Tag Archives: in terms of

Mavericks in a Metropolis of Millions…

by in 2SLGBTQ+ Community Issues, Aesthetics, Art, Über-Transgression..., Keyly Committed Core Components of the Counter-Cultural Community, Literature, Politics, Post-Transgressive Fiction and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Trump has won again.

I can’t believe I’ve just written those words.

I don’t wanna believe I’ve just written those words.

But I hafta.

’Coz they’re true.

Toxically, traumatizingly, tear-tappingly true.

So how’m I gonna respond to the toxic truth of tyrannical Trump’s triumph?

Welp… how better than by publishing some fiercely unbowed words of anti-fascist resistance from one of the core counter-cultural components at one of the world’s leading anti-racist publishing houses?

Yes indeedy, this Papyrocentric Performativizer is positively pulsating with pride and passion to present an exclusive antifa extract from arguably the best interview in Titans of Transgression: Incendiary Interviews with Eleven Ultra-Icons of Über-Extremity (TransVisceral Books 2024), which has just seen its third edition.

Please raise your revolutionary fists for Jay Guinness, Artistic Director and Ipsissimic Aesthetician at Manchester-locused Savoy Books, long hailed as England’s most transgressive publishing company…

Readers’ Advisory: Interview extract contains strong language and uncompromising counter-cultural contrarianism. Proceed at your own risk.

[…]

Miriam Stimbers: Manchester was in the headlines for all the wrong reasons in 2017 [editor’s note: Miriam is referring to the murder of twenty-two people by the homophobic and misogynist Islamist suicide-bomber Salman Abedi at the Manchester Arena].

Jay Guinness: It was, yes. Sadly it was.

Miriam Stimbers: How did you react at Savoy?

Jay Guinness: We in the Savoy community were badly affected. Clearly, we’ve engaged fictionally, artistically, aesthetically with issues around fascism, hatred, intolerance throughout our professional lives, but to have those issues strike on your own doorstep, as it were, strike for real, well, it’s something you could never be prepared for.

Miriam Stimbers: So you think what he did was fascism?

Jay Guinness: I think it was echt fascism, fascism pur sang. Pun not intended. Let’s not beat about the bush. It was fascism.

Miriam Stimbers: Much has been made of the fact that the terrorist––

Jay Guinness: I don’t think “terrorist” is the mot juste. Not at all. For me, he’s just a criminal with a diseased mind. And I don’t mean that as a compliment!

Steve Bell of The Guardian excoriates the Manchester Arena Bomber

Miriam Stimbers: Okay. Much has been made of the fact that the criminal was born and brought up in Manchester. Have you any thoughts on that?

Jay Guinness: You’re right, much has been made of it. But for me and my colleagues at Savoy what he did merely underlined the fact that Manchester is a state of mind far more than it is a physical and temporal Sitz im Leben. It’s about a locus of values, not about geography. I mean, I was born in Huddersfield myself, but I felt that I was Mancunian from the moment I first hung my hat here, because I subscribe to Mancunian values. People who were born here but don’t subscribe to those values aren’t part of the city. Not for me, not for the Savoy community, not ever. I think Dave [Britton] put it best when we were processing the news of what he’d done. Dave’s words have stayed with me: “He’s not a fucking Manc, he’s a fucking cunt. The fucker should be fucking strung up.”

Miriam Stimbers: Metaphorically speaking?

Jay Guinness: No, not metaphorically. Literally. We in the Savoy community are a pretty progressive bunch. We’re not instinctive supporters of the death penalty, to put it mildly. But if you took a vote at Savoy in terms of whether people who do things like that should be hanged, it would be a unanimous yes. No dissenters.

Miriam Stimbers: I’m taken aback. It seems a little extreme. A lot extreme, to be honest.

Jay Guinness: The Savoy community might be progressive, but we’re not bleeding-heart liberals. As Dave said, the fucker should be fucking strung up.

Miriam Stimbers: But what could you hope to achieve by it?

Jay Guinness: Well, for one thing it would be a deterrent to others. Just as importantly, it would ensure he doesn’t do it again.

