tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88227402024-03-07T18:54:10.804-06:00Recursive Bee_..DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.comBlogger276125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-8702228661629388342014-01-31T18:40:00.003-06:002014-01-31T18:40:48.143-06:00I mispronounced “consortium” in front of a consortium<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d1801; font-family: Georgia, Palatino, 'Palatino Linotype', Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22px;">I said it like “consort-ee-um” and the consortium rolled its eyes. I knew I had messed up, but how often do you get to talk to a consortium, so I kind of felt like “It’s an honor just to be nominated.”</span><br />
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I kept talking for a while but I was aware I had goofed. I think it’s because I read a lot and don’t talk to a lot of people, so I say things in my head that I don’t get a chance to say out loud and sometimes the wrong pronunciation sticks. Eventually I stopped talking because the consortium was just looking at me. </div>
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It just looked at me, but I couldn’t tell if it was looking at me with interest or pity or what. This was at a New Year’s party, I should say, and I had to talk loud to get my voice over the crowd, and I thought maybe it hadn’t heard me and that’s why it wasn’t answering me, but then the consortium started slowly pivoting away from me, so I was like “oooohhhh-kaaaay”. It was moving very slowly and I felt like everyone was watching it move slowly.</div>
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Here’s a true thing, this is actually the truth: when I was younger, I knew the word “epitome” and I said it correctly out loud, but when I read it, I pronounced it in my head like “epi-tome” and I think my brain actually categorized these as two different words. I mean, I didn’t literally think these were two different words, I didn’t think that hard about it, but I definitely remember one day in high school, walking to Algebra II and having this realization that the word I’d been saying in my head when I read it and the word I said out loud whenever it came up were the same. I guess it doesn’t come up that often in conversation. The consortium was moving to a different part of the room.</div>
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I was over by the table with the crudités and the consortium was going over to a different area where some people were smoking. It bugged me for a while, to be honest! It kind of nagged me that I had done something wrong, like maybe I had offended it? I kind of go out of my way sometimes to not bother people. It was only later on the train when my friend Andy said, “What were you talking about with the consortium?” and I was like, oh, whoops.</div>
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“Nothing,” I said to Andy.</div>
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Andy lives in Carroll Gardens and I’m in Windsor Terrace, so he got off a few stops before me. The consortium had still been at the party when we left, and I hadn’t said goodbye or anything.</div>
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My phone was at like 2% so I had a while after Andy got off the train to just sit there and think about some things that I could have done differently, or maybe should do differently, in the future. </div>
DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-63508735455511372692014-01-06T16:24:00.001-06:002014-01-06T16:24:58.754-06:00Iris: A Hippo Story<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In 1995 or thereabouts, I wrote a poem about a hippo and made it into a book for my sister. I don’t remember the specifics, other than once every five years I would remember to do something nice for her (also she told me once that she had read that Mikhail Baryshnikov told Lea Thompson that she was too stocky to be a ballerina, and I guess that stuck with me).</div>
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<b><a href="https://medium.com/p/8962ed26d364" target="_blank">AND NOW HERE IT IS ON THE INTERNET.</a></b></div>
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I had read somewhere that with a children’s book, for a given age, some percentage of the vocabulary should be a little more advanced than that age, and since my sister was going into grad school at the time, some of the words in here are from a GRE study guide (the original book had a glossary in the back; here I put them in as comments — this was before the internet made this look as condescending as it does now).</div>
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To give you some idea of how much I know about anything, the illustrations were done by sketching them in significantly different styles in a sketch book, scanning these drawings in and printing them on standard printer paper, then WATER COLORING THE PRINTER PAPER (if you don’t know why this is a bad idea rest peacefully in the knowledge that it is a bad idea) and then going over that with pencil where I thought it still looked too bad. This perfectly yielded the amateurish yet extremely fussy look I was going for no just kidding I just don’t know how to do anything. Then I gave it to Kinkos and asked them to wiro-bind it because that’s the classy way to bind things.</div>
