Dan Rather and I agree that the title of this post is awesome.
Proof through REPE-FUCKING-TITION?
It's like spot the fallacy.
causality indicates that every event must have a purpose
I did not understand this about causality.
"This mind-expanding treatise on Logic brought you by... an enormous bong."
Kenneth's novels also sound super-awesome.
Hey, he lives in Bayside, where my wife grew up!
Eng is indeed the tool of the day.
but, i can't say he isn't on to something. for instance: there's a chinese place i like to eat lunch at from time to time, run by real chinese people, and man! do the black customers give that little chinese lady a hard time. i've seen it myself!
like that skit on the fugees album, "i want four chicken wings, fried HARD!"
"you think you're hard? i'll kick your bitch-ass. yeeoww!"
His SF book got 4.5 stars (out of 5) on Amazon. So I looked into that. One real name out of 23 reviewers. Hmmmmmmmm.
I love the completely unneeded shoutout to the Collatz problem. Logic won't help, Kenneth! Only arithmetic has the answers you need!
The people who published his book, shockingly enough, seem to be a vanity press.
"I would immediately stand up and shout incessantly at the screen so that none of the white audience members could enjoy the film."
Sure you would buddy.
"Do these sycophants think it's "cool" to mindlessly side with whites and blacks?"
Asians mindlessly side with blacks? Not in L.A. they don't. When the fuck did this start?
9: But note that some of his 5-star reviewers are taking the piss. One of them notes: "It's amazing how this blows and sucks, all at the same time!"
Sure you would buddy.
He'd get about 60 seconds from me before he'd get a chance to test his theory about Asians kicking ass.
I may not have the "pleasures" of having human companionship like they do, but at least I am not a coward. To this day, I stand by all of my opinions no matter what the consequences.
Must the courageous always stand alone?
13, meet the post itself
A student punched me in the back of the head just for being honest about his film.
That whole thing is must reading.
16: D'oh! Missed that part. Reading is fundamental.
15: In his case, I hope so. At least past the breeding stage.
Is there any way we could arrange an ultimate fighting match between Eng and Aleksey Vayner? Because I'd pay really good money to watch it.
I don't think we have anything to worry about.
Is there any way
Impossible is nothing, apo.
There's some fun to be had at his Amazon reviews:
please consider seriously not ever mentioning that you are a furry fetishist if you cannot expel such thoughts from your mind completely. That is the height of the most highly deplored faggotry and no one will ever take you seriously with that info out there.
I know I shouldn't, but I love the word "faggotry."
5: remembger in the start of that movie about the college kids trying to kill off their roomate so they could get good grades w/o writing the papers, where ZACH from saved by the bell is there, taking a hit on a huge bong?
Is Kelly Kapowski also there, still bravely trying to fight her crippling dependence on No-Doz?
Shut up, guys. I took a seminar from Eng and it was amazing.
You just slipped Chang a sawbuck to raise your grade.
It's like spot the fallacy.
As opposed to Labs' post, where it's like spot the phallus.
spot the phallus
Why does he call it Spot, anyway?
24: You know, I've never seen Dead Man on Campus. I wonder if Eng has.
Speaking of spot the phallus, I just scrolled down on the page with PK in the room. Thanks, Labs.
A commenter at Table of Malcontents found the following two gems.
A press release about his book:
What makes this book unique from other metaphysical stories, however, is that fact that it answers through pure logic alone many of the most fundamental riddles known to man - the nature of infinity, the certainties of the universe, and the conceptual Theory of Everything, just to name a few. The author even claims that the very meaning of life is buried somewhere in the text.
What qualities do you value most professionally?
Efficiency, perfection, originality, creativity, stoicism, and nobility. These are the same qualities I have bestowed upon Animantis, Dennagon, Super-Physicist, Vixen 3, and all the heroes of the Dragons Multiverse.
