Hey there people-- this is Becket here. The whole "grungeservative" thing was my idea. Drake and Elliot didn't like it at first, but I talked 'em into it over a beer at Last Call on Thursday. I mean hey-- they're the ones in the band (Drake's Raft). What it was was that they were kinda pissed at me when I first came up with it. They wouldn't admit it, but they were. You see, they're the ones who're always writing all the poetry and prose in the context of the Western Canon, in addition to the cool treatises on the death of postmodern liberalism, while all I do is the graphics and CGI stuff and things. Now y'all know that brevity is the soul of wit, so like when I came up with the one word which encompassed the entire jollyroger.com enterprise, they knew they were beat. But anyway, we're all still friends, and I've been buyin' as of late, just to cheer 'em up, and I let Drake win at tennis yesterday. I've been letting Elliot win at golf ever since I came up with the whole pirate motif. And the more I think about it, the cooler it is. When I hear the word "grungeservative," I picture myself eating steak or something, listening to the Rolling Stones or maybe the Smashing Pumpkins if my girlfriend's around, even though she's kinda getting tired of 'em too, and reading Shakespeare, waiting for Rush to perform Reality.
I was so psyched about my fantastic contribution to the contemporary WWW literary revolution, that I decided to let the cool people at Rolling Stone know about it all. It would be selfish to keep the Grungeservative Literary Renaissance all to ourselves, and we're compassionate people. I might also send a letter to The National Review, because P.J. O'Rourke writes for them too.
Dear Rolling Stone,
I invite you to sail on over to our WWW site, www.jollyroger.com, the home port of the generation-x intellectual. Over 30,000 fans and stow-aways have signed their souls aboard The Jolly Roger, hailed the flagship of the WWW Grungeservative Literary Revolution.
We like the music, but we don't do the drugs, and we wish the liberal boomers would stop handing us condoms. Why don't they go use 'em on their third wife/husband/companion/roommate, and let the young alone to dream of romance and immortal love? The Jolly Roger was recently ranked in the top 5% of all WWW sites, and we sold over 100 of our cool jollyroger.com t-shirts this past week, along with copies of Moby Dick. Moby Dick is a novel about whaling.
Postmodern editors, administrators, slackademics, and professors, when entrusted with the helms of our presses and universities, forfeited on their sacred responsibility to sustain a moral course for society. The mission of the Good Ship is to take up the slack and revive Great Literature, such as that which has been banned for promoting violence against whales. A new popular culture centered about contemporary works written in the context of the Great Books will play a fundamental role in reforming society and saving our institutions from being subject to further decadence. I believe that no medium is superior to that of the printed word in nurturing the rational part of the human soul-- the foundation upon which the two pillars of Democracy, freedom and moral responsibility, are erected. Great Literature alone can navigate the vast depths of man's moral conscience and retrieve the spiritual treasures that lie there.
As a physics graduate student I have been taught by Reality to trust not The Barnacle of Higher Education, nor the intellectually indifferent university president, nor the NEA, nor the NEH, nor the corporate conglomerate presses. For they all look ed on in indifference, in silence, or in satisfaction as the heritage our forefathers conceived of and died for, in which all men are created equal and the two-parent family is a cool idea, was desecrated. They stood by and handed us condoms as God, who Jefferson humbly credited with giving us all the gift of freedom, was excommunicated from the ivied campuses, so as to make room for the perverse context in which the nihilistic, Marxist politics of the skin color scholars and gender generals today prevails.
Thus today I find myself part of a generation which perceives that after being bound by holy matrimony there's a fifty-fifty chance that we will ultimately say, "just kidding." I find myself part of a generation that wonders at the use of learning all the multicultural crap, when fading fast is the institution in which one can learn to trust one's father. I am part of a generation which was denied the sacred, and given Snoop Doggy Dogg.
Members of my generation will be rewarded with fame and vast fortunes for conforming to liberal artistic standards and destroying themselves with heroin, but if we write a rhyming love sonnet, we will be kicked out of class by a feminist. I pen this letter knowing that Rolling Stone has one of the few New York addresses where these truth-inspired words can be sent to and read without inspiring dismay, trepidation, and resentment.
And I write to the noble Rolling Stone not to lament, but to exalt. For upon the WWW the crew of the Jolly Roger and I have found a frontier equal to our pioneering spirits. We have longed to sail free of the socialist-tinged institutions of higher education, where the pernicious liberal bureaucrats deconstructed the Truth after theorizing that only in a postmodern void could the mediocre reign supreme. We have fabricated a formidable frigate from the planks of conservatism to keep our thoughts and ideals afloat as we sail the world, battling the forces which seek to destroy the eternal in our souls. The Jolly Roger is armed with the Western Canon, and she is prepared to deliver broadside blasts of truth to resentnik vessels sneakin' up on the port side in the postmodern fog. As Drake recently said on the phone to his mom while telling her not to worry, "She's built from Oak planks of reason, riveted with rhyme, designed to voyage across all of time."