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I also gave a copy to a few other people, including my parents. My dad always liked it a lot, and I thought I would put it up here as a sort of tribute to him. There are a lot of things I would change about it now, but there are still some things I like about it. If you like it, find someone and be nice and/or funny to them, which is what my dad liked to do. XOXO</div>
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DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-21678345980561596072013-11-13T22:22:00.001-06:002015-06-10T21:48:53.284-05:00This is a thing I wroteabout cake vs. pie, and people coming over to my house, and my dad.<br />
<br />
I should have called it <b>These Indomitable Internet Friends Met Up To Decide Whether Cake Or Pie Was Better. But What They Discovered Changed Their Lives Forever</b> but instead I called it "A Corroborating Opinion" because it agreed with the prior day's post about the same meet-up; so anyway, <a href="https://medium.com/@MrBikferd/cake-vs-pie-2088794d69b1">this is it</a>.<br />
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<br />DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-60843053892617656412012-09-18T16:49:00.001-05:002012-09-18T17:14:43.030-05:00Periodically<br />
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I think of a book I bought a long time ago that I thought was funny, and then I type about it and then I ask Splitsider if they want to publish what I just typed and three times now they've said "Sure."<br />
<br />
2. ???<br />
3. Profit<br />
<br />
Anyway, <a href="http://splitsider.com/2012/09/the-invention-of-nostalgia-inside-the-national-lampoons-1964-kaleidoscope/">this is the latest one</a>, a writeup on a high school year book parody that <i>National Lampoon</i> put out in 1974 (but about a high school in 1964). PLEASE TRY TO KEEP UP.<br />
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I hope you enjoy this walk down yesterday's main street with me.DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-43747891646951111802012-05-04T11:50:00.001-05:002016-01-20T09:41:57.626-06:00Opposites AttackHi!<br />
I wrote this thing for a kind-of online book club for Videogum commentors about <i>A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius</i>: <a href="https://medium.com/@MrBikferd/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-dave-eggers-5d1e40d07d1#.gw833y7oh">MOBFD | Opposites Attack</a><br />
<br />
(other write-ups will appear next week, and then no one will talk about this book again for twelve years)
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<br />
O<span style="font-size: x-small;">MISSIONS</span>: Some really great sex scenes were omitted, at the request of those who are now married or <i>involved</i>. Also removed was a fantastic scene—100 percent true—featuring most of the piece's primary characters and a whale. Further, this version reflects the omission of a number of sentences, paragraphs, and passages. Among them:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE: </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Reading him made me speak and even think like him – only DFW
and Thomas Pynchon had previously done that.</span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">AND THEN A LITTLE LATER:</span> <span style="font-weight: normal;">And then this <a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/movies/05away.html">great, great takedown in the New York Times</a> that I still go back and reread sometimes and about which movie Napoleon Complex <a href="http://videogum.com/191852/being-white-is-hard-somewhere/movies/trailer/comment-page-1/#comment-7501942">once used the F word at me</a>. ON THE INTERNET WHERE IT STAYS FOREVER.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">AND THEN STILL LATER: </span>Donnell Alexander read from <i>Ghetto Celebrity</i>, a book that
was slated to be one of the first books published by McSweeney’s, and he paused
– maybe in mid-sentence, sure, why not
– and looked at the crowd and said, “I
just realized this isn’t a very McSweeney’s style book.”<br />
<br />
There were non-white, non-male writers, though, I think? <a href="http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/fat-ladies-floated-in-the-sky-like-balloons">Amanda Davis</a> springs to mind and Zadie Smith hung around the main office for a while. I
guess there were a few ladies, but two of the ones that seemed most striking at
the time –<br />
<br />
(1) Lucy
Thomas, whose slice-of-life stories (collected in “Jokes told in Heaven About
Babies”) become distracted and undercut their own narratives with
non-sequiturs, and<br />
(2) Elizabeth
Klemm whose “Mr. Squishy” reads like if <i>Infinite
Jest</i> was a short story<br />
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">–</span><span style="font-size: 7pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">
</span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">turned out to actually be by dudes (Eggers and David
Foster Wallace)</span><br />
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">IN THE "BACKLASH" SECTION:</span> <span style="font-weight: normal;">Issue 16 of McSweeney’s in 2005 came with a free comb (a
throwback to the Galapagos haircuts?), and when I bought it, the <i>employee at the McSweeney’s store</i> rolled
her eyes when she showed it to me.) </span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">AND SOMEWHERE TOWARD THE END:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span><b>Thorn: </b>When I
first got your book, um, in the mail, when I asked for them to send it to me,
because I’d heard it was quite funny, I was worried that it would be another
one of these McSweeney Asshole Books, where it’s just a lot of unnecessary verbiage
…<br />
<b>Hodgman: </b>You mean