If nothing else, this guy (in combination with Peter Nguyen) has certainly convinced me that Asians are the world's most terrible essayists. He'll definitely need to put up an Alexi Vayner-style resume online if he wants to convince me about his monstrous ass-kickingitude, though.
Animantis, Dennagon, Super-Physicist, Vixen 3
I think I'm in love.
25: that was Jessi with the addiction to uppers, not Kel.
"Super-Physicist" and "Vixen 3" are so otaku it hurts.
What makes this book unique from other....
This makes me reflect upon my Freshman Writing teaching technique. I would have beaten humiliated persuaded Eng to become more self-conscious about his writing, with the result that he would likely have lost a lot of the chutzpah that's on display here. Now perhaps that's a good thing, perhaps he would still have persevered but with better tools at his disposal, but, still, I feel bad. Sorry former students of mine whose poor writing and spirits I have crushed!
Aie! Someone, please, close the strike tag after "humiliated"! It wasn't that funny a joke anyway. Crap.
When JM goes down, she goes down in flames.
Wait, JM, you feel bad about preventing your students from turning out like Kenneth Eng? Why?
Thank you, oh ye merciful gods of unfogged!
Teo, in order to prevent a student like young Eng from writing that way, a teacher has to do a fair amount of oppressing. Making them cry is embarassing, but making them morbidly self-conscious is sort of the goal, at least on an interim basis. But this guy is gloriously unabashed! Only the market oppresses him, as it should be!
So you're saying we shouldn't have writing teachers at all?
This guy should HAND, because he's a tool of tools.
Oh, well, but the arrogant ones deserve to be humiliated. And since they're such shits to their classmates, one really shouldn't feel bad about it.
Proof by Repetition is well-known among desperate math students and inhabitants of certain corners of the internets, although its more common name is Proof by Repeated Assertion. It is closely related to Proof by Failure to Find a Counterexample.
He should get together with Ben Domenech.
"not-P. But surely P is possible. Therefore, P."
"not-P. But surely P is possible. Therefore, P."
I think you'll find the correct proof is,
"not-P. But surely P is possible. Therefore, P."
"not-P. But surely P is possible. Therefore, P."
"not-P. But surely P is possible. Therefore, P."
"not-P. But surely P is possible. Therefore, P."
"not-P. But surely P is possible. Therefore, P."
"not-P. But surely P is possible. Therefore, P."
My favorite Eng paragraph is:
"The book I am currently reading/writing is about Daemonhand Mediaeval, the skeleton warrior who aforesaid his humanity to destroy evil Black Technoknight Uther Penn Sapien and his evil Round Table. In doing so, he becomes an immortal undead warrior 100 billion years into a future when the Middle Ages are still in existence. This story is based on the philosophy that the purpose of life is not the end, but the journey itself, and that even though Death is the ultimate state of existence, it is still possible to contradict it. It's intertwined with Dragons: Lexicon Triumvirate."
Uther Penn Sapien ...
"Dennagon nonchalantly dropped down from his perched position to the ground. Without even taking his eyes off his book, he casually thrust his fist out, punching a hole straight through the head of one of his enemies as it charged. The decapitated body still handing from his forearm, he merely shifted his fist to the side so that the others could run into it. Expectedly, they did, blasting apart their own skulls against his scaly knuckles."
Can we agree that science fiction is the genre of writing that when bad is the most embarrassing?
No, bad sex scenes and bad war porn are also pretty embarrassing, just for starters.
In doing so, he becomes an immortal undead warrior 100 billion years into a future when the Middle Ages are still in existence.
Quite possibly the greatest sentence ever written.
No, wait, I'm wrong. The genre of writing than when bad is most embarrassing is blogging:
Let's look at the muslim religion. They believe that music, dance, naked women and other such things are "indecent". They think that some creature called "allah" will bring them peace, yadda, yadda, yadda. They think that if they bow every day, they will somehow be transported to a place called "heaven", where everyone looks conspicuously human. I don't know about you, but I masturbate all the time. It's not going to affect me in any way, aside from making me need to take baths more often. And listening to O Fortuna will not make my head explode. Nor will spitting at every church I see make my intestines burst out of my abdomen.