Miriam Stimbers: But he won’t be doing it again. How could he?

Jay Guinness: Very easily. And he will do it again. We in the Savoy community are confident of that. Leopards don’t change their spots.

Miriam Stimbers: But how could he do it again? He’s dead.

Jay Guinness: I’m sorry, you’ve lost me. Who’s dead?

Miriam Stimbers: Salman Abedi, of course. The suicide-bomber at the Manchester Arena. Who else?

Much More Mucking Maverick Than You, Monkeyfunker!

Jay Guinness: Oh no, no, no, you’ve got entirely the wrong end of the stick. I wasn’t talking about that poor British-Muslim boy. He was quite possibly the biggest victim in that unfortunate business at the Arena.

Miriam Stimbers: Then who were you talking about?

Jay Guinness: That despicable creature Morrissey, of course. Those comments of his about immigration and Salman’s background were utterly unforgivable. Utterly. But no more than one would expect. As Dave went on to say: “That fucking crypto-fascist cunt’s just a fucking attention-seeker, always fucking has been, always fucking will be. String the fucker up!”

Miriam Stimbers: And you really think there’d be a majority at Savoy in favour of executing Morrissey?

Jay Guinness: I don’t think it, I know it. But it wouldn’t just be a majority, it would a unanimous vote, nem. con. What has Morrissey ever done but bring Manchester into disrepute with his dire music, his shitty fashion sense and his toxic racist agenda? As Michael Moorcock once said: “Fascism never sleeps and nor must the anti-fascist community.” In terms of saying it all, it does. Definitively.

[…]

Interview extract © Jay Guinness, Dr Miriam Stimbers, TransVisceral Books 2024

• Jay Guinness is a Huddersfield-born artist and aesthetician, and the subject of Dr Joan Jay Jefferson’s incisive and exhaustive biography Art-Bandit: Interrogating the Outlaw Aesthetics of Über-Maverick Gay Atelierista Jay Guinness (University of Salford Press 2012). See reviews of Art-Bandit at: Pink News, The Guardian, London Review of Books, Quietus, and Huffington Post. Visit Jay’s website for news of his latest projects.

• Miriam Stimbers is a Glasgow-born psychoanalyst, literary scholar and cultural commentatrix whose most recent book is the updated edition of Morbidly Miriam: The Mephitic Memoirs of Miriam B. Stimbers (TransVisceral Books 2023). See a review of Morbidly Miriam at Papyrocentric Performativity. Visit Miriam’s website for news of her latest projects.

Previously pre-posted on Papyrocentric Performativity…

• Il Nano e il Necrofilo… – an earlier exclusive extract from Titans of Transgression…

• The Hurt Shocker – an even earlier exclusive extract from Titans of Transgression…

Toxik TikTok

by in 2SLGBTQ+ Community Issues, English Usage, In Terms Of, Politics, Quotations and tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Libs of TikTok is shaping our entire political conversation about the rights of LGBTQ people to participate in society,” [Ari] Drennen said. “It feels like they’re single-handedly taking us back a decade in terms of the public discourse around LGBTQ rights. It’s been like nothing we’ve ever really seen.” — “Meet the woman behind Libs of TikTok, secretly fueling the right’s outrage machine”, The Washington Post, 19iv22.

Elsewhere other-accessible

• Ex-Term-In-Ate! — interrogating issues around “in terms of”…
• All posts interrogating issues around “in terms of”…

Reading the Roons

by in Art, English Usage, Guardianistas, In Terms Of, Keyly Committed Core Components of the Counter-Cultural Community, Language, Literature, Politics, Psychology and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

In terms of core issues around maximal engagement with keyly committed core components of the counter-cultural community, one of the saddest, sorriest and sighfullest sights among them is that of the talented lad from the wrong side of the tracks who betrays his class by turning himself into a Guardian-reader, in terms of core cultural assumptions and behaviour.

Northampton’s Alan Moore has done it.

London’s Stewart Home has done it.

Huddersfield’s John Coulthart has done it.

How do I know?

[Readers’ Advisory: If you are easily disturbed, distressed and/or disgusted, please stop reading NOW.]

