That Foul Smell on the Waterfront

[WolfLarsen]

That Foul Smell on the Waterfront
a short story by Wolf Larsen

(I worked as a longshoreman for 10 years. This story is based on an actual experience. There is one big difference between this story and reality: in reality the dialogue would contain four letter words in nearly every sentence.)

It was a pretty normal day. We were working a 12 hour shift in a 10° below zero F (25° below zero C) freezer hold in a cargo ship in the port of Dutch Harbor, Alaska. We were grabbing 40 pound boxes of frozen fish off the pallets and stacking them in rows up to the ceiling over our heads. It was 3 ton per hour per man minimum. The shipping company wanted the ships stored by hand to get a tighter stow, to get more cargo in the ships and make more money.

It was a normal day except something didn't smell right.
"What's with this smell?" asked the new guy.
"Wolf, did you fart again?" asked a fat guy laughing.
"No," said the new guy, "this ain't no fart. It's the fish we're loading. It doesn't smell right!"
"Oh that," responded the fat guy. "Yeah, smells like the fish has gone bad. Probably got defrosted one way or another."

There were about half-a-dozen of us working together on that hatch gang. We could talk as we worked because it didn't matter what we did above the neck as long as our bodies kept working.

"BUT AREN'T PEOPLE GOING TO GET SICK?!" blurted out the new guy.
"Yeah, probably..." said the fat guy sadly.
"WELL WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT THEN!" practically yelled the new guy.

A co-worker nicknamed "Scotty" (who was actually from Wales) laughed at the new guy. His laughter seem to say "boy are you naïve!"
"I worked on fishing boats before this, I know when something's wrong with the fish. The people who eat this fish are gonna get sick!" exclaimed new guy.

Another coworker, who was from south-central LA, said: "Okay. The fish is bad. People are going to get sick. But what can we do about it?"

There was silence for a little bit as everybody kept putting the boxes of frozen fish one on top of the other row after row. It was the kind of job you never got used to. It was the kind of job that was so physically hard you felt 20 years older than your actual age while working. It was the kind of job where in the early part of the shift you weren't quite sure if you could make it to the end of the shift. It was the kind of job where you wished you are dead. But you knew eventually the shift would end… I did it for 10 years.

Then the pallet was empty. A new load of frozen fish was brought by the "winches" (a type of crane) into the hold. The new load stank as bad as the last load. Something was definitely very wrong.

"HEY!" yelled out the new guy to the foreman who was standing up there on the deck two stories above us watching us work and not really doing anything except giving us the same old mean ugly expression he always did, but that's what he was paid to do.

The foreman ignored the new guy, but maybe it wasn't deliberate, maybe behind the mask of the same old miserable mean expression, he may not have been really paying attention, and may have been having a sexual fantasy at that moment, and thus may not have heard the greenhorn say "HEY!".

As we landed the 2 ton load of "frozen" fish on a huge roller and began trying to push the #@^%#@% roller (it got a little easier when it started rolling) the greenhorn began yelling up at the foreman.

"HEY, THIS FISH IS BAD. I WORKED ON FISHING BOATS I KNOW. THIS FISH IS NOT FROZEN. IT THAWED OUT A LONG TIME AGO. IT SMELLS! IT DOESN'T SMELL RIGHT! PEOPLE ARE GOING TO GET SICK WHEN THEY EAT THIS!"

As he yelled up at the foreman most of the other coworkers (except Wolf and a few others) had amused expressions on their faces. They pushed & pushed & pushed until the roller began moving and they began pushing the 2 ton load towards the stack of fish. They would repeat this process over and over until the giant hold of the ship was filled.

"WORK AS DIRECTED!" yelled back the foreman.
The greenhorn turned us and asked, "What does that mean?"
"It means get your butt over here and help us unload this smelly fish!" said the fat guy.
"But the people who eat this fish are going to get sick! I worked with fish before - "
"Dude," said Scotty interrupting him. "Nobody here wants to unload this fish. We all know something’s wrong. But there's nothing we can do about it!"