Can we agree that science fiction is the genre of writing that when bad is the most embarrassing?
In that category, I'd still have to go with erotica
56 -- You can have a blog at Amazon?
Is Quonster the same person who runs "nicedoggie.net"?
The MeFi thread on this topic has some interesting stories from someone who went to college with Eng. Really, though, after a certain point the craziness starts to saturate and it all sounds about the same.
An awesome comment from that MeFi thread.
"I can tell you why this got past the editors: Asian racists just aren't that threatening. Really, what's he gonna do? Ching chong me to death? Poke me with his chopsticks? Come on."
That is all sorts of concentrated crazy right there.
Nothing like casual racism to meet casual racism.
Oh, man, his novel. It's saying, "Heyyyy there, 'Eye of Argon,' I'm going to give you a run for your money.
"Do you also believe in love..." she started hesitantly, "...at first sight?"
The words wisped from her soul to the air. She felt like a weight had been lifted off her brain and breast, but unfortunately, Dennagon did not share the same sentiments. The embarrassment she felt in her premeditation now spilt over to him, and he was more aversive toward it than she. This he would not tolerate, the utter insolence of it all.... Lyconel gasped. She had just unveiled her inner most sensations and had been rejected quicker than an electron's revolutionary period around a nucleus.... Angrily, she stomped away on all fours, resuming the repairs on her mace and thinking no more of the creature that she had been so thoroughly snubbed by.
Maybe this will soon be only the second craziest person ever to comment on Unfogged!
(in other words, I am surprised at the lack of gogleprofing)
Could Eng beat Adam Yoshida in a fight?
Could E/n/g and Y/o/s/h/i/d/a beat P/a/u/l D/e/i/g/n/a/n and S/t/e/p/h/e/n/ A. M/e/i/g/s in an interracial insanity cagematch?
68: This guy could be the final nail in the silly self-esteem movement's coffin. If he shows up here can you direct him to Nathaniel Branden?
What the hell is "the 3x+1 procedure?"
If your own age is x, the procedure tells you the minimum age of the next woman you will have sex with. It's specific to the four people mentioned in #70.
Ah! And I see, on re-reading, that 9 already had a reference to it ("Collatz"). Pre-pwned, damnit.
Thanks for the link though. Unfogged: Google, When You're Too Lazy To.
spot the phallus
Why does he call it Spot, anyway?
b/c of the tear stains
I can't stop laughing after reading some of the Eng links. I really can't. I try to stop and I manage it briefly and then I start thinking about 'Daemonhand Mediaeval, the skeleton warrior who aforesaid his humanity to destroy evil Black Technoknight Uther Penn Sapien and his evil Round Table' and I start giggling again.
'Daemonhand Mediaeval'?
I thought the interview was by far the most amusing part of the corpus (although if you want some fun, search for the word "polyhedron" in his book on Amazon. Go ahead, you know you want to.). Eng is worse at answering a question directly than George Bush.
What would surprise most people to learn about you?That even though I am by definition a genius, I was bloody stupid enough to pitch my idea for the 0th Dimension, which is about anthropomorphic organisms fighting in the early universe, to kids in NYU before it was published. The reason I did this was because someone broke into my dorm in April 2002 and stole copies of my work, and I thought that the only way to protect it aside from copyright registration was to garner witnesses. Little did I know at the time that all I had to do was send it out to producers, editors, or agents, even if it was an unsolicited manuscript. One of many could easily have stolen the concept, but I guess my hard work and concentration created enough perceptual energy in this Universe to bring me to the realization that I had to talk only to people of power.
That didn't actually surprise me at all.
Heh.