it’s not?<br />
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<b>Thorn: </b>…Well, I,
you know, I mean to some extent it is, I don’t mean to underplay the McSweeney
aspect quality of it. But were you worried that it would just fall too deeply
into that kind of house style of McSweeney’s?</div>
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<b>Hodgman: </b>I wasn’t
worried about that because McSweeney’s was the venue that allowed me to explore
this voice and this subject matter to begin with. I mean, obviously without
McSweeney’s, I never would have written “Ask a Former Professional Literary
Agent”; I never would have developed, I think, this sort of, this particular
voice of the eternal authority who’s also kind of a blinkered idiot. But more
to the point, McSweeney’s gave me this sort of excuse to write funny, because
before that I was writing serious short stories that had some comic stuff in
it, but McSweeney’s was, as a literary journal to publish serious fiction
against experimental fiction against sheer absurdist comedy, I mean, it was
very liberating for me. So if it had only reached people who appreciated
McSweeney’s, I would probably be pretty happy, because (a) I owe those people a
lot as it is and (b) I think there are quite a few of them, you know, who dig
it. But I also felt going into it, that I wanted the book to reach as many people
as possible and it would be inevitable and I think not unreasonable to compare
it to McSweeney’s. I had no idea what that audience might be and I did suspect
that it might just reach those people who are already attuned to that
McSweeney’s style, who would like it but I’m glad to say that it has reached
those people and a little beyond too.</div>
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[and then later]</div>
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I am lucky, I suppose, that I’ve evaded the McSweeney’s
Asshole Book label because I know that there are people out there who, no
matter what the quality of the work and no matter what the particular point of
view of the individual author they just hate hate hate McSweeney’s. It just
really bugs some people. And I guess the worry I had was that the book would
find its way into the hands of a journalist or a reviewer who felt that way and
simply because they would associate me with something – that I believe in – but
because of that, they would be mean about it. And luckily that hasn’t happened.
Until right now, actually. So thanks. </div>
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<br />DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-17962605045970072442012-03-13T16:09:00.000-05:002012-03-13T16:13:20.449-05:00Goodnight Moon: Some Continuity Errors<br />
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<ol>
<li>On the “comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush” page, the brush and comb look like they are about four inches apart, but on the “goodnight light” page (and others), the comb is practically touching the brush.</li>
<li>Before and after the “goodnight mittens” page, it shows a pair of socks next to the mittens on the drying rack (or whatever), but on this page it shows just the mittens by themselves with no socks.</li>
<li>In prior (and subsequent) pictures of the “little house”, the door on the house has a doorknob but on the “goodnight little house” page, the door is missing the doorknob.</li>
<li>Prior to my owning this book, my apartment had an “office”.</li>
<li>The picture of the kittens immediately prior to the “goodnight kittens” page depicts the kittens playing with yarn, as does the subsequent picture, but on the “goodnight kittens” page itself: no yarn.</li>
<li>Prior to my receiving a copy of this book in a gift set of other books by the same author, I would just go to Amazon and buy a bunch of things whenever, but now I think a lot about how much food costs.</li>
<li>Before I had this book, it seemed impossible to me that I would ever have said to someone I loved: “You know, a percentage of me is still a penis”; or: “I’m confused how your having had an episiotomy a week ago prevents me from getting a bj now?” although maybe we can all admit singing “Sometimes all I need is the air that I breathe and
a bj” is objectively funny divorced from the context. </li>
<li>Before the appearance of this book in my home, I didn’t immediately assume strangers I saw on the street were actively attempting to cause harm to people close to me as I walked with them or pushed them in a stroller and then in my head jump off from that image of them (the strangers) potentially hurting my family into playing out scene after scene of my violent retribution, like recent-Korean-movies levels of violence, against these strangers, who in these scenarios that I am imagining would meet with staggering and disturbing consequences at my hand, but in a complicated inversion of what you might expect, this results in the people in my apartment building and just in my general neighborhood looking on me with a new respect instead of pity and this is also mixed with a kind of sexual desire from some of them, but subsequent to my receiving this book, all that, but plus I also oscillate between pity for myself and contempt for myself and how every mundane choice I make is ultimately insufficient, like a perverse <i>Choose Your Own Adventure</i> where every decision leads not merely to a death but to a specifically unimpressive death, the choices I’ll make for the rest of my life spread out before me, forming a polluted, qlipothic tree, on every branch a sour, rancid piece of shit fruit that if this were an overexplainy political cartoon would each be labeled with things like “<span style="font-variant: small-caps;">inadequacy</span>” or “<span style="font-variant: small-caps;">disappointment</span>” or “<span style="font-variant: small-caps;">even the moderate successes in his life can be chalked up to the mere happenstance of his being born into a white middle class family and the entropy that that afforded him</span>” and know that even this pity/contempt is practically a working definition of triviality compared to some of the nightmare stuff that many, many other people legitimately have to deal with, and even my acknowledgment of same just heightens the privileged position from which the solipsism feeds on itself, which just makes the whole feeling of bullshit inadequacy collapse into itself like a melting Klein bottle.</li>
