THIS WILL NOT STAND
Posted on April 1, 2012 Posted by John Scalzi 60 Comments
Some miscreant by the name of Scott Lynch — whoever he is — is typing horrible, slanderous lies about me and my art ON THE INTERNET, thus besmirching that last bastion of temperate reason and truthfulness.
THIS WILL NOT STAND.
Naturally, I have replied to his splenetic libels over there with sweet and gentle correction.
GO THOU AND DO LIKEWISE.
That is all.
Pretty sure the subheading of this blog should be changed from “its in the trees. its coming” to “miasmic perjury-fog”.
Good zod. I am bored at work, and have started scribblings entitled “Colt Jackhammer: Pussy Magnet”. Because I **MUST** read that book, even if I have to write it first….
I might just start calling you “Big Chief” :-)
? April FD roast?
Is he simultaneously arguing that the book is horrific, and that he wrote it?
He is a swirling ball of contradiction and grandpa smell, Joshua.
Bit harsh on the badgers, no? What did they ever do to you?
THEY KNOW WHAT THEY DID.
you are rightfully incensed at his attack on your stature.
Yes! A venue at which I can display my new flesh eating kitten avatar in all its magnificent glory!
Enough with the April Fools gags already people. And you’re not fooling anyone, especially not me.
On the internet, nobody knows if you’re a pussy.
Indeed this will not stand! I am now recruiting a regiment (777th Nevada Volunteers, ‘The Lucky 7’s) to avenge this wrong. I call on able bodied men (and stalwart women) assemble and await orders. And I (your humble commander, General Confusion) shall lead you into Glory!
Minion-wrath is a mighty and terrible thing to summon, JS.
IS IT NOT WARRANTED?!?!?!?!?!???!!!???!!!!?!?!??!??!??!?
ALSO: ?!????!!!!!???!?!?!??!!!!??!
I would pay to furtively download ‘experimental sexno-thriller’ Colt Jackhammer: Pussy Magnet. Does that make me a bad person or a lucrative market segment?
OK. Enuff already. I must now take the dog for a walk to apologize for explosive laughter and for screaming that I don’t want to be anonymous when I besmirch Scott Lynch. why am I such a luddite?
When I was perhaps 13 the alien learned that Earth
sharks didn’t have laser beams and blurted out
“coprophagous Christ!”
After a bit of time with the dictionary I decided that
my new favorite term was “autosexual coprophilliac.”
I am ashamed to admit that not only do I know that “It’s in the trees. It’s coming” is from Night of the Demon, but also that Kate Bush used it on her Hounds of Love album.
I really don’t try to be a geek. It seems to just … happen.
Oh: and your reply to Scott Lynch has the funniest line I’ve read in ages: “that benighted existential Taco Bell that you call your soul.” Oh, thank you thank you.
Don’t worry, John. I defended you. I’ve seen the original manuscript for your work of genius. It is NOT Big Chief tablets.
THANK YOU, MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL.
Isn’t Rothfuss a badger?
Mary Robinette Kowal:
Waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiit…
There’s an In-n-Out in Ohio now?
And the have Coke Zero??
I had to go to Vegas to get my Double Meat Animal Style!
AND THEY DIDN’T HAVE COKE ZERO!!!
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU………..
Also, wasn’t “Double Meat Animal Style” the name of chapter 3 in Colt Jackhammer: Pussy Magnet?
Gee…I dunno Mr. Scalzi. I mean, your outrage has all the hallmarks of one trying to cover one’s ass. In other words, “methinks thou doth protest too much.”
On the other hand, Ms. Kowal vouches for you. Everyone knows SHE’S the trustworthy one.
But she could have been duped!
Gosh I just don’t know….I need some more convincing.
I was totally on your side until you started ragging on Taco Bell. Now, I don’t know WHAT to believe.
Canyon42, just think about this; on the one hand, you’ve got corporate TVP-shored Taco Bell. On the other is pure and family-owned In-And-Out Burger, second in patty-puisance only to Five Guys.
Really, now, which standard-bearer are you gonna believe?
Is it April 2nd yet? Please?
My stomach cannae take any more, Captain!
Very nice, Scalzi. Except that I see your sock puppet “Mary Robinette Kowal” puts “her” periods at the ends of sentences EXACTLY where you do.
You should both be ashamed of yourselves for plagiarizing my work.
I love that my birthday is a day full of tomfoolery and silliness.
I loved the novelization of Meet the Spartans. I cried a little at the end.
Oh, c’mon! Kowal’s lying too! THERE AREN’T ANY IN-N-OUT BURGERS in the hellhole that Scalzi lives in! La!
@Lurkertype: Last I heard, Scalzi lives in Ohio. When did he move to a hellhole?
I think someone is abusing the Loving Mallet of Correction.
I think Lynch’s rant is an excellent example of internet snark, and he makes many valid points. I know his books are excellent without exception, except for the ones I haven’t read, which is most of them. But c’mon, people, that doesn’t mean I’m not an authority on his work. He’s a literary icon who must be taken absolutely seriously. When he calls Scalzi a “twitchy weasel-dicked scum merchant,” it behooves us to stroke our scraggly geek-beards and carefully consider whether that might in fact be true.
Then, having done what behooves us, we’ll be hooved, and can gallop faster than anyone and WIN THE NEW YORK MARATHON, which is named after another one of those famous Greek battles like Thermopylae, which is what they made that sober historical drama Meet the Spartans about, and if they hadn’t Scalzi could never have written the novelization, which proves that Lynch is right, at least about that part. See what I did there? This is an unassailable loop of logic from which nothing can escape…at least without some rope burns and stuff.
