Professional Book Slammers

A slapdash attempt at the slipshod

AEW Double or Nothing Pre Show: Part 2

By Gabriel | June 7, 2019 | Comments 3 comments

Backstage

A girl who presents like Bayley on meth is backstage saying things. Apparently, she was like this first, which is a bit of a bummer as, first or not, the work is on her to demonstrate difference from her more famous comparison. I have yet to see “Girl who is happy” be a character with much depth if she is always happy. Bayley would frequently get serious, mad, etcetera, and this was much needed variety. But Smiley Kiley Ray gets all of a few seconds so I won’t hold anything against her yet.

A slapdash attempt at the slipshod

AEW: Double or Nothing Pre Show

By Gabriel | May 31, 2019 | Comments 0 Comment

Like a lot of single, unemployed 36-year-old men, I am a big fan of the art of Professional Wrestling, and in 2019, it has never been a better time to be an art buff. New promotions are hardly news, nobody even bothered to read the press release for my one based around stop-motion teddy bears, but when one has the backing of a billionaire and several of the saner sounding performers, the world takes notice. And so it was that Double or Nothing, from the newly minted All Elite Wrestling, burst into life. Technically their second stab at it, this one serves as a kind of pilot for what will be a series proper, and, as this is a rare opportunity, I decided to write about it. If for no other reason than nobody else I know pays attention to wrestling and there’s only so much a bus stranger is willing to tolerate.

A slapdash attempt at the slipshod

When it’s you

By Gabriel | April 16, 2019 | Comments 8 comments

Professional Book Slammers

The point of interaction between created work and end user is a dynamic one. There’re a lot of reasons for making art and one of the most common is to create some kind of effect in the audience (there are exceptions but they’re not relevant here). So, this dynamic point is where someone or a group of someones’ intentions interact with another human. Dara Ó Briain has famously stated that this point of interaction is so pronounced in video games that they are the only medium to kick you out for not doing it right. A book doesn’t slam itself shut if you aren’t picking up on the themes. This is somewhat inaccurate, as the book will shut if you’re not getting it, it’s just the agent in this case is you. Videogames take what all other art does and makes it official.

A slapdash attempt at the slipshod

Love in the Time of Solanum

By Gabriel | February 11, 2019 | Comments 4 comments

A sandwich made with some kind of new, proprietary deli meat is always going to be seen in the shadow of the meat, with the experience of it as a whole obscured by the specific elements that compose it. ZombiU is in a similar situation, as part of the release crop of WiiU games it shoulders the burdens of being a “proof of concept” for a console with a lot to prove and standing as a game on its own. In the maelstrom of release mania, this is no small task.

A slapdash attempt at the slipshod

From Heaving Mounds to Exploding Ovaries: A Brief History of Women’s Porn

By Gabriel | March 16, 2018 | Comments 2 comments

At first glance, Jane Austen and noted Australian actor Jack Thompson’s penis don’t have an awful lot in common and there was a time when I would have felt the same way. When given carte blanche to select your own topic to write on, the thinking writer shoots for a pleasant combination between the least amount of work and the most amount of fun. Naturally, I selected pornography as my area of focus. Porno. Even saying the word is enough to make your mouth feel dirty and the images it calls to mind are hardly any cleaner. It is mass consumed and yet mass condemned, so powerful a loathing does it summon that it has been able to unite both fundamentalist Christian and radical feminist on the matter of how a woman should be depicted. No small miracle.

A slapdash attempt at the slipshod

The Language of the Bizarre

By Gabriel | January 3, 2018 | Comments 1 comment

Critical Art

By Gabriel | June 24, 2017 | Comments 3 comments

There’s guy who turned condoms full of his own shit into dildos to fuck himself with before eating them. There’s a community of people who inject saline into their scrota to make them as large as possible, getting dudebro competitive about it even as they lose the use of their penis. You know those colourful push pins? The ones you stick things to cork boards with? I read a blog by a woman who stuffed her vaginal cavity with those and then sewed her outer labia shut. These people weren’t being tortured by some weird marionette with a point to make, they did it because they liked it.

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