to as the audience of your blog. Besides that, I have way too many blog addictions, anyway.

    However, someone should tell him, you can't be worthless and complete perfection at the same time. Pick a side of the fence, already. Straddling it is only going to cause permanent damage, dude.

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  6. Driz's writing is full of disillusionment, he craves (as opposed to needs) response to to his cries, responses that will confirm his desperation or assure him that the world is not the dark place it appears in his eyes.

    A wordy fuck indeed, on more than one occasion I had to step out of a piece, it hurt my mind to try and glue together the literal manefestation of what his mind struggles with.

    I can see this guy's mind never stopping, always working, always thinking, and more often than not, despairing. This is the reason why his pieces vary in subject, but lesser so in tone.

    One thing for sure, when you are at odds with the world around you for whatever reason, you will find a more eloquent voice than yours speaking on behalf of a soul in a similar state, right here.

    The black template is as difficult to read as his words are, but in both cases you have to sacrifice to reap the benefits.

    He scares me, he worries me, and I would never want to spend any significant time in his company, but this blog is pixelated penicillin for the over active and under optimistic minds among us.

    On the other hand, he could just be a bluffer, pretentious and pulling the three card trick with his entries. If so, then so am I with this comment.

    (FYI - 11:02 am here, I'm sober)

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  7. I truly would not have given him 4 stars. I consider him incredibly pretensious, and a little bit of 20-something pretensiousness goes a long ways with me. Is he smart? Sure. Is he as smart as he thinks he is? Not sure. Is he emotionally smart? Not really. Can he change the world through blogging? Highly unlikely.

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  8. Is he trying to change the world through blogging? I don't think so.

    I'm not trying to get the wife up the duff through blogging.

    It keeps me sane, helps me rationalise and quantify the mess in my head.

    I think there is a reasonable parallel with what he does, which no doubt is far too simplified an explanation for how he envisages his writing, but that's his charm, we are all peasants.

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  9. Oh, Driz--the douche to all bags. It's like he believes he's handing out life lessons, or throwing gold to lesser folk. Like an unsexy Robin Hood. He truly believes that he is wise. Maybe he is, in some ways. He's an excellent writer, that's for sure.

    But I just can't get over his superiority complex, his sadism. He's a hater who believes he writes to some higher calling.

    His blogs can be good to read, and I do read them, just so I have something to be pissed about when I feel like being pissed. That’s his goal in the end: to get people to feel, regardless of what emotion it is. It seems like he thinks that only HE can generate that kind of response, that everyone is unfeeling unless he’s kicking them repeatedly. And that just pisses me off even more, how wrong he is.

    So he wins, because you can't help but react to Driz. And he loses, because he sure ain’t Gandalf.

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  10. That's the thing. I always read Jobber's blog, because it makes me think. But, I never get the impression that jobber is a pretentious douche who tries only to get a rise out of people. I mean, clearly, he does love fucking with people. So do I. But Jobber gets that he's a huge dork, on the inside.

    I don't think Driz gets this. God, he takes himself so gosh-darned seriously.

    It gets on my damn last good nerve. Also, his writing makes me tired.

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  11. Xbox, I think I'm going to have to make time this weekend to read your blog cover to cover.

    The superiority complex, the taking myself seriously... I wonder if that isn't a sort of guilty projection on the part of the readers?

    I haven't yet found another blog that's doing what I'm trying to do. Even if you vehemently insist that I am indeed failing, I still seem to be the only one trying. I don't discount the possibility of others - I just haven't found them yet.

    It's a little like love, in that way.

    I wonder if I don't come off as superior because of my search for a love that matters; especially since my conduct stands in stark contrast to your one-night-stand blogging.

    Little substance, all flash and wit, dress yourself up and sell yourself out for comments and affection. That clearly isn't what blogging is to me.