All that said, I’m pretty sure John never did meet Scott on a sticky and tumescent night. And I know sticky and tumescent. Admittedly it’s been a while.
[Deleted because I’m totally unfair and arbitrary and can’t stand the slightest criticism. Neener neener. -JS]
(naw, it’s a joke)
When’s the part where we get to fire the judges?
I’m truly confused . . .
Ah, aye see. Thanks for the pulling the plank out of me eye, Scott Lynch. And, no on the second question. Yes, on the first, OMW being the exception. The third? I’m having trouble translating it. Is that German?
@Hugh57 — there’s no In-N-Out there, ergo it is a hellhole. REFUTE THAT!
@Xopher: I think Lynch’s rant is an excellent example of internet snark, and he makes many valid points. I know his books are excellent without exception, except for the ones I haven’t read, which is most of them. But c’mon, people, that doesn’t mean I’m not an authority on his work.
I see what you did there. And I larfed mightily.
I am shocked and dismayed that pink slime has not yet made it into the conversation. I mean, Taco Bell…
Taco Bell has stopped stocking pink slime thanks to a cabal of petition writers on this very Internet. But they continue to use genetically modified nachos and other maize products, and the crunchy tomatoes. I cannot vouch for In-and-Out Burger.
@ cranapia
You say that like those are mutually exclusive. I like to think I’m both, but then I’m already planning fan-fic for CJ:PM…
@ Canyon42
Taco Bell is like feces from a crack addict, it’s a festering diarrhea of bloody pink slime all by itself. Don’t blame Scalzi.
Hi John:
I think you already know from my cousin Jonathan Vos Post that Eliezer Yudkowsky and a bunch of the singularity nuts claim I don’t exist because they didn’t like one of Jonathan’s complaints about their plagiarizing his 1992 quantum mechanics paper on the universe as a simulation. Early on in working with Peter Lynds, we got more of the same, with a bunch of Chinese physics students saying (a) we didn’t really existand (b) they had solved the problems in quantum cosmology which we were working on anyway. As John Baez has long demonstrated with the “Crackpot Index”, the internet is a breeding ground for psychosis and deviants just as much as it is for creativity and new forms of productive interaction.
On a much more positive note, my friend Dean Hartley (III), who now runs a very large list on modeling and simulation (DIME/PMESII) on LinkedIn has been strongly recommending your work across the list. As a past president of the Military Operations Research Society and the Military Applications Society of INFORMS, he’s bringing you to audiences who are both knowledgeable and dare I say it, absolutely charmed by your work as I and my coauthors have been.
The nut cases are like the late Gary Gygax’ “green slime”, you get out your magical can of lysol, nuke ’em and move on.
Cheers,
Phil Fellman
You can judge a writer by the quality of his blog commenters. John’s commenters are erudite, cultured gentlebeings, while Scott Lynch’s are, to judge by the entry John linked to, a morass of feces-slinging flying monkeys released by some deranged troll. Advantage: Scalzi!
I am personally upset that “Colt Jackhammer: Pussy Magnet” is unavailable from Baen. Why such an amazing work should be out of print so soon is sad. I thought the NYTimes called it a “notable book of the year,” and a “Roman de Clef of his time at the Fresno Bee”. Sure as a autobiography it might have had all the authenticity of James Frey, but it was a work of Fiction. Personally, I thought it was deeply moving, and displayed electric emotional energy. A Jackhammer to my heart if no one else’s.
I sure look forward to the next crime writer’s convention where I hear John is scheduled to share billing with Mark Billingham. I am sure that John will be his normal magnanimous self.
And lo, I am out of popcorn. :(
You didn’t deny writing the novelization of “Meet the Spartans”…
That book caused two of my neighbors to commit suicide. You have much ( more) to answer for, even if I got their koosh ball collection…
Dear Mr Scalzi,
No matter what I do no-one ever calls ME a twitchy weasel-dicked scum merchant – where am I going wrong? Please advise.
So I take it this isn’t an April Fool’s Joke. I mean, I had to read it twice and I still don’t believe it. (Not you, him). It’s madness! It’s so completely insane that I am at a loss for words, and since that hardly ever happens, you now know with even more certainty (like you needed it in the first place) how bonkers this is.
I’m with @evolet0680 on this one. Is this real, or is this Poe? The date of the posting gives me pause.
BTW, whether a prank or real, your second comment on the Lynch post had me spitting Mt Dew all over my keyboard and monitor. Are your royalty checks big enough to cover replacements?
Gary, Gary, Gary. Scalzi’s post contains this: “THE INTERNET, thus besmirching that last bastion of temperate reason and truthfulness.”
Even under Poe…!
Guys:
I posted this on April 1st. It’s very much a joke posting, responding to a joke posting.
If this is indeed a joke posting then where is the bacon? Where is the bacon? Won’t someone think of the bacon?
@Xopher: Fine, then. I’ve been had. Not the first time, nor the last. And I still need a replacement monitor and keyboard.
Jerol Johnson: Dude, bacon is sooo 2006.
“Colt Jackhammer : Pussy Magnet” is not real?!?!?
HAVE WE LIVED AND FOUGHT IN VAIN?!?!
I certainly hope someone is making a cross-stitch out of that ‘have we lived and fought in vain’ quote. I would hang that on my wall proudly.