How does one wind up in the ignoble Thunder Bucket? It's not a great mystery. Simply send me some shitty poetry and then send a snide or smartass reply to the inevitable rejection. Or threaten my life. Or write something nasty about me and I'll return the favor. Folks who act this way crave attention, so let's give them some.
December 20, 2008:
Christoper Roberts? Anybody ever heard of this prick? (The dude is a gardener in NYC. I hope he mows lawns and prunes trees better than he writes.)
I don't know who he is, but I received a nasty note from the son of a bitch. Why, I have no idea. He's not one of those fools I've rejected because I haven't taken submissions in about three years.
Mr. Roberts doesn't think TS is a worthy literary journal and he doesn't even like the name. He apparently didn't take time to view some of the names who have published in this zine since the early eighties; Mr. Roberts was probably sucking on mama's tit about that time, and he's likely still living in her basement.
About all I can say to this jerk, whoever he is, is go fuck yourself. It will no doubt be the only ass you ever get.
September 25, 2006: Marissa Renallo is a wannabe stand-up comic who has recently attacked me in print at some doubtful rag called the ULA - I think that stands for "Ugly Lying Assholes," judging by a picture of Renallo and the veracity of the bullshit that spews from her corrupt Lewinskis. I don't intend to put a link to her garbage, but you can find it it, and the group of posers who operate there, if you care to waste your time and search. November 12, 2005: What does one say about Thomas L. Vaultonburg, short of noting that he is a moron? I'm not sure. Vaultonburg is a special case—A brave, self-righteous dude who can't follow guidelines or bother with any of the technical stuff because he's just too important to take the time, but he can take time to call people names. You know the type—gutless assholes who talk big behind the security of cyberspace, but piss their pants in real life.
I don't intend to waste much time on this jerk. He runs all over the Internet posting links to his crummy poetry site, so I figure I can help him with his publicity campaign. This page sure gets one hell of a lot more traffic than most of the places where he puts his links. Enjoy, dummy. May 21, 2005: In my years of doing Thunder Sandwich, I have run across many an asshole. Few could measure up to a geek named Russell Bittner, who is, as Wilson Pickett used to scream, the king of 'em all, y'all!
Let's see. Mr. Bittner got his panties in a bind because I had not responded to his submission after six weeks or so. He wrote me a rather smartass note (the first one below) and started this entire episode. Of course I responded in smart fashion and, after reading the garbage he had submitted, rejected that as well. Let me be totally honest--I would have rejected it had it been worthwhile after his little hissy fit. But fortunately, I didn't have to refuse anything worth printing with Bittner's poems.
As you can see, old Russ says he has installed me in some hall of fame he has. That's fine, but I'll bet a dollar to a donut that it doesn't get anywhere near the traffic this page gets. And the boy seems to be overly concerned about being found in Google. Hey dude, it's a sure thing. Everybody in the world will know what kind of prick Russell Bittner is, at least from my perspective.
And wow, he quotes a bad review some bitter rejectee like himself gave my book on Amazon. Read the good ones sucker, they were written by people who actually read the book. I'm sure that soon we'll see another bad review, because twerps like Russell do things like that.
Below, in block quotes, is "The
You see, these people are the real "underground outlaws" of the poetic world. . .even thought they all conform to their own little righteous dogma. They can't tolerate any dissent from their narrow view of the world. What they lack in good sense they attempt to make up for what passes as wit with that crowd. It's known as "half-wit" most places.
The aforementioned slag is typical of that breed. She has a link to her "ezine" on the Ugly Lying Assholes site, a link to one of those freebie sites any dumbass can get who doesn't have the good sense or dedication to spend a few bucks for real space, but of course it doesn't work. And I recall several years ago this skank asked to use some of my poems in an ezine she was about to launch at the time, but of course that never materialized either.
What's really amusing is how she accused me of making racist and ethnic comments, and then uses a term concerning a new motor home to reflect on me as a Southerner. Good wit there, gal! You'd do well as a waitress down at Mabel's Cafe, though most folks around here don't tip your kind of halfwit too well.
