Trolls

happy st. troll’s day!

ha ha! you have just experienced an april fool’s troll, which is possibly an even more trollish holiday than the one pictured above. holidays in general tend to attract the trolls, particularly those that involve excessive amounts of glee at one wit overcoming another, as in april “troll’s” day, or as in those that involve excessive amounts of drinking and shiny beads, such as st. troll’s day or mardi troll (tt-troll tuesday-for short). we recommend to our readers, unless they are particularly intrepid anthropologists, to remain safely beneath their bridges on such days, so as to avoid the other trolls’ festivities.

a very special trolls.tumblr.com series: poetrolls.

william troll williams

while reading the poem, try to appreciate how william troll williams uses the sensory experience of the transgressive act of eating someone else’s plums to create the sense impression of a troll cave. the plums, actually belonging to someone else, conjuring images of the conflict about rights of use of the troll bridge, are a perfect vehicle to explore the experience of being a troll. the dark, cold, possibly damp icebox clearly represents a particularly desirable trollcave, while the deceptively simple language, consisting largely of monosyllabic words, is reminiscent of the earlier discussed troll font, reading solely “moar moar moar moar….”

(forthcoming: an investigation into “trollcatz”)

this is just to troll

I have eaten
the plums [trolls]
that were in
the icebox [cave]

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they [those trolls] were delicious
so sweet 
and so cold

thanks to a tip from some faithful readers, we have discovered the ultimate method to express frustration with those trolls in our lives: the “oh troll” font. clink on the link posted below, and scroll down to download the font entitled “oh troll.” pictured above, then, is a screen shot of a font reading these words:

The troll, as a phenomenon, has recently burst onto the classics reading room scene, rendering it impossible for others to enjoy its unique delights.

note how these letters, when converted into “oh troll,” read only one word, a meaningless, guttural noise expressing dissatisfaction, frustration, and the slight keen of grief. alternatively, in a different interpretive register, this droning chant could represent the unfulfillable desire of the modern capitalist commodity troll.

do not hesitate, then, dear readers, to explore your own inner trollish longings. perhaps this “oh troll” font will reveal to you your latent psychological desires for dark caverns and bridge undersides, commodity fetish and classics reading rooms.

pictured above we have another layered example of typical troll behavior. not only are the bicyclists clearly trolls, as the troll in the background appears to be wearing a typical knit hat common among the stylish rasta troll, but they are also riding upon the sidewalk, an activity that is threatening to pedestrians and generally trollish. the same drive that compels trolls to hoard their bridge-usage operates in this instance; the bicycling trolls are unwilling to share the sidewalk, preferring instead to mow down passers-by.

the image is not only significant to troll studies for its photographic content, however. anyone who would take the trouble to caption a photograph with the decisive slogan “sideWALK not sideRIDE” is clearly someone full of enough rage and free time to qualify as a troll. we can easily picture this troll retreating back to his or her den, perhaps even chuckling trollishly as he or she affixes the appropriate text to the offensive image. the solitary status of the photoshop troll as contrasted to the communal, fun-loving bicycling trolls displays two oppositional modes of troll behavior: those who prefer to troll in groups and those who prefer to troll alone.