<li>On the “goodnight noises” page, it sort of looks like the brush no longer says “bunny” on it.</li>
</ol>
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</div>DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-9739434682918384862012-01-06T12:00:00.000-06:002012-01-09T09:34:35.231-06:00It's All in Books!<br />
If you like looking at things, here is something I wrote about a <i>Late Night with David Letterman</i> book from 1985:<br />
<a href="http://splitsider.com/2012/01/inside-the-almost-100-successful-1985-late-night-with-david-letterman-book">Inside the Almost 100% Successful 1985 Late Night with David Letterman Book</a><br />
<br />
I am as shocked as you to see it contains a short "interview" with Merrill Markoe and less shocked that it has a reference meant only for <i>Voyagers!</i> Superfans.<br />
<br />
By the way, you look really pretty today!DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-31635823500204603402011-12-27T14:54:00.000-06:002011-12-31T13:57:57.108-06:00The Do Monkeys<br />
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<span id="internal-source-marker_0.15992190688848495"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On Tuesday, arriving in the mail, was – and I use </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">was</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and not </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">were</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> because it was an </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">entity</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a big package, a self-contained TV dinner </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">gestalt</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> – was the Sea Monkeys, all in a shrinkwrap-wrapped package that looked like it could survive being mailed from pretty much anywhere to pretty much anywhere else. </span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I opened it, I was surprised to see the one packet labeled not </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Growth Food</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, but </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Manna</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The Growth Guarantee in Writing was signed and stamped, something no ant farm had ever offered. The whole thing had cost $1.25 plus 50 cents to mail plus another 50 for the rush order, cut out from the back pages of an </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Avengers</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">; it had taken several issues to get an </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Avengers</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that didn’t have the ad on the verso page of actual content (I could have just bought a second copy, it occurs to me now). The Avengers “fight the foes no single super hero can withstand” and one thing about them is they’re more often than not referred to by their real names instead of their super hero names: everyone just calls the Scarlet Witch “Wanda”; the </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">subtext</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is that she is “The Scarlet Witch”. I would one day have enough of subtext; the Sea Monkeys seemed initially free of it.</span></span></span></div>
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">As implied by the ad, the Sea Monkeys all had little tridents. The spines of the males were ridged with plates like the Loch Ness Monster’s (I had seen an artist’s rendering in an old <span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">National Geographic</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> at the doctor’s office; the caption for a picture of a man buying a “Nessie-Burger” read “This man keeps one eye on his change and another on the Loch”. I was, at this time, interested in The Unexplained, and the Loch Ness Monster was often in my thoughts). There was one Sea Monkey with an especially long beard – the king – whose beard only unfurled once it hit the water. The women crossed their legs, barely concealing their genitals, in a move that reminded me of my cousin Lois who untied the back of her bathing suit top to tan evenly at the beach, although I guess those aren’t her genitals. Tail fins blocked male genitals (I will stop saying </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">genitals</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> now), and the babies were neutered little Weeble creatures. They all had scales on their chests like another cousin of mine, Dale. Several of my cousins had weird diseases. I wonder what they think of me; probably that I am a “city slicker,” because they think Indian Head is near Baltimore although we’re over an hour away and anyway there are several cities larger than Baltimore. I look at the skyline and say, “There’s our skyline,” and then I pause and say, “Such as it is.” It gets a laugh. About half the time it gets a laugh.</span><br />