You need to get a life, Marissa. And probably a job too, something to occupy your time, because poetry isn't doing it. You write like old people fuck and that ain't good.
I know. I'm old people.
Bitter Bittner Experience." Some of those comments show just how little Russell Bittner knows about several things, me included. Emphasis is his.
1. Submissions that blatantly ignore requirements will be discarded without comment or reply. (I submitted over a month and a half ago STRICTLY according to your requirements.)
2. Note May 16, 2005: Unsolicited manuscripts from those who have never appeared here will not be considered again until after September 15. However, if your work has ever appeared in TS in the past, feel free to submit at any time.
All of this is vastly interesting.
If you're going out of business, why not just say so? It happens all the time. People fuck up. Go out of business. Decide they'd really rather be surfing. That's cool. Just SAY so, for fuck's sake.
Russell
Great, Jim! Thanks for the honor! And I'll recip by adding you and your site to my own Hall of F(l)amers. Right up there with Didi Menendez of that other too self-important lit (hah!) site and a few others whose names I've already deleted from my "pretentious" memory bank.
Great, that is, just so long as no evidence of our little love spat ends up on Google. Some of this shit has a tendency to do that, you know, and although you no doubt enjoy every opportunity you can scrounge up to see your name in the bright lights, I do not.
Russell
It took you how long to reach this startling conclusion? Let's see... I submitted April 3. I received your kind reply today, May 21 -- but only because I had to nudge you. What is your day job, Jim? Do you write parking tickets, or are you the guy who schlepps the car away? And do you moonlight, by chance, as Undercover Narc? Or maybe you hawk kiddie porn on the side. Don't know. Don't care.
Re your kind rejection note (quite possibly the most professional I've ever read), I'm always amused when someone has to resort to ad hominem to make a point.
Your class is showing, Jim. 'Better zip it up.
Have a GREAT day :-)
"Reviewer: A reader It's all about angst. As if there's not enough of it being passed around already, Mr. Chandler dishes up several courses of it in this volume, complete with whine. Save your room on your plate for more substantial meals, ladies and gentlemen, and pass on this dose of post-modern repartee."
1-28-05: Nick "Jellygun" Moron Morgan is the newest resident of the noble Bucket, and a more deserving denizen would be hard to find. I might add that Morgan's inclusion is somewhat belated--he first, and last, submitted a couple pieces of garbage to TS several years back, both of which were summarily rejected because they were consistent in literary quality with his death threats below.
Morgan, who is usually referred to in emails from people he is associated with (I won't say 'friends' because I don't think he has any) as "that idiot," has been attacking me and the zine on posting boards recently. He calls Thunder Sandwich "a joke," however I think the fact that you don't find his swill herein says just the opposite.
Certainly I'm not so thin-skinned that his opinion of my zine bothers me, because a person with his very limited ability can't express an opinion that carries any weight. What DOES bother me is when he threatens to come and "shoot me" after he has "killed (my) children first," as he threatened yesterday.
Even the normal cretins one encounters on the Internet (and they are legion) seldom go to such lengths. He seems nutty enough to follow through too, except for lacking the one ingredient necessary -- guts. And too, he would have to have someone show him the way, because he appears to be the kind of person who would have difficulty finding his way home without assistance from the Rescue Squad.
Below is a sample of this fool's threats. Fortunately, I downloaded a copy of the board before the owner removed it. I left all his errors intact, because bad writing is his signature.
figures, an old coward of a creepy old man, would be all silent...,, fuk u.. i win... cok sucker!!dont test me again...or i will show up on your door step and shoot you..
you think this is a joke? i have nothing to lose dude.. what do you have to lose?gawd dammit.. just give me a reason..,.
jazz, you are nothing but a cunt coward pussy, dude, seriously come to texas. or let me come to your hometown... i would kick your ass so bad... i'll be driving a big rig soon... send me your address...let me back up my words, you cok sucker... come on dude.. lets have coffeee. i would so kill you you old fuk..
worst mistake you ever made jazz.may take years. may take months. maybe days...yep... i am the idiot....ever bin to a truck stop stud master? ha...aint no cowboy... but this hillbilly got your address now...yeah.. dude.. i may be an idiot... but i still got my teeth... cant wait to visit you... but first i'll kill your kids...
