Canned Combat: March 1, 2010: Interspecies Communication

Mix and match with the unrealized themes below.

Subscribe in a reader

I noticed a shortage of combatants for stumbleupon

So what are the proposed alternatives?

Subscribe in a reader

Ongoing Combat About to Close in Favor of Projecting the Combat

Let's do it.

Subscribe in a reader

Canned Combat: Feb 27, 2010: Hit Stumbleupon's Poetry Section

This accomplishes several things: 1) We drive traffic to our various pages (and combatwords if you so wish) by linking to it with every post. 2) Our user account pages should let us link to our own profiles so that we perhaps get followers on stumbleupon. 3) We improve literary standards. We should target all the top poems. If they are weak, let's attack. When the combatants get bored, find the fiction section. Any place where the writing is touted, but weak--attack it! In this way, we raise literary standards and remind writers that not everyone on the internet is an idiot.

Subscribe in a reader

Jihad! CombatWords Topic Feb 27, 2010

Now that CombatWords! has warmed up a bit, it is time to explore the internet a bit and identify new targets. I would like volunteers and suggestions for topics for tonight's ire. I will select an initial target by 5:30pm PST or so and will add targets later this evening around or after 11pm PST.

Rules:
-Be honorable. If a foe scores a point, accept it. We must lead by example.
-Be aggressive. Show no mercy for bad writing.
-Be funny. Funny is memorable. Don't go for cheap quips, unless they add up to something funnier.
-Be grandiose. The whole point is to outwrite a wannabe on his/her turf, with a trail leading back to here, blogs or whatever.

So let's hear it. Who is willing to engage in Jihad?

Subscribe in a reader

Feb 26, 2010: Ongoing Thread Below: Grade the Fighters or Leap Into the Fray

Essay Vs Prose-Poetry: Who's winning? Will you surprise the punch-drunk fighters and defeat them both?

There is no need for canned combat when we have a live thread here.

Subscribe in a reader

Feb 25, 2010 CombatWords! Canned Combat: Human vs Inhuman

The ongoing thread below had me think about the nature of worldview on as big a scale as possible. Some subscribe to a human-centric model (considering postulates irrelevant to humans as irrelevant postulation), while others subscribe to a transcendental model--by which I do not mean angels and devils and so forth. Instead, I mean a harsh, deistic transcendental model as this combines theists with atheists and agnostics into a single category.

I would like to see advocates on both sides prosecute their case and fight! Any style, any position so long as it's relevant to the dualism I presented.

Be honorable and show the hacks of the world what a properly trained writer can do with a keyboard!

Subscribe in a reader

Late Canned Combat: Feb 24, 2010: Beyond Words

Some concepts do not map well into single words. We use compound words ("love-struck" "fucked-up" etc), expressions ("threw him under the bus"), slogans (Patriotism: "Love it or leave it.") and even verse ("Hell hath no fury...") to contain certain thoughts. Some concepts import from a worldview ('hell' for example), while others draw upon analytic concepts (patriotism) with the concepts embedded in the language; while still others draw from ambiguous words that require context to fix them and as a result, connote broadly, while also being semantically rigid ("fuck"). I want you to hunt down the biggest such concept you can find and express it however you so choose. Do not disguise your concept ("my poem/story/essay _is_ the concept"), because if it can be summarized more simply, then you've phailed and risk pwnage.

And therefore it is CombatWords!

ps: Don't forget there's a live thread below.

Subscribe in a reader

Canned Combat: Started Feb 23, 2010 and ONGOING: Conflict

Everybody loves to fight, but some are too scared of the word, so they call it 'conflict.' Fighting comes from many sources; from misunderstandings, to the snap applications of the ego one refuses to back away from, to the desire to test the mettle of another. Conflict is the opposite of equilibrium, of stasis, of death. The sea conflicts with shore; rivals conflict over doctrine; friends, because they're bored.

CombatWords! Attack!

Subscribe in a reader

Feb 22, 2010: Canned Combat: The Media

That's a simple one, isn't it? The internet, newspapers, anything. Any riff you can think of. Cuff Link's post yesterday wins and now I expect to see some real competition as that came out of left field. Beat his post, or maybe you shouldn't bother playing.

CombatWords! I incite and summon thee!

Subscribe in a reader

Feb 21, 2010 Canned Combat: Love

That's right, I've selected the most cliche topic around. That way it's more dangerous because it will be easy to spot who sux at love-writing. This one should get people to 'bring it' because it's easy and inclines one to one-up the other writers.

Subscribe in a reader

Souvenir of Nothing: Canned Combat Feb 20, 2010

In the words of a wise man, "I am a fucked apart dead thing if I'm not having fun." I fucked apart the city. I cleaved through the crowds of giggle-tinklers and smoke rings of false eloquence. I saw the city as if I were a migrating soul, inhabiting the bodies of the howling louts and stumbling sluts as I walked past them. I wore their beer goggles as I deposited Today's News Poems in high profile locations. They did not understand why I was out. I was not out to get laid, or to laugh--but to sway. They understand the sashay, the persuasion of lust; but not the quixotic quest to provide them with a catalyst for drunken inspiration--verse in transit and on street corners. The redhead expected me to wait for her to finish the poem and get her digits--oh, but I had another 90 copies to go. If she is so fond of me she can send me an email. My mission tonight was sexless, though it was animated by eros. I left her a souvenir of verse. And the city gave me a song of lust without the filth of venereal disease.