The greenhorn joined us and began stacking the boxes of frozen fish. As he worked he asked, "But what about the union? If we refuse to offload this rancid fish won't the union back us up?"
"Nope!" said the fat guy.
"Isn't there some kind of government agency that we could call?"
The others greeted this with laughter, except Wolf.
Wolf said, "I've tried the government. It's useless. If you go to the government about anything management will punish you."
The greenhorn said, "But isn't that against the law? Aren’t there laws to protect whistleblowers?"
The others laughed again.
Wolf answered, "It doesn't matter. Management will punish you if you go to the government. One way or another management will get revenge. And when management punishes you the government won't back you up."
"How do you know?" Asked the greenhorn.
"I went to the NLRB about something. You know, the National Labor Relations Board? They might as well call it the national bosses relations board, because they're the ones running it. Trust me greenhorn, going to the government is a mistake."
The fat guy said, "I told you not to go the NLRB, Wolf. But you didn't listen to me."
"If the fish didn't open up their mouths they wouldn't get caught," said Scotty.

"What if I called the boss? What if I got his number and called the boss of the stevedoring company we’re working for?"
"Forget about it," said Arturo a Mexican immigrant. "It's 2 AM. He’s sleeping. You wake him up he’ll take you to disciplinary committee."
"Disciplinary committee? What's that?!" asked the greenhorn.
"That's when you assume the position! All the management representatives get a turn!" blurted out the fat guy laughing.

"I'm going to call the union then!" proclaimed the greenhorn.
Scotty, Arturo, and the fat guy shook their heads. Some of the others laughed.
"The union will just tell you to work as directed," said the fat guy. "The union is not going to back you up."
"Don't you guys have any friends out here?" Asked the greenhorn.
"Nope," said the fat guy. "Nobody besides each other."
Arturo agreed, "We have each other, and that's all we got."

The fat guy said, "It's good to have the union, don't get me wrong. But it's run by a bunch of sellouts who are always kissing management’s ***. But you’re lucky there's a union. Because if there wasn't one you'd be out of a job soon enough, just for complaining to the foreman about the fish. They'd find some excuse to fire you. But you're okay. You can complain sometimes and get away with it because it's a union job"

"Doesn't do any good to complain," said the guy from south-central LA. "It's just like Scotty said, ‘If the fish didn't open up their mouths they’d never get caught in the first place."
"**** this job! This is my last shift!" said the new guy.

Nobody joked about anything for the rest of the shift, which was very unusual. For the rest of the shift not a single word was spoken. Everyone had miserable expressions on their faces for the rest of the 12 hour shift. Not a single man in that hold wanted to offload that rancid fish. But what could we do?

Copyright 2011 by Wolf Larsen

[Bewlay Brother]

You get a little redundant at times. In the last paragraph you say "rest of the shift" three times. Many sentences are much longer than needed. And you have some grammatical errors, particularly with dialogue. Your dialogue tags are a bit amateurish.

Also you really don't add anything by making fart jokes.

It is much better than most of your other things though.

[hillwalker]

I agree with BB - this could have been tightened up by removing some of the repetition.

I know that in many argumentative conversations people end up in some kind of looped dialogue where the same speech is repeated until the message gets through or everyone dies of boredom. But in a short story it pays to consider the reader - there's no need to record every utterance (and I'm sure we appreciate the author's censorship on this occasion).

I'm also curious as to why certain lines of speech are capitalised. Is it supposed to signify the guy was shouting? It's a little amateurish. I'm not suggesting you use exclamation marks because they are just as bad, but normally if someone says 'Hey, this fish is bad' we assume they are raising their voice in complaint rather than complementing someone.

H

[cafolini]

What Wolf ommitted is that nobody is going to eat that fish. It's going to fertilizer. You have to be a little more perspicacious, my concerned fellows.

[hillwalker]

Concerned? I think you're confusing us with anyone who actually cares about the plot. We were both too bogged down in the writing style to notice what he was writing about.

H

[cafolini]

He told you it was not reality, Hill. You should have figured out the joke, or at least one of them. Readers must cooperate with writers.

[Darcy88]

Better than any of your other works I've read. I can't call it bad, though I agree with Bewlay about the last paragraph.


For the rest of the shift not a single word was spoken. Everyone had miserable expressions on their faces for the rest of the 12 hour shift.

These two sentences could easily be made one. Something like "for the rest of the 12 hour shift not a single word was spoken and everyone had miserable expressions on their faces."

Its the ending. You want to seal it with a nicer finish than the one its currently got.

[Jack of Hearts]

It's no great feat of prose but it tells a story and holds reader interest.

Not too shabby there, Adalwulf.






J

[WolfLarsen]

It's no great feat of prose but it tells a story and holds reader interest.



Jack of Hearts understands.

It tells the story of something that really happened, on more than one occasion too.

I'm not trying to write great conventional work. Great conventional work has already been done. I'm just writing about reality.