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I had assumed the sea monkeys would look like brine shrimp – </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Artemia salina – </span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but they looked more like elongated </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Precious Moments</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> figurines, only maybe more jaunty and angular. With my ear pressed to the tank, I could hear them speaking in upper register octaves, unsurprising, I guess, as they presumably had tiny, tiny vocal chords; they did not appear to speak English.</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My Crazy Crab (“Sandy Claws”) ignored them for the most part, his large neotenic blue eyes never quite focusing on them (but still smiling the happy smile of mail-order Crazy Crabs) when I would turn his shell toward the tank; I wanted to show him what happy sea creatures were like, because he pretty much stayed in his shell and only came out begrudgingly for races with other Crazy Crabs. I got the name “Sandy Claws” from the ad. I entered him into races, like the ad said. I painted him, like the ad said I should: I painted him red with a blue Atari logo; my Pinewood Derby car had a similar design. </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Atari</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is Japanese for </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">go</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, but he never won a race. My Venus fly trap (mail order, as well, and nameless) continued to eat whatever flies I could catch and in the meantime eyed my Crazy Crab with a kind of mechanical, waiting sedentariness, with eyes, had it had eyes, like a dull-eyed shark. </span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Just as I never named the fly trap, I never named the Sea Monkeys; the ad didn’t recommend it specifically, and so it didn’t occur to me, although there was an obvious distinction between each one, an obvious pecking order; for the men, the more generously bearded held a higher position in the Sea Monkey hierarchy, while with the women, it seemed like the ones with the larger breasts seemed to get by a little easier. These were the first breasts I had ever seen </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">full on</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, except if you count the aborigine breasts in </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">National Geographic</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which were long vinelike breasts. The Sea Monkey breasts were, I guess the word is, </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">pert</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I felt odd looking at them and wondered if they cared or if they were perhaps “libertines,” which at first seemed to be the case, though I realize now this was because they couldn’t see me very well; when the plastic tank was filled with water, it was reflective on the inside. </span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I watched their civilization iterate and then burgeon, and wondered if despotism might be the way to go; it seemed to be working for them. At first, they were mainly focused on procreation, something else I had obtained the bulk of my understanding from </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">National Geographic</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The procreation went on for about a week, untrammeled, but then their long-bearded king had some of his lackeys divide the bottom of the tank with little dotted lines like in sitcoms, and after that each Sea Monkey pretty much stayed in its own little square and things calmed down. Sea Monkey women congregated around those with larger squares. The water took on a tint that I’m pretty sure one would say would have to be the result of pee, but I had thrown away the instructions and didn’t know how to clean it without disrupting the ecosystem.</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The next day when I woke up, they had built little houses for themselves – no windows but doors. I had mail-ordered X-ray specs (“scientific optical principle really works!”) and could watch them through the walls.</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Days passed; someone invented convection, or learned how to control it, to make a self-contained highway cum aqueduct cum mail system. There were large geometric designs carved into the rocks at the bottom of the tank explaining how it worked, as well as many curvilinear animal drawings, for which no one would take credit. </span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Sea Monkeys shot information and sometimes themselves through the tank making it look like documentary footage of a pneumatic tubes mailroom. Sea Monkeys poked their heads out their doors expectantly to see what the convection would bring them that day. This was when one male convected up to the surface of the tank (evaporation had worked its way down about a quarter inch), swallowed water, poked his head out and saw me. He immediately dove and reported to the king; I could see them making plans. The next day three of them addressed me (in English, after all): they held onto the edge of the tank. “You!” they all gargle-shouted in unison. They spoke in exclamatory sentences. When they talked, water came out of their mouths and they kept having to go back down and swallow more into their lungs, and then come up again to shout: “Who are you!”