Tiger Beatdown

You know, there are a lot of fun things about covering my particular beat. One of the most fun, however, is the possibility that, on any given morning, this will be the very first thing I find in my e-mail inbox.

For those of you who don’t feel like clicking through to the link, it’s a blog post about why someone wants and/or doesn’t want to fuck me! Written by my long-time Interstalker, Dom Passantino.

For those of you who don’t know who Dom Passantino is — and, let’s be honest: None of you know who Dom Passantino is — he is a failed music writer. He worked for a few online publications, which are now defunct. He worked briefly for the Guardian, and (as I understand it) he was fired. He had a Wikipedia entry briefly, which was deleted on the basis of his not being a relevant person. And now he has a blog. On this blog, he writes about how anyone who has ever written anything is inferior to Dom Passantino. Which you can clearly see, because they are getting published. Dom Passantino is just too good for this corrupt system! The man is out to shut Dom Passantino down, because the man cannot deal with Dom Passantino’s various truth bombs! So, just to be clear, here’s an infographic of Dom Passantino:

And here is more or less everyone else:

If only by comparison.

I’ve been a long-time object of Dom’s affection, for various reasons explained above. It actually goes back to my very first Guardian article! In which I was instructed to “stop writing, stop taking away jobs and commission fees from people who have actually done a day’s honest work in their life and may have something interesting to say,” because one little-known fact about freelance writing is that every single person who gets an assignment has to rip her check right the fuck out of Dom Passantino’s hands in order to get paid. The Guardian would actually be composed entirely of articles by Dom Passantino, if only there were no other writers in the world, and no-one could find a typing monkey. True facts! Anyway, this was followed by that was followed by the other. Was followed by an article about what it might be like to screw me! As is the course of these things.

(Continued)

There is a problem with sorting through The Lady News Of The Day when you are — as one unidentified, but sexy blogger may well be! — under the influence of copious cold medication and/or pretty much unable to breathe. (“Would a cigarette help with this?” — Sady’s Tragic Addiction.) First: The Lady News Of The Day is boring. It has been for a while, actually. But when the breaking shit includes stuff like “White Male Authors: Maybe People Actually Privilege Those?” and/or “Porn: Folks Don’t Use Condoms In It,” and/or “I Hear That Glenn Beck Fellow Is Pretty Racist,” well… that whole “blogs as medium for distributing new takes and/or information” hypothesis is tested. SORELY TESTED.

Second: Even if any of this information were new and exciting, none of it would make any sense. To you, the breathing-and-cognition-deficient, anyway! Information, when you are this state, does not spark new associations and/or insights and/or outrage. I spent fully half an hour reading AV Club commenters talk about Katy Perry’s “titties” and also what a “whore” she is, and I felt… nothing. Nothing! (“Internet Comment Sections: You Always Hope None Of The Dudes In Them Are Secretly Your Boyfriend!” Like I said: The news, it is old.) Information, in this state, lands in your mind with the dull, wet smack of a dead fish on a snare drum.

AND SPEAKING OF FISH.

No: We are not going to be visiting any of these years-old controversies today, or dignifying them with the assumption that these latest iterations are somehow new and exciting. What we are going to do is to talk about the Real Issues of our time, issues so global in their import that it will soon make all of our gender warfare seem pitifully irrelevant. The Real Issues of our time include: The Giant Squid! THEY’RE LEARNING.

Okay, so what they are learning has to do with “simple concepts” and “spatial reasoning” and “thus far more or less coconut-shell-based tool utilization,” and also, for some reason, “this article pertains mostly to octopi and not THE DEADLY GIANT SQUID WHICH YOU’D THINK WE’D WANT TO FOCUS ON, what with their established murderyness and drastically under-researched potential to construct nuclear weapons or whatever.” But it is a grim, cephalopod-centric future ahead of us, kids. And for some reason, I don’t think any of us will be worried about the subtle nuances of the condoms-in-porn debate when we have the wet and vengeful tentacles of Professor Squiddington locked in a death embrace around our faces. (This will actually be part of how he gets tenure, for some reason. Don’t question Professor Squiddington’s research methods! Professor Squiddington has a career to look out for!)

Although, you know, maybe some of you will? Care, I mean. In which case, keep fighting the good fight. I’m going to go lie down.

[Hey, it’s Tiger Beatdown Pledge Driving Week! And normally, I would insert a little schpiel here. But today, things are different. I have some stuff to say, it turns out. So here’s a button! And then, later, when we’re done talking, I’ll give you a button again.]

Hey! Who here is in the mood for some navel-gazing? AGAIN??

SPOILER: Turns out it’s me.

As you might be, by this point, really painfully aware, I have been, um, THINKING about the Internet Feminism lately. What it can do, what it can’t do. More specifically, I have been thinking about the Tiger Beatdown. And the Sady Doyle. And what, if anything, those two creatures are worth in the long run. What they started out to do, and what they’re going to do, and how those two things might be different. Because honestly? I don’t know any more.

Lately, I’ve been asked to tell the origin story of this blog. And, as with most things in my life — I am not a talented autobiographer! — I can’t remember. I have about four stories which seem to tell some part of the truth; coordinating them all would take the a dedicated historian, or maybe just one of those ESPN documentary crews whose job it is to wander around interviewing professional football players who have been hit in the head for a living 9,000 times and make their musings sound witty and insightful, with the aid of dramatic music and archival footage. The way Tiger Beatdown started, I am telling you, had to do with one or more of the following things:

1. I wanted to Become a Writer.
2. I was pissed off at dudes.
3. I made a joke and it came to define my life.
4. I wanted to impress a dude.

(Continued)