[Hawkman]

Actually Wolf, I thought this was pretty good. It's very evocative and reads true for me. I didn't have a problem with the circularly repetitive dialogue as it enhanced the scene's veritas and humour. Jolly well done, I say.

Live long and prosper - H

[AuntShecky]

Hill's comment about the redundancy is well-taken. Also, it could be a little less preachy about its political points (which really should be made, God bless ya.)

I do think, nevertheless, that this is a pretty good effort. The dialogue "sounds" authentic and plebian readers, such as myself, can certainly relate to the situation.

[WolfLarsen]

That Foul Smell on the Waterfront
a short story by Wolf Larsen

(I worked as a bing-bong for 1,000 years. This story is based on an actual bing-bong. There is one big difference between this story and reality: in reality the uujjjiii-dooojii would contain one million letter words in nearly every sentence! )

It was a pretty day. We were working a 12 hour shift in a 10° below zero phrase of poetry in a run-on sentence in the port of Dutch Harbor, Alaska. We were grabbing the meaning of life off the pallets and stacking them in rows up to the ceiling up over the skyscrapers. It was 3 ton per hour per man minimum. The shipping company wanted the ships stored by hand to get a tighter stow, to get more cargo in the ships and make more money.

It was a pretty day except something didn't bing-bong quite right.
"What's with this smell?" asked the new guy.
"Wolf, did you faaaluuuffaa again?" asked a Zink-Zonk-Clonk-guy laughing.
"Raspberry people! " said the guy from heaven, "this ain't no faaaluuuffaa. It's the 21st century we're loading. It doesn't smell right!"
"Oh that," responded the fat guy. "Yeah, smells like the end of the world has gone bad. Probably got rat-infested one way or another!"

There were about half-a-dozen of us monsters working together on that deranged sky. We could fadooble-padang as we plopped because it didn't matter what we did above the hemisphere as long as our toenails kept working.

"BUT AREN'T PEOPLE GOING TO GET EATEN?!" blurted out the guy from heaven.
"Yeah, probably..." said the ba/ba/ba/boom/bang guy sadly.
"WELL WE NEED TO DO BECOME OTHER PEOPLE THEN!" practically yelled the new guy.

A co-worker nicknamed "Dishwasher" (who was actually from Planet Sewing Machine) laughed at the guy from heaven. His laughter seem to say "boy are you relish & mustard!"
"I worked on exclamation points before this, I know when something's wrong with the bing-bong. The people who dance this bing-bong are gonna get zooooked!" exclaimed the guy from heaven.

Another coworker, who was from hell, said: "Strawberry Fish! The bing-bong is bad. People are going to get zooooked. But what can we do about it?"

There was green radiance as everybody kept putting the boxes of imaginary imaginations one on top of the other row after row. It was the kind of job you never got used to. It was the kind of job that was so physically hard you felt 2,000 years older than your actual age while working. It was the kind of job where in the early part of the shift you weren't quite sure if you could make it to the end of the shift. It was the kind of job where you wished you are married to some fat old ugly rich person. But you knew eventually the shift would end… It would end in 10 years.

Then the entire world was empty. A new load of bing-bong was brought by the beautiful wenches into the hold. The new load of pussy (cats) stank as bad as the last load. Something was definitely very oh **** oh no oh gaajjuung!

"HEY!" yelled out the new guy to God who was standing up there on the deck two stories above us watching us work and not really doing anything except giving us the same old mean ugly expression he always did, but that's what he was paid to do.

God ignored the new guy, but maybe it wasn't planetary Galactic, maybe behind the mask of the same old miserable mean expression, God may not have been really paying attention, and may have been having a sexual fantasy at that moment, and thus may not have heard the new guy say "HEY!".

As we landed the 2 ton load of stinky pussy (cats) on a huge roller and began trying to push the #@^%#@% roller (it got a little easier when it started rolling) the greenhorn began yelling up at God.

"HEY, THIS BING-BONG IS BAD. I WORKED ON SPACESHIPS I KNOW. THIS BING-BONG IS NOT ALIGNED WITH THE PLANETS. IT PAZOODLED OUT A LONG TIME AGO. IT SMELLS! IT DOESN'T SMELL RIGHT! PEOPLE ARE GOING TO GET SICK WHEN THEY DANCE THIS!"

As he yelled up at God most of the other coworkers (except Wolf and a few others) had frothing-!-grrrrr-!-expressions on their faces. They pushed & pushed & pushed until the planet Earth began moving and they began pushing the planet Earth around the Sun. They would repeat this process over and over until the human race became extinct from nuclear war.