I know because

[I mean it. Stop reading or you may well regret it.]

I know because each of these talented lads from the wrong side of the tracks now bears the Mark of the Beast, metaphorically speaking.

[Last chance.]

Each of them has, on multiple occasions and without the minimalest micro-metric of shame or irony, deployed the key Guardianista phrase “in terms of”.

• For proof of Alan Moore’s deplorable delinquency, please see here.
• For proof of Stewart Home’s dep-del, please see here.
• For proof of John Coulthart’s dep-del, please see in the same place as you possibly saw or are-about-to-see Stewart Home’s, i.e. here.

So. After seeing and lamenting those horrific examples of class-betrayal, I thought I was hermeneutically hardened and would never again experience sadness, sorrow or sighfullness at the sight of a talented lad etc.

I was wrong.

As I learned when I read this interview in The Mail on Sunday:

There was a lot of negativity in terms of my mum getting frustrated with us as kids, messing around all the time, smashing things in the house and my nan lived in the same road, a few houses down. […] In terms of therapy, I have spoken to a few different people. I have never done a period of time where I have done two years with someone and it has been ongoing. […] Everything I am asking of those players in terms of hard work, honesty, trust, commitment…if I was just to turn round and say “I have had an offer, I’m off”, I honestly couldn’t do that to the players and the staff. — Wayne Rooney reveals his secret two-day drinking binges etc

Oh, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne. How could you do it? But I think we can easily guess where he was infected: it was during his therapy-sessions.

Elsewhere other-accessible

• Ex-Term-In-Ate! — interrogating issues around why “in terms of” is so teratographically toxic…
• All posts interrogating issues around “in terms of”…
• All posts interrogating issues around the Guardian-reading community and its affiliates…

Core War…

by in English Usage, In Terms Of, Language, Literature and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

In terms of my core ambitions for 2022, I hope to continue the fight against such things as the reprehensible and repulsive phrase “in terms of”, the pretentious and throbbingly urgent adjective “core”, and the cheap trick of trailing dots… I know that I won’t win and that the Hive-Mind will continue to buzz deafeningly at core venues like The Guardian, The London Review of Books and The Shropshire Advertiser, but so what? In the core words of Samuel in terms of Johnson:

[I]t remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language. — Samuel Johnson, Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

Elsewhere Other-Accessible

• Ex-term-in-ate! — core interrogation of why “in terms of” is so despicable, deplorable and downright disgusting…
• Don’t Do Dot — core interrogation of why “…” is so despicable, deplorable and downright disgusting dot dot dot

Post-Performative Post-Scriptum

How should the first line of this incendiary intervention begin? I suggest: “In terms of my core ambitions for 2022…” → “Among my main ambitions…”

Gleet the Beatles

by in English Usage, Guardianistas, In Terms Of, Language and tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Guardian incisively interrogates issues around the Scouse Superstars:

Just in terms of pure sales they still dominate. In the first half of the year in the US – half a century on from Ed Sullivan, screaming fans, the olds just not getting it – they sold more albums than anyone else; the only group that came close over that period were BTS, a group who are regularly compared to the Beatles in terms of their planet-straddling massiveness. — The Guide #10: the enduring appeal of the Beatles, The Guardian, 26xi21

Elsewhere other-accessible

• Ex-Term-In-Ate! — interrogating issues around why “in terms of” is so teratographically toxic…
• All posts interrogating issues around “in terms of”…
• All posts interrogating issues around the Guardian-reading community and its affiliates…

The Grates of Roth

by in English Usage, Guardianistas, In Terms Of, Music and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Van Halen’s Diamond Dave fails to sparkle:

In terms of music, it’s all Brit. It’s Freddie, Bowie and the guy in Zeppelin. Theatrically, you’re looking at Spider-Man, with a little Groucho thrown in. […] Pushing boundaries in terms of what [Van Halen] wore was never an ambition of ours, but it always seemed to be where we would end up. — David Lee Roth: ‘My advice for aspiring artists? Breathable fabrics’, The Guardian, 25vi2019.