"I was stuck behind this dude at a book signing once. Living caricature of an arrogant egotistical prick. Memorable quote: I don't read other people's books anymore, I am constantly reading my own books in my head. BTW, this was for a book signing of an author he didn't even know about and whose book he hadn't bought. Dude brought his own book instead and when someone asked if he was going to get it signed he said that the copies cost too much to do that."
I think I have a plan for the reeducation. I'm thinking something kind of like the whole A Clockwork Orange movie-watching but instead of clamping his eyes open we simply apply a ball-gag and then play Mickey Rooney's scenes from Breakfast at Tiffany's on an endless loop until Eng's mind cracks and he can be taught to love again.
It all sounds like the sort of thing a reasonably smart 8 year old might say (aside from the hating black people) as a provocation. What happened to this kid? He needed a coach to yell at him or something.
"Who then was the being whose blond hair inexplicably became wrapped around Peter Khoury's penis?"
Bill Chalker, a UFO investigator, claims to have a strand of hair (blond, naturally) from an Australian man's sexy alien threesome. So maybe there's someone out there for Eng, too.
About the time it transitioned from funny to sad is when I learned that he's a furry fanatic and is in love with his stuffed animals.
They're the only ones who understand.
I'm also tempted to wonder whether this kid's novels were ghost-written by Colbert as a warm-up for the Tek Jansen series.
Yeah, from this post.
Kenneth Eng on what he would save from his burning house:
My animal plushies, which are very important to the family. Especially Smoochy, our semi-dog semi-bunny doll, and Froggy, the big green frog. Definitely, I would save Dennagon, my dragon plushie.
[...] Kenneth also characterizes himself as "technically a genius" and a "furry fanatic."
He's the gift that keeps on giving.
This cracks me up, too.
He was in a friend's life drawing class, for example, and at one point the teacher asked everyone what they first looked for when drawing a figure. Everyone gave sane answers - "I look for an action line" or "I look for an interesting feature" - but then Ken said, "first, I imagine the subject as a lycanthrope." And then, lo and behold, everyone cranes their necks to look at Ken's work, and indeed, he's drawn a shitty bevy of lycanthropes for his assignments.
Apo, did you see the bit about wanting to escape the prison of this existence and enter some other dimension as an anthropomorphic shark? Just the best. Part of me believes that the guy is parodying something, and just has tremendous commitment to that end.
I want to know what "the family" is. It's fairly likely that it doesn't refer to, well, humans.
By the way, the thing that stuck in my craw from the beginning is his ludicrous claim that he's the youngest published science fiction novelist evar, at 21. Leaving aside the question of whether you are really "published" if you pay somebody to print your book, didn't Mary Shelley write Frankenstein before she was 20? (Yes.)
did you see the bit
I sure did. We should let him guest post here.
You don't have to go back to Frankenstein, yo. Christopher Paolini wrote Eragon at 19 and not only got it published, but made it to the NYT bestseller list and had it made into a movie.
Oh no, I started finding Eng's message board posts.
Most people on Earth (especially italians) are garbage and to treat them kindly would be a disservice to those of us with intelligence.
Cosine Chan, a law-enforcement agent, must battle against an anarchist organization that worships death before they can end eternal life.
Generally, my stories tend to be intensely philosophical and action-packed.
Is he schizophrenic? I'm not quite certain.
When the Medium Lobster catches up with them, the editors at AsianWeek are going to be very sorry for firing Giblets.
Oh dear. It's Eng's old Geocities page, which apparently Eng promoted in AsianWeek when he still had his gig:
This blog is now devoted to hatred against Asians in comics in general. Let's start today by exposing more secrets of Marvel:
1. They mostly hire hot italian girls -- I noticed this when Teresa Focarile, who used to work as the associate editor, got her job. She wasn't particularly qualified. She got educated at CUNY and some minor college I have never heard of. Yet somehow she managed to get a top-ranking do-nothing job that pays handsomely. And it's not a coincidence that she was SUPER HOT. I mean this guinea girl had an ass that was shapely and always encased in boots and tights. I actually had to masturbate in the bathroom a couple of times in Marvel after seeing her. Giggity!