    I guess all I'm saying is, if we're walking different paths, and both condemning each other's practices, at some point the dogma needs to be put aside and the practices themselves evaluated. Half of my despair is just this - the repeated evaluative processes I submit to, to ensure I'm doing what I can understand to be right.

    But I don't see that sort of self-doubt, that responsibility of opinion and conduct, on your sides of the fence. If anyone takes themselves too seriously, it might just be you - without even a little reflection or reconsideration, you do indeed look inferior. Where you look for comfort and safety of self, I look for honesty at painful cost.

    Truth is a great defense against slander; until you improve, you're a joke.

    Cheers.

    ~ Driz

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  12. It seems I'm wrong again, but such is life.

    Out of curiosity, how may tears have you shed today in your 'search for a love that matters'?

    I make no fanciful claims about my blog, it is cheap laughs, it is knob jokes, it is a poor imitation of a carry-on movie, but it helps me through frustrating and relationship straining times which are more real than I ever imagined they could be.

    I don't quite have the ability to mimic how Nietzsche may put this, so I'll just have to stick with an uneducated 'fuck you'.

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  13. Oh, good lord... I mixed my messages.

    My comment to you, Xbox, was an aside. You didn't accuse me of a superiority complex, or taking myself seriously... and thus the rest of the response wasn't directed at you in the least.

    I really appreciated your comment.

    The 'you' I refer to in my last comment was LB and Rassles, the people who made the remarks I'm responding to.

    Sorry for the mixup dude. I wrote that comment quick and didn't proof it.

    ~ Driz

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  14. I may have just soiled myself again.

    I had to re-read what I had originally written because your response didn't quite add up.

    I withdraw my fucking of you.

    This internet is a scary place.

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  15. Driz, you are so full of shit I could plant you in the ground and grow another one just like you. But why would I want to?

    However, you were exactly right in calling me out about that comment I left on your blog. It really was only blog fodder because the truth is, I had already lost the ability to believe anything you said because you had suddenly lost the conviction to say anything at all.

    The sad thing is that you are an intelligent, witty, good looking man, and yet you will never EVER find the love you're looking for because it doesn't exist. Love isn't an expectation, and it will never be the perfect pretty crystal clear emotion that's going to come bursting through your door, wrap up your cracked heart, and color your black world a pretty blue.

    Love, in any form will break your heart right down the middle and quickly teach you how to rejoice in the agony of it all even more than the splendour. You will never find it because it will never be good enough for you.

    No one understands you because you don't want them to understand you. It pisses you off when someone agrees with you because it doesn't give you something to whine about. It has nothing to do with our lack of insight or intelligence. Anyone can write a metaphor, a few nice adjectives, and learn how to use a Thesaurus.

    You have the ability to offer an insight that, in the beginning, I found both heart wrenching and refreshing because you offered things in views I'd never thought of before. But sometimes you get so absorbed in seeing how many people you can offend with your raw truths, that you end up lying outta your ass.

    I have a word for you:

    E-M-O

    If that's what you're going for, you suck at, darling. So why don't you go back to writing what is real so I can go back to respecting you for it.

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  16. The only thing you give up and sacrifice in love is your own ideas of what love can be, should be, and must be for you to love at all.

    Xbox seems to understand me just fine, and he hasn't even had a dialogue with me like you have, Angel. Just more proof how we humans can figure each other out without the dance and the question period.

    And of course I was right to call you out. Watching you read and respond got to be like watching a race driver with a heavy foot - every corner and turn you take with just too much speed and assumption, failing to brake and drifting off track.

    Take it slower. Nobody is entitled to a perfection - we have to earn it with practice.

    ~ Driz

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  17. I will always look for ways to better myself as an individual, but I will never strive for perfection. Unrealistic expectations just aren't my thing.

    Driz, you scolding anyone over speedy assumptions is certainly a laughable offense considering you think you have the rest of us figured completely.

