The Well-Named Justin Blank

As longtime readers of this humble “weblog” well know, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” are nothing if not petty. It is, we suppose, amongst our most endearing qualities—right beside argumentative and foolish.

Further, as humble proprietors of a humble “weblog” destined to “post” every weekday, we are constantly on the lookout for new topics of discussion. Accordingly, no subject is too lowly, no theme too jejune to warrant our collective attention.

And this, we guess, turns out to be bad news for a mal-educated ignoramus named Justin Blank. You see, dear reader, Mr. Blank, a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, runs a pathetically intermittent “weblog” called Wintry Smile. As it turns out, a few years ago Mr. Blank dedicated one of the “posts” on his “weblog” to “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly.”

More specifically, Mr. Blank took aim at our humble e-outfit when contemplating our nomination for the Best Humor Blog category in the 2005 Weblog Awards. For your edification, dear reader, we have affixed said “post” below:

Achewood and Fafblog are going up against the Dilbert Blog and The Hate Mongers Quarterly on The Weblog Awards for Best Humor/Comics Weblog. I was going to write about how this is a clear example of market failure, since Girls are Pretty just isn't included and the Dilbert Blog isn't really that funny. Also, the Hatemonger's Quarterly is some of the shittiest shit ever shat onto the net. Believe me on this one. You don't want to spend the time confirming my opinion.

I know I'm biased, so let's factor that into the equation, by moving my opinions of both Fafblog and the Hatemonger's Quarterly towards the center. The result is that Fafblog is still one of the top 250 things to happen to humanity, while the Hatemonger's Quarterly has become a despicable mediocrity. Even when they take on targets where I can roughly sympathize with an old conservative curmudgeon, such as the "Student Environmental Action Coalition’s Activist Training Camp," they just sort of muddle around being unfunny. One of their favorite posts for the year involves making fun of an English professor for ending a sentence with a preposition.

On second thought, this isn't really a market failure, since Achewood and Fafblog are both solidly in the middle of the pack, Dilbert isn't in first, and the Hatemonger's Quarterly is dead last.

A bit longwinded, and, alas, grammatically-challenged. Still, we think you get a sense of Mr. Blank’s esteem for our humble efforts: To him, our “weblog” is “some of the shittiest shit ever shat onto the net.” Our “website” is so horrid, in fact, that it appears as if Mr. Blank can’t be bothered to spell it correctly—or even consistently. Ah, yes: It must be very bad indeed.

But wait: If our humble animadversions are so poor, perhaps we can learn a thing or two from Justin Blank, a former distinguished copyeditor of a UNC political rag called The Hill. Also, as you can tell from his Friendster page, Justin’s a very, very attractive chap. Maybe, in addition to gleaning some style and tonsorial tips from him, we can take in some pointers about writing properly from this delightful tyro.

To this end, we have appended another “weblog” “post” from Wintry Smile, this one also stemming from a few years ago, and also characteristic of Mr. Blank’s mellifluous prose:

Proposition: In the scene in American Beauty in which the plastic bag is featured, we are supposed to largely agree with the boy about the beauty of the plastic bag, or at least sympathize insofar as we feel him to have a certain depth.

"we are meant" can be either cashed out in terms of authorial intent or any other theoretical apparatus you find appropriate.

Thoughts?

Ah, yes: Here’s some real wonderful writing. Mangled grammar; horrid syntax; a split infinitive—boy, we wish we could “shit” this “shit onto the net” as well as Justin Blank. And to think, no one bothered to chime in with a response to this garbled nonsense.

Sadly, such writing is indicative of the mindless effusions of Justin Blank. And, if you ask us, they demonstrate that this boob should be summarily stripped of his BA. Anyone who writes this badly should be forced to take up yak farming in Peru.