Warning: this site is rated ASHER.
Comment Policy: We don’t publish all comments. Not even most. They don’t all have to be positive, or even polite, but one thing we aren’t going to post is bullshit that wastes our time, or stuff that doesn’t feed our imagination, inspire, interest, or help us in some way.
It’s not Fight Club: Asher isn’t here to argue, or debate, or fight. If you send comments that offer debate, they won’t be posted. This will remain true even if you nudge, cajole, push, browbeat, accuse, invite or invect. This will remain true even if *you* think debate is really useful, or prefer to call it ‘constructive discussion’. This is not a position we’re moving off of. If you want to debate, go find a forum – that’s what we would have done.
Asher can’t be saved: Asher isn’t here to be repaired, rescued, rehabilitated, put right or deprogrammed. Comments offering to fix Asher won’t be posted, unless we think they’re good, funny satire (Asher can be roasted, if it’s good-natured & not a veiled personal attack). Asher’s willing to talk about Asher, but isn’t interested in a litany of what’s wrong with him. He probably knows that better than you do.
Analyze this: Asher isn’t here for pop psychotherapy, so we explain to each other what we guess the other person’s motives, feelings, thoughts, proclivities, inhibitions, or problems are. Comments offering presumptions about the artist himself, which aren’t really about the art, don’t get posted. If you don’t really know Asher or get Asher or like Asher, you’re wasting your time explaining Asher to Asher, and to the people who do. Streetcorner personality assessments are more like muggings than curatives. Asher saves any therapy for a clinical environment, as should you.
We answer to no one: That’s a radical statement in this society, isn’t it? Akin to blasphemy. Asher isn’t here to submit to control. He doesn’t care about your moral standards or sense of decorum. He uses profanity like a free-flowing case of dysentery, when he wants to (he likes to listen to Lewis Black for inspiration). He says what he wants. He talks about any subjects he wants. He voices any opinions he wants. He answers to nothing, is not accountable to you, his fellow man, society, the collective, the people, the party, your deity, or your political gang of ideologues. He accountable to his conscience – if it comes down to saving you or that, guess which one he’s saving. Comments telling him to be ‘nice’ or that accuse of being ‘bad’ just get treated as spam, mentally and actually.
We have a personality: If you have something that you think Asher will regard as a contribution, feel free – we might like it. But if you really feel you must engage in the above kinds of things, the solution is simple:
- Find someone who cares (and is willing), and make them the target. There are internet forums rife with masochists, the confused, the vulnerable, who don’t know who they are, and are waving around flags saying “judge me, fix me, define me, rule me, fight me”. They’re not hard to find.
- Don’t read the stuff that’s here. You’re not required to like it. It’s not like we banged on your door and threw it inside when you opened up. We didn’t come down to your job, interrupt your day, or make it obligatory for you to be here. It’s a big world and a big web. Go read stuff you like by people you like. There’s the Onion, there’s SNL, there’s Cracked.com, and Asher thinks all of them are better than his own stuff.
If you still need clarification on the comment policy: We do appreciate some comments, but there’s no absolute rule for what we’ll appreciate. Some people’s stuff is annoying and sucks – that’s sometimes true of our stuff as well. This isn’t a call and response environment, like a Billy Idol concert. The performance is the performance, the art is the art, the idea is the idea. There’s not a Q&A afterward or a focus group. Not every reader is an indispensable part of it who must sing along. “Get your own fucking blog,” Asher likes to say. That’s the whole point of the new web – anyone can publish, and they don’t have to do it according to our rules – they get to make their own. If Asher isn’t interested in what you’re saying, he just doesn’t respond – It isn’t a public park or community-owned space. Asher gets enough mail, already, so it has to be something useful or interesting. Yeah, it’s on the web, but your house is probably on a street – that doesn’t mean you have to cater to people who stop by your window or bang on your door. Yeah, this is all biased. We’re not trying to be the New York Times, or run some generic corporate environment where everything and everyone is treated the same – this is Asher’s own residence – he lives here – get used to it.
We have a policy, so we don’t have to police the thing: If people were less insistent on starting an argument every time they discover someone doing, being, or saying something “wrong”, we wouldn’t have to do this. But since the U.S., especially, is just that classically fucked up (polarized), we have to make it clear, because some of you still won’t fucking get it. If you’ve read this far, and you still require clarification, please go to www.microsoft.com and ask Bill Gates for technical and moral support, or write the Dalai Lama for wisdom and insight, or whatever. But it isn’t a negotiation – it’s just how we roll here. If you’re offended, because you think this means we don’t want your comments or care what you think, you’re probably right – its probably your stuff we’re talking about. There’s someone for everyone, though – just search the net.
Asher is a “meanie”: Yes, yes, he’s a very bad man. But look, we don’t give a rat’s ass if you know Asher in some other walk of life or venue – we don’t even care if you’re his mom and think he shouldn’t act the way he does – this is like his own personal nightclub, and he’s Tony Montana. D0n’t have one of your own? Well, sorry, but we can’t help that. You’re not required to visit the AsherNet, so if you’re offended by this stuff, then don’t. Think of it like a porn site in that way: this site is rated ASHER, which is the highest and most disturbing rating possible, even without the swear words. If you don’t like it – go back & hang out where you’re used to things going the way you like, people talking the way you prefer, people living by the rules and protocols you want them to, and people submitting to whatever vision of the net you have in your corner of it. Here, we don’t give a shit. We tried being “nice” for a while, and it didn’t work, didn’t fit, and just can’t be the policy. You will have to work out any need to control how people think and behave without our participation. You won’t have to look far – it’s not like there’s a shortage of people that aren’t you – and somewhere, someone else is wrong on the internet. Go get ’em.
This isn’t the Walmart in Gerkauf, Kansas: In some places, there’s a tendency to treat things that happen in public as belonging to the public, as though this is some kind of community property, where we have some corporate-like, customer-service driven conventions to observe or civil servant function we have to perform, where we have to be nice, or service you, or in fact be something at all. We don’t owe anyone jack squat here – this is private. Think of it like Asher’s Deli and Pub, a little place in some neighborhood you don’t live in but a lot of other people do, in Philly or NYC – people who have a way of doing things, and aren’t looking to have some rube come in and hassle them about it. We can throw out anyone we want, just because we don’t like you. It’s not your bar. And we can dislike you, just because. Usually, we won’t do that. We have no reason to. But if you come in here and start some shit, expect a chilly response, then a hot one if you keep it up.
It’s Art, Stupid: We aren’t interested in explaining the art pieces we write. We aren’t interested in elaborating, justifying, debating, clarifying, or accounting for it. You don’t have to think it’s good. But we aren’t going to reduce everything to an ideology, so it can be easily categorized, sorted into good/bad, right/wrong, true/false. If you have to give a lecture about your poem, it wasn’t an effective poem. Or maybe it just wasn’t effective for that audience. We’re willing to make bad art. What we’re not willing to do is sell art down the river, by pretending it bows its head to someone else’s axe that they’ve been grinding.
Our Policy: The one thing you can do that will basically ensure your welcome here is… drumroll… don’t start shit. We don’t know how to explain it better than that. There’s probably an Italian or Irish bar near you, or at least a biker joint. Go down there and start shit, if you want. Just because we’re artists doesn’t mean we can’t rumble, but it does generally mean we don’t enjoy it.