</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I made you,” I said, although of course I had only purchased them, but what I meant was, I was an American. “I’ve watched you grow, and build your houses,” I said, “You’ve developed very rapidly.”</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We know!” they said, “We invented English and convection! Do you know about convection! We hope you do!”</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I do know,” I said, although I had only learned about convection the year before in a science fair experiment that I got an A on because Mr. Damrosch got me confused with Noah Altman.</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“You know a lot of things! You created us and we are grateful! We want to know what you know!” they said, “We want to be more like you!”</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I didn’t want them to be more like me, though, because I was still admiring some of the small, dun, </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">pert</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Sea Monkey nipples of the women, and there was nothing more unlike me that I could think of than that, and also I couldn’t think of anything good that I had that they didn’t, except maybe my Atari or print media and a bike (a Diamondback), so I said, “You’re pretty much on schedule, inventionwise; actually, you’re doing very well. Keep up the good work.”</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“But we have a desire to know!” they all shouted, “We have been procreating and building houses, and eating manna but there must be more to life, we all think! We want to know about the feeling of being disarmed by a first viewing of </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casablanca</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and picking dewberries from behind a fence you’re not supposed to go behind, and doing your laundry with your girlfriend on a rainy Sunday when you’re in your early twenties! We don’t understand the second law of thermodynamics, and it kind of scares us!”</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Listen,” I said, “I don’t know about any of those things either. I only know about procreation because of pictures of aborigines in </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">National Geographic</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and while I’m sure I must have had dewberries by this point, I can’t think of what they taste like. They are not that different from boysenberries, I think. The last movie I saw was </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Unidentified Flying Oddball</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,” (which would later be renamed </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Spaceman in King Arthur’s Court</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> when it was released on video), “and I’m not even 100% sure what manna is. This morning I had Busy Bodies, the brown kind, not the yellow kind. I can flip the score in </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Atari Pinball</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, because I know how to nudge without ever tilting, and I play </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kaboom</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> so well, it’s like I don’t see individual bombs, I see scrolling-down wallpaper, patterns. I don’t do my own laundry, and I don’t have a girlfriend.” They looked at me like they were about to cry, but whereas with dogs (or my cousins) you can tell what they’re thinking to an extent, who can tell with Sea Monkeys? They dove.</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From the back of a </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Captain America </span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I had purchased two invisible goldfish through the mail (“guaranteed to remain invisible permanently”) that arrived around this time, and on a whim had dumped them in the tank with the Sea Monkeys. I watched the Sea Monkeys carefully, trying to figure out if they could see the fish, even if I couldn’t. Maybe their eyes work differently! But the fish, unfortunately, developed a taste for the Sea Monkeys and caused a biotic crisis.</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They swept through the tank, taking great mouthfuls of the populace. The Sea Monkeys looked like they were literally being erased in front of me; you could not see them once they had been swallowed. I could see lots of discussion and fingerpointing among the Sea Monkeys (their main method of debate; it was effective due to the slenderness of their fingers), but eventually they made a kind of coracle and caught the fish, tethering them to the bottom of the tank. After a week, I began to see something that looked like the constellation Pisces in the tank, and I knew that the fish had come down with </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ichthyophthirius multifiliis</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, or Ich. The Sea Monkeys surprised me by inventing vaccination and, when the wealthier ones complained, anesthesia. They used their aqueduct to tell each