    I'm really glad Xbox understands you. Maybe that was my first mistake, believing we ever shared any sort of dialogue at all. As long as you feel you owe no one even the smallest glimpse of who you really are, we're going to continue fail miserably at understanding you. For what little time we try, anyway. Who will even try when you've made it clear we either get you or we don't. And if it isn't an immediate epiphany, you don't have the time to bother.

    It's quite the contridication, isn't it? You want to be this deeply complicated awe inspiring person yet I'd better have you figured out immediately or I'm a waste of time.

    Do you even know who you are?

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  18. I don't want to 'be' anything. I used to. I got what I worked and wished for, and I'm trying to figure out what to do with it now.

    I like how you phrased that, 'owe no one even the smallest glimpse of who you are.'

    But then, I track my page hits by asserting I do owe apologies. Tongue in cheek, I certainly understand the frustration.

    I called the blog Ex Movere for a reason. To move, to be moved. From one idea to the next, one thought to the next. I'm not writing about my day, a fucking novel, some novel posts. I'm not giving you plot and characters, just scenes.

    I'm not well adjusted. The three-act play doesn't work for me. I don't have my shit together. Pick your catchy nugget of life advice. You read a person's blog, and you want to meet the person, within those words, between those posts... somewhere in there, you want to meet them.

    I'm in there, and I'm right here. The thing is, I happen to look a lot different than you're used to seeing. Speaking specifically to your frustration, only as local advice: until you stop looking at me with expectation, you're never going to see who I actually am.

    And I think what bothers you most is on one hand, you do understand, and do agree with how I do things. It's the implications of that agreement that you just can't bear.

    ~ Driz

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  19. I am so turned on right now...

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  20. I wonder if I don't come off as superior because of my search for a love that matters; especially since my conduct stands in stark contrast to your one-night-stand blogging.

    Little substance, all flash and wit, dress yourself up and sell yourself out for comments and affection. That clearly isn't what blogging is to me.


    Dude, I'm a mother with children. I know what love is. Love is self-sacrifice. Love is wiping the shit off an ass. Love is cleaning up puke. Love is holding a person who's sick just because they don't want to be sick and alone. Love is doing, day after day, all the dirty, unpleasant human maintenance chores that come along with choosing to spend your life with someone. Love is forgiving the unforegivable, letting it go, and moving on.

    You don't understand the least little goddamn about love because you don't even LIKE yourself, much less love you. You are full of the existential suffering of the world, and you haven't even fucking lived. You're too damn scared to let someone in to love them.

    When you've done that shit-wiping kind of love, FOR YEARS, get back to me. Until then, you remain a poser.

    p.s. At least I'm getting laid. Which is more than I can say for you, emo boi.

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  21. I think this group of comments wins the trophy for Longest Rebuttals...I love it.

    I know no-one else would've gone as high with the rating, but isn't that what makes this fun?

    No?

    Shit.

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  22. God, Driz, you suffer so for your "art."

    *le sigh*

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  23. You know we love you, jubblies.

    It just so happens that I considered raking Driz myself, I've concluded he's a wanker, and I don't like to go into a blog review with that kind of pre-existing bias. I sometimes LEAVE a blog that way, but I never like to go in that way.

    Of course, Driz, I use the term Wanker only in the most thoughtful, soul-searching, and passionate way possible.

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  24. Of course, Driz could possibly get more "real" if he just ejaculated onto the computer screen. It would serve the same intellectual purpose.

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  25. I'm going to keep track of these one-liners of yours, Bites; "le sigh" is hysterical.

    C'est moan.

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  26. Actually, I steal most of them from my fourteen year old daughter. What, you aren't up on hip, contemporary middle school verbiage? Bah.

    My newest favorite:

    "She's drinkin' the hatorade."

    Heh!

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  27. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), I don't have access to the minds of those aged between 4 & 25.

    I heard "apple-bottom" the other day, and my confused look was greeted by the crack of her ass above her pants; my response:

    "FUCK I'm old, huh?"

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  28. That's one thing about having kids, it will definitely keep you young...if you let it.

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Grow a pair.