Avast! Upon this deck sober thought reigns, and words mean things. Smoking dope isn't cool here-- reading the immortal words of the Western Canon is. Learning three chords, shooting heroin, and selling yer soul to David Geffen just won't cut it aboard me immaculate frigate, nor will brown-nosing yer feminist instructor. I let me peers know that they're welcome to conform to what Trent Reznor needs them to be, but I shall confiscate the bogus idea that they are independent people from their minds, and replace it with the fact that they are liberal pawns, accepting pornographic bribes in exchange for voting for liberals to spend the money they will never earn. Slackers are welcome to walk the plank and get left in Reality's wake. But the free-thinkers shall join me in pirating the profound context of the Great Books which has been buried 'neath postmodernism, feminism, nihilism, and MTV, and returning it to its rightful owner-- the people. Liberals who stand in the way of our Destiny shall soon sink in the wake of our Ship.
Enclosed in this envelope please find a copy of The Red Avengers of All that is Right And True's Declaration of Independence From Slackers. This call to arms is popular amongst my peers, and it has been picked up by several WWW publications, including The Internet Herald, The Revolutionary, The Jolly Roger, and The Carolina Review. I'm sure that Rolling Stone, situated on the cutting edge of contemporary culture, will be interested in publishing it.
A lot of people are psyched to see what we're saying getting said. We speak from the heart, and while this inspires controversy, it is also forms the foundation of our credibility. We're providing generation-x an alternative to alternative consisting of a voice inspired by truths higher than heroin. The WWW is allowing us and our goatees to have fun filling the spiritual void created and ma intained by the postmodern power-mongerers. We're proud to be serving the world with Great Contemporary Literature, as the twenty-seven year old Captains of THE JOLLY ROGER.
And alas-- as there is little chance that a postmodern liberal will touch any of this with a ten foot oar, and as it happens that postmodern liberals edit The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, Spin, and New York in general, I was hoping that Rolling Stone might be able to help get the word out concerning all the ruthless fun we're having aboard the Good Ship. Please be sure to puruse the encouraging responses we've received: http://jollyroger.com/beaconway/response.html.
Awhile back this one Hollywood agent like tried to get me to write a screenplay for the The Drake Raft Field Trip. He bought me meals and all, but like the thing is, I'd rather have it published and read first, before OliverStoneBradPitt get a hold of it. I mean I wouldn't mind seeing their postmodern interpretation (it'd make a good ad), but like not without the real thing out there too. Somebody in the entertainment industry is going to make some serious money off of exalting the peoples' moral conseciences with the sober Truth, but it probably won't be Death Row records.
Rather than murdering that which I had created, I decided to set out to revive the cultural context in which the subtle and the profound, embodied in the printed word, can be appreciated. Hence the www literary renaissance. The wind has just begun to rise. I would be grateful for a mention in your intellectually revered pages.
Happy Holidays
Becket "Bluebeard" Knottingham
P.S. And don't forget to order your jollyroger.com t-shirt, and pick up a copy of Moby Dick while you're at it! http://jollyroger.com/shirt.html
P.P.S. My only literary awards to date have been getting kicked out of Joyce Carol Oates' creative writing class at Princeton.
Ahoy! Drop the crew a line! 
To: becket@jollyroger.com
Subject: Ahoy!Ahoy maties!,
I'm just writting to send a message to ye'all that your site is truely magnificant. I'm a newcomer me'self, an aussie chick with a love of literature.
Your newest shipmate, casio132.
To: becket@jollyroger.com
Subject: Re: Ahoy rather be red! Welcome aboard THE JOLLY ROGER!Avast!
I've found me ship at last! Is there yet romance, chivary, men willing to write rhyming poetry to win a wench? (As I did, so long ago) still longing for that magic when words stir more than intellect? I'm astounded, but...
Why not!
Regards, RB red
To: becket@jollyroger.com
Subject: businessphilosophy screedDear Mr. Knottingham:
I found the Jolly Roger site by accident, looking for likely sites for my students to explore (I teach early American history, never one of the "hot sellers" in academics), and read through your essay. As a Unitarian-leftist- skeptic academic who has (oddly enough) never had any trouble connecting the greats of the past with the present day, I can only say "good for you"--the renaissance will come in time, the jeep and (maybe) the girl hopefully a little sooner.
With best wishes,
David
Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy
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