Michael Phillips: Portrait of a loser – Part 4 (Resident poet)

You can read about Michael Phillips sucking up to The Man at his job as Operations Manager for PowWeb.

In this Q&A thing, MJP is asked what his favorite hobbies are. He says he “writes,” “paints,” blah, blah, watches “girlfriend paint,” watches “(way too many) shows on Tivo,” blah, blah. MJP later goes on to say, “I read once that Steve Jobs said every company should have a resident poet, and I think he's right.”

MJP never overtly says that he is the resident poet, though it is implicitly clear that he is calling himself the poet.

I don’t write poetry. I never have. I don’t read the stuff. But let me tell you about poets. Real poets. Poets never call themselves poets. Poets don’t suck up to and work for The Man –- at least not for as long as he is saying he does (2 years). Poets can’t tolerate The Man for any length greater than 3 months. Tops! Poets don’t own Tivos. Poets don’t have girlfriends because they’re interested in cock, and even if they happen to like girls, they cannot obtain girlfriends, because they never make enough money for them. The true poet is a man who feels like his nuts are in vice and his asshole is violated. The true poet has nothing left but agony, despair, and anger. (Of course a true poet can be a woman too. I don’t mean to sound sexist. It’s just different for a man.)

Resident poet. Is MJP fucking kidding me? MJP wants to position himself as an art fag yet you can’t be an art fag and suck up to The Man at the same time. It is the pressure of living outside of the realm of The Man that gives you the pathos and creative freedom necessary to be an art fag. I can at least respect an art fag, but a weekend art fag disgusts me beyond belief. They are intolerable. Worse than The Man himself.

Michael Phillips: You are a contradiction. Remember when Captain Kirk convinced that robot who was bent on exterminating the Enterprise to blow itself up because it had contradictory programming? You are that robot. You are a living contradiction.  You are living a lie. The lie of nobody going nowhere who thinks he’s a poet. You’re an embarrassment to true art fags everywhere. You make them sick. You must carry out your prime directive, Michael Phillips, just like the robot. You know what you must do.

I still haven’t gotten to MJP’s letter yet. I intend to dissect what the motherfucker said to me, line by line. All in good time.