"WORK AS DIRECTED!" yelled back God.
The new guy turned to us and asked, "What does that mean?"
"It means get your butt over here and help us unload this smelly pussy (cats)!" said the guy named "dishwasher", even though he was from the Sewing-Machine-Planet.
"But the people who dance this bing-bong are going to get zooonked! I worked with cannibals before - "
"Sir Dude," said Scotty interrupting him. "Nobody here wants to unload this bing-bong and nasty pussy (cats). We all know something’s juuurrranging. But there's bazooka-samurai-salami we can do about it!"

The greenhorn joined us and began stacking the boxes of nasty pussy (cats). As he worked he asked, "But what about the Angels in heaven? If we refuse to offload this rancid fish won't they play baseball in the clouds?"
"Paloop!" said the orangutan.
"Isn't there some poet that we could call?" asked an imaginary person.
The others greeted this with laughter, except the orangutan.
The orangutan said, "I've tried the Poet. It's useless. If you go to the Poet he will just eat you. He's a cannibal!"
The man from the Sewing-Machine-Planet said as he danced around us like a happy cloud, "But isn't that against the law? But isn't that against the law?"
The others became books again.
The man with three hands answered, "It doesn't Titty Management Go to Tulip! One way or another God will get revenge. And when Dog punishes you the government won't back you up."
"How do you pa****s that kaping, pa-ting-!-hole!?" asked the orangutan.
"I went to the Raspberry Directives Board about bing- bong stinky pussy (cats). You know, the Raspberry Directives Board? They might as well call it the Up Your ****zyHole Board, because they're the ones running it. Trust me orangutan, going to the government is a mistake."
The Zink-Zonk-Clonk-guy said, "I told you not to go to the Raspberry Directives Board, Wolf. But you didn't kadoodle to me!"
"If the lizards didn't open up their mouths they wouldn't become strawberries!" exclaimed the guy from hell.

"What if I called the end of the world before the beginning of the world? What if I got a beautiful pink telephone and called up a dominatrix?"
"Forget about it," said Arturo, who was conceived when a Volkswagen beetle bug made love to a distant galaxy. "It's millions of years before the human race even exists right now! Where we going to get a dominatrix from?"
"A dominatrix? Normally, I wouldn't go for that, but it would certainly fit on this job!" said a bird flying around our heads.
"That's when you assume the position! All the management representatives get a turn!" blurted out the fat guy laughing. "Happy capitalism!"

"I'm going to call the union then!" proclaimed the greenhorn.
Scotty, Arturo, and the fat guy shook their heads. Some of the others laughed.
"Forget about the union!" said the Zink-Zonk-Clonk-guy. "Can't you see that there are giant fountains of spermatozoa splashing out of all the - "
"Don't you guys have any cannibal feuds out here?" interrupted the orangutan.
"Nope," said the fat guy. "Nobody besides each other."
Arturo agreed, "We have the sunset, and that's all we got."

Copyright 2012 by Wolf Larsen

[Delta40]

lol. The revision was highly entertaining after reading the original.

[jajdude]

Pretty good, and the revision was even better.

[Darcy88]

The first story was horse, not a great horse, a little weak, but still a horse I could ride to some destination of meaning and enjoyment. In revising it you ran it through the glue factory and what came out was this sticky mess. If the great literature of the past was anything like this revision literature as an art-form would have been stillborn, and none of us would be here, we'd be on some other forum discussing music or films of paintings.

[WolfLarsen]

That Foul Smell on the Waterfront
a short story by Wolf Larsen

(I worked as a throooo!ooong for blonk! This story is based on an actuuuuuaaaaaal experie,n!c/e. There is oNe BIG difFerenc!e between this stoOOOOOOOOOry and re-E-a-A-ality: in realit,Y the dialogUe would cO,ntain four-4-for letter /words in, nearly every sentence.)

It was a pretty normal, day/ We were working a 12 hour shift in a 10° below zero F (25° below zero C) freezer hold in a cargo ship in the port of Dutch Harbor, Alaska/ We were grabbing 40 pound boxes of frozen fish off the pallets and stacking them in rows up to the ceiling over our heads/ It was 3 ton per hour per man minimum/ The shipping company wanted the ships stored by hand to get a tighter stow, to get more cargo in the ships and make more money/

It was a normal day eX,cept some…thing didn't sme…eeell righ!T.

"WhaaaAAAAAaaaat's with this smell?" as?ked th?e ne?w gu?y.