4. The blacks are gay -- They're always in the production area play-fighting like they're in high school and joking with each other. I swear, these niggers touch each other WAY too much. And they do the slave labor like they were meant to.
Once again, check out my blog on Asianweek.
Also, while this page does not *explicitly* encourage violence against whities and darkies, it certainly does not discourage it.
Kenneth certainly has issues with Italians. I have a theory about who might have beaten him up the most during junior high school.
Although in other venues, he has explicitly encouraged racial violence.
Now I'm leaning heavily towards 'schizo.' I encourage you not to click on the "What White People Deserve" link. And this is as deep as I feel like digging.
I sure am glad that I didn't grow up in the age of the internet. I certainly had some stupid ideas and said some stupid things.
Which isn't to say that this kid isn't a class-A idiot.
That Italian stuff is great. Seriously, what year does he think this is?
People are all "Cosine Chan is hott!!", but her sister Cosecant is **way** hottterr.
"If we storm them together as the blacks did, we can finally make those big-eyed fuckers suffer."
"Especially after we release our werewolf selves!"
Even if logic did not need to be proven, could it still be disproved?
Kenneth appears to be a fan of the good herb.
and it's interesting that his whole bit about causality, induction, and logic being disprovable, is straight out of creationist rhetoric. they love them some "you can't rely on science, because causality can't be proven, logic can't prove itself, and the only absolute basis for anything is extra-logical and extra-causal (ie. God)." as soon as a creationist mentions causality, head for the exits, the conversation is about to take a turn for the worse - if you don't, you're going to end up arguing for the basis of knowledge itself - and that's a dead end, as far as science goes.
it's especially interesting since the post at the top of his blog is all about how cool and smart he is for being an atheist, unlike the stupid/poor, black/hispanic most religious people are.
99: I'd love to find out one of his novels features a villain named Guido Pastatron 5000, a dangerous medieval robot whose addiction to the poly-fill stuffing in plush animals has kept him undead for 500 million kajillion years.
What would make all of this complete would be Dragonball Z fan-fic cross-over.
All right, I said I'd stop, but it keeps pulling me back in.
"Dennagon felt like taking a dump. Luckily, he hadn't any fecal matter left in his empty stomach." -- The Dragons Triumverate, p.89
61: Is Quonster the same person who runs "nicedoggie.net"?
I'd never made that connection before. But now that you mention it, that would actually make sense.
Man. I was feeling pretty bad about laughing at a guy who's so far down the geek hierarchy he barely even registers. But seeing it all again... a furry. Who brings his own vanity press novel to other people's book signings. And thinks up names like "Uther Penn Sapien." And had quite possibly one of the lamest, most openly pathetic cry-for-help "hate" sites I've ever seen. And wants to be transformed into an anthropomorphic shark. And on. And on. He's the kind of character you couldn't get away with in fiction, because the reader wouldn't be able to suspend disbelief.
Surely this guy is an elaborate piece of performance art, no?
...and claims to have gotten death threats from Marvel Comics, and...
Surely this guy is an elaborate piece of performance art, no?
Of the saddest and most unwitting kind, I'm thinking.
110: I've encountered worse: a pro-child-sex Iranophobe who self-identifies as a white wolf and wants to be transformed into a Lovecraftian Deep One. Yes, he actually lived in his stepmother's basement. He also writes poetry on tribe.net about the evils of bush meat. Bad bad poetry.
I don't think Quon is Misha, because unlike Quon, Misha is not sexually aroused by Wilhelmine architecture. AFAIK.
There's always someone crazier, isn't there. I guess Kenneth can take some comfort in that.
"take some comfort" s/b "perceive a challenge"
If Eng were performance art, how would you rate it as performance art? Would you want to see "inventing insane internet personalities" catch on as a genre?