It's pretty obvious that this guy needs to be in a home somewhere, one where they don't have Internet access or even pencils and paper. C'mon down, sucka, we've got "Western State Mental Health Facility," commonly known around here as "Bolivar." They've got a room waiting for you, though I doubt you'd ever get that far. You'' discover that I don't suffer your kind of fool gladly.
And, if there is a trucking company in America run by a person stupid enough to put this kind of idiot in charge of 50,000 pound of steel, he needs an adjoining room at the crazy house.
1-9-05: I happened across a posting board today where a lady (and I use that term loosely) was belaboring me for posting this page. This twit believed I was doing a great disservice by publicly humilating those listed here.
Suffice it to say, I'm not really concerned with what some skank thinks of me or my zine. If everyone I had a disagreement with wound up in this bucket, I'd have to purchase more web space. If I placed every person here who notified me after publication that his or her poems had been taken elsewhere, thus causing me unnecessary work, it would be an endless task. If I retaliated against every kid with a Live Journal account who claimed I had somehow mutilated his poems when I had not, I would never be finished.
It doesn't work that way. People who wind up here do so of their own accord. Treat me like a human being and I will return the favor. Treat me like feces and I will respond in kind.
Many, many people get rejected each issue. You can see how few wind up here. Enough said.
10-30-04: It's a first, folks! We have a return honoree to the Bucket and once aginst it is the inestimable Mr. G. David Schwartz, whose poetry is even worse than his essays. I know, I know, it's hard to believe, but read below and you'll see I'm right.
In fact, this is the second time Mr. Schwartz has submitted since he first appeared in the bucket. In the other case I simply deleted his mail without comment because the "poetry" was horrendous.
How horrendous, you ask? Well, it was very much like this latest offering, which I shall paste below. You might have read something very similar before -- especially if you have a 5-year-old in the house.
Bumble Bee
G David Schwartz
Better never render me
He’d better be prepared to see
His stinger slung into the sea
Sweet Adeline
G David Schwartz
Poor sad lips of porcupine
Derive no pleasure from what they pine
Play hut and peck and what do they get
A sticker stuck into their neck
Poor sad lips of friends of mine
Who want to kiss sweet Adeline
Alas, this will be the last of G. David, as I have blocked his email. So enjoy this while you can, but remember -- wait 5 minutes before coming back for yet another read so as to not put too much of a burden on the TS server. I know, it will be hard to control yourself, but just refrain and be comforted by the thought of what's waiting at the end of that anticipated mouse click. It's all about the reward. . .
8-19-04: Ah, fresh blood for the Bucket! This time we welcome Mr. G. David Schwartz.
About a week ago. Mr. Schwartz sent me a horrendous essay entitled "Truth." It was the worst piece of writing I ever received in more that 20 years of digging through crap to fill the pages of TS. I shall place the first two paragraphs below -- I had entended to link to the entire disaster, but that would be pointless and few readers could endure the agony without slitting their wrists or smashing the monitor with a large shop hammer. The below is copied directly from Schwartz's text complete with errors intact:
Truth
By G David Schwartz
In discussion truth, we deal with a form of transcendence which is not like a detour which is static or piling rocks on the road of funny business. Truth is not waking toward repetition or slippage of importance but reaches thrift a long distance. Truth is like a wrapping up of the earth. Lies in this sense, work to distort the earth.
In both the works of Nietzsche and Heidegger truth is not a "true proportions" but rather such as a general order with an historical structure. A form of life, or an each of being. Second, the inauguration of the new epoch does not depend on the individual and his or her decisions.
Well, you can imagine how my jaw dropped when I read a lot more of this gibberish. I don't have a lot of time to waste and I certainly don't want to use it plowing through something that should have been written on a Big Chief primary school tablet with a crayon. So I promptly wrote Mr. Schwartz a note informing him that I wasn't interested in receving such gibberish and that any further submissions of such fecal matter would find him in the Bucket post haste.