"WooOOOOooooolf, hooooooOOOOOOOOOOOl?" zonkered a fa,t guy lau/gh!ing.

"NooooOOOOOoooo," sai/d the ne,w guy::: "this ain't no fart. It's the fi:sh we're loa;ding. It doesn't sme,eeee,ell right///"

"Oh that," respondod the fat gyu. "Yeah, s,m,e,l,l,s like the FISH has gone BAD. Probably gOt defroSted one WAY or a/n,o-t.h.er."

There weRe wEre werE aboU,t half-a-doze?n of us-us-us wo-oo-OOrking together, on that hatch ganG. We could tAlk-taLk-talK as we w,o/r-ke,d because it didn't matter what we did above the neck as long as our bodies kept wOr'kin"g-worKi/ng-wo.rkiNg.

"BUT AREN'T – weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrr rrrrrrrrrrrrrd – PEOPLE GOING TO GET – hooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwl – SICK?!" blurted, out, the, new, guy.

"Yeah, probably..." said the fat GUY sadDly.

"WELL WE NEED – need – neE!d – TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT THEN! Then?" practically yElled the neW guy.

A co-worker nicknamed "Scotty" (who was actually from Wales) Whales! Laughed – haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! – at the new guy. His laughter-laughter-laughter-laughter-laughter seem to say "boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooy are you naïve!"

"I worked on fishing boats before this, fishing boats on worked this before, before worked boats fishing on this I. I know-no-no-know when something's wroOoong with the fish. The people who – BOOOOONG! – eat this fish are gonna get siC/k-sic,K-siC/k!" exclaimed the guy new.

Coworker another, who from was south-central LA, said: "Okay. Is bad the fish. Sick are people going to get. Do about it what can we?"

There was silence – WOOO WOOO WOOOO – for a little bit – DUD DAG! DING DOCK! – as everybody kept putting the boxes of – OOOOOOOOP – frozen fish one on top of – gyyyyraaaatttiioonnss – each other row after row. It was the, kind of job/ you. never got! used to. Used to!

You stew! Use do! It was the kind of job – joooooooooooob – that was so physically hard – BONG! BONG! BONG! – you felt 20 years older than your actual age – whaaaaz uuuuppp!? while working. It was the kind of job – hhoooowwwzzaa – where in the early part of the shift – rraaaooo raaaoooo raaaoooo – you weren't quite sure if you could make it to the end of

the shift. It wa?S the k?Ind of jo?B wher?E you wis?Hed you ar?E dead. But? you? knew eventually! the shift would end… I did it for 10 yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaars.

Then the pallet was empty. A new load of – zoooowwwyy – fRozen fiSh was brought by the "winches" or wenches (a type of crane) into the hold. Hold me! The new load stank as bad as the last load. Oh, I've got such a big load! Something was defi!Nitely ver! y wro!ng. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

"HEY!" yelled out the new guy to the foreman – MEOW! – who was standing up there on the deck two stories above us watching us work and WHOOOPPS not really doing anything ACHOO! Except giving us the same old mean ugly expression itch itch itch

itch itch he always did, but that's what he was itch itch itch itch itch itch itch paid to do.

The foreman ignored itch itch itch itch itch the new guy, but maybe it wasn't itch itch itch itch deliberate, maybe behind the mask of the same old miserable mean expression, a sexy nun, he may not have been really paying attention, and may have been having a sexual fantasy at that moment, and thus may not have heard the greenhorn say "HEY! NINE MONTHS BEFORE YOU WERE BORN!".,/(

) As we landed (the) 2 ton load of "frozen" fish (on) a! huge roller and, began trying to puuUUUUUUU!UU!U!U!USH the #@^%#@% roller (a it got easier when little it started rolling) – rolling rolling rolling – the greenhorn began yelling-YELLING-yelling-Y! E! L! L! I! N! G up at the foreman.

"HEY, THIS FISH IS BAD. I WORKED ON FISHING BOATS I NO. THIS FISH IS FROZEN NOT. IT THAWED OUT A LONG TIME AGO. SMELLS IT! IT DOESN'T RIGHT SMELL! PEOPLE ARE GOING TO GET SICK WHEN THEY EAT THIS!"

As he yelled up at the foreman – ouch – most of the other coworkers (except – ouch – Wolf and a few others) had amused – what happened??? – expressions on their faces. They pushed & pushed & pushed –??? – until the roller began moving-moving-moving and they began pushing-pushing-pushing the 2 ton load towards the stack of fish. They would repeat this process over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over until the giant hold of the ship was filled.

