To this guy:




Eric, I’m impressed you’ve stood your ground on my challenge. Good. That’s the first step. Now, I’m going to get this rolling with a little recap. To you I paid battle’s invitation by knife fight in the written world: cold, pointed words against a foe.

As you strode into the ring, losing your jacket and rolling up your sleeves, you produced from a sheath concealed behind your neck…the 1900-word essay.

This is Mortal Kombat, dude, not fey games of tag after a good reading of Byron. You could have DUG into me, Eric. I even glimpsed fleeting merit scrolling down the small book you wrote for me at 3 in the morning. Then I thought to myself, “Wow, why read this when porn’s a click away?” I started skimming. Jesus man, we’re not two old chums from the academy locked in a cursive game of Risk. We hardly know each other. Did you actually expect me to methodically read through your five-page English paper or were you just producing a manuscript for posterity?

If someone scrubs his boot into your persuasion, this is what you do? You attack him with the stuff he’s already ridiculed you about not two months ago? You bore him into basalt before the next foot-noted strike? I don’t recall Dutch ever taking that approach. Dutch would have his skull bouncing in the predator’s crotch-mounted trophy case pulling that kind of shit.

Now, Eric, I’m giving you another shot. If you’re not going to meet my knife with a blade, then I’m disappointed in you. You see, I don’t have a problem with SOMETHING you wrote. I got a problem with what you write. And my respect for you is going to be kissing the cow pie if you can’t come up with something better to stall my engine.

Here’s something to mull your cider, Eric:

Remember that line I wrote in my letter to you? You know; the one about the children of Ungoliant so eager to lap up your cold curds? Ungoliant was a hideous thing in Tolkien’s lore. In fact, her heart was so twisted by her ceaseless hunger that she bit and drained light from the world. I don’t respect what you do to music and its makers. I think it poison. That’s my conviction. And I will take my phial given by the lady, and I will jam it in your eyes until you stay your plague on music.

I’m not finished. Before you go deliberate your options, you’re going to park yourself and watch this. You’re going to watch and imagine I stole the fish you caught to feed your family in the skeezy part of Italy.

You gonna put up a fight for that fish or you gonna granny shot another book at me?

*No, you’re not Ungoliant. You a kid.