Mr. Schwartz promptly submitted the garbage below without any comment on the previous piece or my response. As an act of "loving kindness" on my part, I will subject you to only a brief portion of this masterpiece:
Acts of Loving-Kindness
By G. David Schwartz
Can acts of loving-kindness end aggression, war, and atrocity? There is both a short response and a long response. There is, in other words, both a reply which the ostriches, doomsayers, and elites want to hear and will hear, and a reply which the apathetic and the instigators neither want, nor will, hear. Can acts of loving-kindness really stop belligerency and hatred? In the short-term, no, in the long run, yes.
Permission has been give for any reader to regard the following paper as either idealistic nonsense or indecisive, and put the paper down. Nevertheless, the reason for saying both yes and no is due to both the nature of time and, if I may, the time of nature. First, the short-term, as they phrase implies, is the limited duration where there is no consistency. The short-run betokens the immediate, the strictly pragmatic if not shortsighted. The short-run is concerned with immediate fixes, fire fighting, patchwork, and expediency. Later we might take our time and devise better solutions. We never do.
In the short-run, deeds of loving-kindness, if and when they may be offered, are single acts among competing deportments. A good deed is one in a tumult of possibilities of good and sickly, one atom in the full building of humanity which is easily ignored, easily ridiculed, easily rendered for naught. The only exception to this severing of the legs of good deeds, the dis-intending of all good intentions, is the insignificant number of individuals who may be persuaded toward good, the book clubs who may meet to discuss ideas of the good, the memorial committees who keep alive the memory of the good and, as if a process of quantity becoming a qualitative change, the movement which intend and work for the good on the basis of books the member of the movement have read, the discussions they have participated in, or the ideal they have been taught.
The ultimate act of loving kindness would be not to subject anyone to this kind of shit. Mentioning the names of philosophers or using many compound adverbs and adjectives does not equate to intellectual discourse. Get a life, Mr. Schwartz, or at the least stay out of mine.
Our featured imbecile this time around is an Irishman named Dan Lordain. Lordain said he didn't like the lone bad poem he submitted himself, which is why he sent it to a "three bob e-zine run by illiterates."
And now, the masterpiece. If he had used the word "child" one more time it might have been acceptable.
After a Painting of a Famine Eviction
Barefoot, hungry child,
Child driven from your home,
Child whose drunken father took it lying down,
This foreign painter saw your rage being born.
Child in oil,
Child of the sawn oak and the crumbling stone,
Your wasted tears have dried, like mine, and flown.
Child in rags,
Child of rot and the blackened bone;
You are less than smoke.
But I swear by all I see your rage lives on,
For rage is what remains when tears are gone,
What bides its’ [sic] time, what cracks the earth,
What drives all trace of pity from the heart.
Air Freshner, please. It smells like somebody shit a Christmas tree in here!
Well, another pitiful poet has checked in with equally bad manners to my "no, thanks" rejection. This one's name is Jesse Auchter and he may knock the above person out of the position of Shitty Poet of the Issue.
Poor Mr. Auchter says, "I was abrubtly and rudely turned down without any explanation so here is a poetic "finger" of sorts." The "poetic finger" is below. I must say it's better than his original submission, which should serve to give one clue why he was rejected.
"locusts"
locusts destroy greenery
the precious crops of poetry
a fencing match between bug and farm
the critics cause true artistry genuine harm
If Auchter's poetry is a "precious crop," send the Raid man on vacation and bring on the locusts!
"Artist" Mark J. Fisher, making a bid for TS #20, sez: "Thanks for the rejection asshole." To Mr. Fisher we say, "Steal something a little less famous to call your art next time."
Fisher took the picture "Perfect Diner" and--in amateurish fashion--stuck a UFO in the sky, slapped a little red on the pavement and called this shit "art."
Mommy must have bought Marky a Photoshop for his birthday! That's wonderful, but please, direct your work product elsewhere in the future.