"WORK AS DIRECTED!" yelled back the foreman.

The greenhorn – "Hello, how are you?" – turned to us and asked, "What does that mean?"

"It means get your butt over – "yes yes, he’s here!" – here and help us unload this smelly fish!" said the fat guy.

"But the people who eat this – "The bus is late again!" – fish are going to get sick! I worked with fish before - "

"Dude," said Scotty interrupting him. "Nobody here – "Sure! Sure! Friday night! – wants to unload this fish. We all know – "three million dollars, sure sure. fine fine!" – Something’s wrong. but there's nothing we can do about it!"

The greenhorn joined us and began stacking the boxes of frozen fish as he worked he asked But what about the union If we refuse to offload this rancid fish won't the union back us up

Nope said the fat guy.

Isn't there some kind of government agency that we could call
The others greeted this with laughter except Wolf
Wolf said I've tried the government It's useless If you go to the government about anything management will punish you

Copyright 2012 by Wolf Larsen

[AuntShecky]

First of all, let me start this reply by stating unequivocally that I am not trying to be mean or jumping on the bandwagon of getting on your case and prefunctorily criticizing you..
Instead:

Help me get a couple of things straight so I can understand your work better.

The entirety of your creative vision is that old stuff is no good and brand-new stuff is fine, is that correct? Throw everything away, grammar, meaning, punctuation, or anything that would in any way bring actual coherence to a piece, for doing anything conventional is just not "creative", right?

Your point then, if you have one, is that any amount of aleatory gibberish (posted primarily by you yourself) is just as valuable as say, a work by Henry James or Saul Bellow, if not more so. Is that it?

If so, it has occurred to me that by some tiny chance your ultimate message to the literary world is nihilistic-- that everything is meaningless. Am I on right track?

If that is the case, than why bother posting more than one piece? If everything you post is intentional nonsense, why do you post what is essentially the same nonsense over and over again?

And if that's not the case, why are consuming bandwidth and taking up our time and especially your own time to post stuff that does nothing but make people pissed off at you?

As I said before in other threads, I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, in the slimmest of possibilities that you are attempting to make a nihilistic statement about the state of the current literary world. Maybe you really do have the talent which you would like us to appreciate. However, I can't seem to shake the impression that you haven't really put much thought and effort in the stuff we've been seeing.

For every writer, no matter who he claims to be, should never take himself seriously, but should always take the work seriously, even --and especially --with humor.)

It takes a lot of effort for writing to appear effortless and a lot of time for it to look spontaneous.

[BookBeauty]

First of all, let me start this reply by stating unequivocally that I am not trying to be mean or jumping on the bandwagon of getting on your case and prefunctorily criticizing you..
Instead:

Help me get a couple of things straight so I can understand your work better.

The entirety of your creative vision is that old stuff is no good and brand-new stuff is fine, is that correct? Throw everything away, grammar, meaning, punctuation, or anything that would in any way bring actual coherence to a piece, for doing anything conventional is just not "creative", right?

Your point then, if you have one, is that any amount of aleatory gibberish (posted primarily by you yourself) is just as valuable as say, a work by Henry James or Saul Bellow, if not more so. Is that it?

If so, it has occurred to me that by some tiny chance your ultimate message to the literary world is nihilistic-- that everything is meaningless. Am I on right track?

If that is the case, than why bother posting more than one piece? If everything you post is intentional nonsense, why do you post what is essentially the same nonsense over and over again?

And if that's not the case, why are consuming bandwidth and taking up our time and especially your own time to post stuff that does nothing but make people pissed off at you?

As I said before in other threads, I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, in the slimmest of possibilities that you are attempting to make a nihilistic statement about the state of the current literary world. Maybe you really do have the talent which you would like us to appreciate. However, I can't seem to shake the impression that you haven't really put much thought and effort in the stuff we've been seeing.

For every writer, no matter who he claims to be, should never take himself seriously, but should always take the work seriously, even --and especially --with humor.)

It takes a lot of effort for writing to appear effortless and a lot of time for it to look spontaneous.

Thank you, for putting into words what was aching at the back of my brain, but unable to form into coherence.

[jajdude]

I just reckon he likes the attention. Nothing really wrong with that I guess. Seems odd if he is a grown man though.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I just reckon he likes the attention. Nothing really wrong with that I guess. Seems odd if he is a grown man though.

He is. He's also running for president.