Note that he said “Theatrically…” rather than “In terms of theater…” So he should’ve said “Musically, it’s all Brit.” Rather than using the ugly and pretentious “In terms of music…”

• Hal Bent for Leather — Rob Halford talks like a Guardianista too

Maximal Mensual Metrics

by in English Usage, Guardianistas, In Terms Of, Language, Politics and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Like all minimally decent and politically aware people, I am keyly — and corely — committed to anti-racism on a maximal basis by any means necessary. Monkey-funker.

This is also why I am a corely — and keyly — committed member of the Guardian-reading community. If I am ever tempted to relent a micrometre in terms of the maximality of the metrics of my core commitment to anti-racism, the Guardian is there to remind me of what anti-racism is corely committed to achieving…

• It’s been a turbulent year for race in Britain. So what next? — At the end of Black History Month, we ask prominent Black British figures to assess where the UK stands in terms of equality and cohesion, The Guardian, 30×21

Terminal Transgressivity

by in Art, English Usage, Guardianistas, In Terms Of, Keyly Committed Core Components of the Counter-Cultural Community, Transgression... and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“If this work is about hell,” he says, “it’s not only about hell in terms of content. It’s also about hell in terms of its hellishness in terms of production.” — maximally maverick artist Jake Chapman describes how he and his brother Dinos made the transgressive sculpture Hell (2000), as quoted in Simon Garfield’s In Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate the World (2018)

Elsewhere Other-Accessible

• Ex-term-in-nate! — incendiarily interrogating issues around “in terms of”…
• All O.o.t.Ü.-F. posts interrogating issues around “in terms of”…

Peri-Performative Post-Scriptum…

Yes, this was an über-ideal quote for posting on the 23rd in terms of the month… But I was so taken with it that I couldn’t delay any longer. And anyway: it is the 23rd of the months in base 11. (I.e., 2111 = 2 * 11 + 1 = 22 + 1 = 23.)

Perfect Performative Pairing

by in English Usage, Guardianistas, In Terms Of and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Salt and celery, cheese and chocolate, yams and yoghurt — some things just taste better together. But that’s true of much more than foods and flavors. As a keyly committed core component of the anti-racist community, I’m proud and passionate to report that it’s also true of ideology and “in terms of”:

Unsurprisingly for a 200-year-old institution, the Guardian has not always got it right in terms of race coverage. — From slavery to BLM: the ups and downs of 200 years of Guardian race reporting, The Guardian, 6v21

For me, anti-racism just wouldn’t be the maximally moral movement that it is without a steady seasoning of “in terms of”. They’re a perfect performative pairing in an atrabiliously imperfect world.

Elsewhere other-engageable…

• Ex-term-in-nate! — interrogating issues around “in terms of”
• All O.o.t.Ü.-F. posts interrogating issues around “in terms of”…

Strength thru Joyce!

by in English Usage, In Terms Of, Keyly Committed Core Components of the Counter-Cultural Community, Language and tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Here is a Clarificatory Conspectus for Core Comprehension of Key Counter-Culture:

(open in new window for larger version)

Please note the inclusion of James Joyce (1882-1941). You will see that he is at one remove from the Heart of Darkness represented by the despicable, deplorable and downright disgusting phrase “in terms of”. That is, I put Joyce in the clarificatory conspectus because he is popular among the abusers of “in terms of”, not because I think he would have abused “in terms of” himself. Although I can’t stand Joyce’s writing and think it has had a very bad influence on English literature, I also think he wrote too well and was too aesthetically and linguistically sensitive to use “in terms of” in the degraded fashion of his countless modern admirers and imitators.

Please note, however, that being at one or more removes from the Heart of Darkness is not exculpatory for any other inclusees in terms of the Clarificatory Conspectus (Marty Amis, Sal Rushdie, the LRB, etc).

Elsewhere other-accessible:

• Ex-term-in-ate! — core interrogation of why “in terms of” is so despicable, deplorable and downright disgusting…
• Titus Graun — core interrogation of key deployers of “in terms of”……
• Don’t Do Dot — core interrogation of why “…” is so despicable, deplorable and downright disgusting dot dot dot