I ask because I am sometimes tempted to invent an insane internet alter ego, mostly, I think, because insanity seems like it would be liberating.
Would you want to see "inventing insane internet personalities" catch on as a genre?
Are you suggesting that it has not already done?
Neal Pollack had a nutcase performance-art personality for a while there. Done well I think that kind of thing could be pretty neat.
I'm not sure he's stopped. He can really bait people with his new book.
Yeah, I've been secretly hoping the Alternadad thing is a similar deal.
Catcher in the Rye is a typical angst-ridden complaint book written for teenagers, no better than the rubbish teen dramas on television. Certainly, it cannot compete with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which contains both intriguing action and character interactions more interesting than those of any pathetic drama.
And:
It was just more popular amongst professors to analyze "classics" like Hamlet and Tom Sawyer rather than "risible" new material like Superman. Blinded were these childish losers to the objective fact that just because something is 500 pages long, written 400 years ago and contains boring unimaginative characters doesn't mean it is great.
There is poetry in "Blinded were these childish losers".
Ethan Frome vs. Ultimate Spider-Man is great.
Here's Kenneth Eng pretending to be a stereotypical ineloquent black guy, trolling a sci-fi message board for comments about himself.
I'd just like to give a big shout out to my man Afro-bro for starting such interesting conversation. Yo-man You a god you greater than a god you a king. Afro-bro man you da man man. Plus you only care about two things in the world Rap-and Fantasy and that's the truth.
Sadly it seems that schizo was a safe bet:
When I was forced by NYU to attend a therapy session later on in my academic career, I found even more disturbing truths. I recall recounting to the counselor what had happened to me in school. I spoke of the censorship I was enduring, the fact that the Chairman of Tisch was spying on me and distributing my personal information, and the racial discrimination against Asians at NYU. She pretty much nodded off everything I was saying and then offered me a bunch of psychiatric drugs.
You can't medicate away the truth, neil. Besides, those things have never been tested on weresharks.
And finally, to move from the 0th dimension back to the blogosphere, was Kenneth Eng really once published alongside Norman Geras? He was.
...and Tibor Machan! That issue must have been some reading.
There is poetry in "Blinded were these childish losers".
Not good it is, too.
Am I the only one who caught this in White people: bad?
I ... in the past three months and I have only been out of my home a handful of times.he leaves his house like once every two weeks?
Why do I get the feeling this guy has a really powerful World of Warcraft character?
130: Why do I get the feeling this guy has a really powerful World of Warcraft character?
And about 20 Gigs of porn on his hard drive. Featuring Italian chicks.
Unfortunately, I start to lose the ability to laugh at guys like this when I contemplate just how sad their day-to-day existences must be.
AsianWeek editor to owner: "It's not my fault! How was I supposed to know a guy calling himself God of the Universe was a delusional paranoid?"
Hey I have a really powerful WoW character and 20gigs of porn on my hard drive (no Italian stuff though. I should check that out). Am I a weirdo/schitzo/asian dragon nazi?
I think I'll go cry now. Then masturbate.
Our friend Ja/son Fo/rtun/y has commented (scroll a bit; not going to link). Can our other old favorites be far behind?
rfjason.livejournal.com
Juicy! It's been quite some time since I saw you here last.
Yeah I know. There's simply not enough time to do all the truly important things in life.. like reading about cumshots on toilet walls and such.
But Mr Eng is simply irresistable. He's man enough to wake the dead from the deepest of lurkerous slumber.
Does anyone know if he's single?
110: you know there's a fuller, more articulate version of that hierarchy floating around (probably still on brunching.com, really), right?
63: An awesome comment from that MeFi thread.
"I can tell you why this got past the editors: Asian racists just aren't that threatening. Really, what's he gonna do? Ching chong me to death? Poke me with his chopsticks? Come on."
Somehow it's hard to find that funny when one of my favorite profs was killed by Wayne Lo.