Subscribe in a reader

The Power and the Glory

Ahh, power. So delicious. So terrifying. When you seek power do you seek it to protect yourself or to abuse others? But that's too easy. Write a poem or prose about power. Anything. Like Iron Chef, I want you to prominently display the soul of 'Power' however you see it.

Sorry for not updating Feb 18. I'll see what I can do to make it up to you.

Subscribe in a reader

Feb 17, 2010 Canned Combat: Comedy

That's right fucker-jive. Can you be funny? Try.

Subscribe in a reader

Support CombatWords!

You can do one of two things to promote combatwords:

1) Go to these social promotion sites to promote us: Digg, reddit, propeller, and you can retweet the day's news poem on twitter; we're there as 'toylitpaper.'
or
2) Feign some interest in our advertisers... or even better, buy their crap.

This enables 3 things:
1) Combatwords' quality will increase with increased competition and traffic.
2) 'Gifts' to champs will encourage some real bloodlust (easier than promises of 'prizes').
3) Therefore, you will have a better reading experience, at no cost to you. I know there are at least seven of you who obsessively check this page, because I obsessively check my web stats. Instead of one of those visits, go and promote Combatwords--it takes about fifteen minutes to do all the above sites. Then your work will be done permanently and when you return, there will be a higher likelihood of good stuff to read here.

Subscribe in a reader

Canned Combat, Feb 16, 2010: Cops

No matter what, you have to deal with them. Verse, prose, whatever... let's see some scuffling.

Subscribe in a reader

"A Good Enemy is Better Than a Good Friend"

I didn't believe my pal when he said that, but it turns out he's right in many ways. A rival is critical for giving the self some context. Rivalry disintegrates most personal delusions, because the rival doesn't give one the luxury of theoretical comparisons.

Battle strengthens us. Not only must organisms compete for resources, so too must memes; which compete for attention and medium in the name of replication. The artist is a meme factory. How well does an artist's production stand up in this ecosystem of ideas? Like most organisms, most every artist's memes have advantages and disadvantages.

We can either spend time with the ass-kissers of the world, who have their own selfish reasons for telling us we're good, when we're really not; or we can spend time with people who want our metaphorical blood. Ideally, one should find both sets of traits in the same person; but barring that, we should have one place for our allies and another for our enemies. Well, I'm not really interested in enmity per se; but I am interested in sparring and oneupsmanship. I am interested in a type of bragging party. I want you to prepare breaths, memorize them, and then sling them. I want you to want to ruthlessly kill your weak writing traits with the help of a fellow combatant.

You are here because you know academia breeds complacency--at least in the humanities. You either want to read live performance-combat, else you want to be one of the combatants. So you can be each others' enemies, but also be comrades. It makes the insurgency more effective (maximum mass-morale, etc). I think of this as a place to build mystique as well as brain-muscles.

So let's see it.

Subscribe in a reader

What, I've gotta do everything around here? Canned Combat 2.13.2010

What are you people doing, hitting this page again and again and not writing anything? Don't be chicken. Use a nom de plume if you don't want friends finding out you like to visit fight club in your off-hours.

Today's theme is obliged sentiment. Today's News Poem was diminished because I couldn't bring myself to use a word that would bring me trouble. I've been advised I shouldn't even use the word with poisonous sarcasm, for fear of offending (although being a gadfly is basically the goal of the News Poem). For a more seasonal angle, consider the pressure of Valentine's Day. Pro forma emotions for the sake of survival--or some other reason. I don't care. It can be prose, it can be poetry, but it should be about Obliged Sentiment.

Okay, keyboards at ten paces people.

Subscribe in a reader

Okay, CombatWords! Revised Rules

1) Highest score wins.
2) Technical errors will be judged by the audience and confirmed by either two other posters, else me. These include, but are not restricted to: character, plot, symbolism and unintended anythings.
3) Each five spelling and grammatical errors equals a one point deduction. These must also be confirmed. Stylistic conventions should not be punished. For example: intentionally not capitalizing should not be penalized unless it wasn't effective, in which case it's a technical error, not a stylistic error.
4) Each aspect that worked in the piece gains it a point. This includes memorable sentences/lines/phrases as well as humor, well developed arguments, complex-yet-coherent thought and so forth.
5) Clock is optional. Late posts are penalized at the rate of one point per minute. Early posts get a bonus of a point per minute, capping out at 1/4 the total time allocated to compose. So for example, if the clock is set for one hour, the most points an early poster can earn are 15.
6) Highest score wins and becomes defacto champ. If you don't want your post to be used as 'Champ of the Day' let me know and I'll take it down and replace it with the runner-up.
7) These rules are continuing to evolve so disregard the prior rule variants below.

I can select a topic, or someone else can suggest one here on this thread.

Subscribe in a reader

Combatprose and Combatverse in One Spot: Here

Now you don't need to pick or feel limited. I'm going to export the content from the old sites here.

Subscribe in a reader