other about it. </span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They also used the aqueduct centrifugally to launch little plastic balls filled with water outside of the tank, each large enough to hold one to three Sea Monkeys. I found a few under my bed each with a little Sea Monkey floating upside down inside of it. I would find one and then the next day nothing and then the next day another one. Each little ball was labeled “Artemis”. </span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Around this time, there seemed to be a lot of debate about tgfowat and it took me a while to figure out that it meant </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Great Finless One Without a Trident</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, or me. “If there is a tgfowat, then why does He allow Ich?” one of them would say, pointing his long finger. Or: “If there is a tgfowat, then how do we reconcile his omniscience with Free Will?” Then another sea monkey would swim him up to the top of the tank and they would look at me and then both make a “Well, that settles that” face.</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The next day, the next day, days went by. I lose track. They built water filtration plants, a grotto for some of the larger-breasted lady Sea Monkeys, pyramids (which, what?), and from what I could make out, skipped modernism and went straight to post-modernism. Or rather, their modernism and post-modernism were reversed. Also, they did “public schools” and “private schools” the British way. They ousted the king and formed a democracy and then invented Brinkmanship. I was taking some Amazing Hair-Raising Monsters that had seen better days off of my bookshelf and setting up a tableau of </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Star Wars </span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">figures, and I heard a chorus of throat clearings. It was three Sea Monkeys, it turns out descendants of the three that had spoken to me a few weeks before. One was a female; she looked like </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fire With Fire-</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">era</span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Virginia Madsen, I now understand, but I wouldn’t know that for a few more years. She seemed to be their leader; she was wearing Donna Karan. She said (they no longer spoke simultaneously; they no longer seemed as excited), “We’ve invented war and peace and subtext. We have names for things you don’t, like the sound that shoes make when they’re in the dryer and nostalgia for second-hand experiences. We are all closet Francophiles but we also want to be like all those Leftist Jews from the University of Chicago in the ’60s. We are pretty conflicted about the Dreyfus Affair!”</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“M’accuse!” said the sea monkey on her right (my left). </span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Yes,” I said, “I know it looks like I’m not paying attention, but I am. I’m impressed with your health care plan, and foresee that the one we have in our country will need a major overhaul in about ten or fifteen years.”</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We invented Nostradamus a long time ago, and he concurs. We invented east coast colleges, and the following joke.”</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Sea Monkey on her left, my right, spoke up here: “How many Sea Monkeys does it take to screw in a light bulb?” he said, and when I didn’t answer: “Just two, but the trick is getting them in there.” </span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Sea Monkey on her right made a noise like a rimshot. “We have also, you can see,” the leader said, “invented comedians who specialize in sound effects. Carl’s grandfather was a supporting character of several police procedural comedies a few generations back. Carl is thinking now about being a prop comic.” (Carl nodded here, making a noise like a robot nodding.) “Finally,” she said after studying Carl for a second or two, “we have invented a large mythology based on you. Here is a story from the Book of Lassitude.”</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not Carl, but the other one with the Caesar haircut, said, “And many years ago, civilizations ago, tgfowat floated down in his vessel and he said unto all present, ‘Go now, and build giant pyramids for your current king, while I make myself more or less content with lochs and crop circles and Stonehenge and yeti,’ and (lo) the Sea Monkeys present built giant pyramids for their king, over several generations, and many lives were lost in the process, and centuries later, we wondered why they had been built at all, and a few clever ones speculated that it was probably tgfowat who was behind it, since in the olden days he used to appear more often, and so they developed a space program and went into space seeking out He who had told us to build the pyramids in the first place, and when we finally found Him, He said, ‘Noooo, you missed the point..? I had you build the pyramids so you would see the folly of erecting gigantic monuments to one man’s ego, and using that knowledge, would not go to the trouble of developing a space program, itself a monument to the ego of one man.’ Shortly after, Kennedy was shot. Our Kennedy, not your Kennedy.” (Rim shot from Carl here.)</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“What?” I said, “I never did any of that.” I didn’t know much about the space program, but above the stacks of magazines about aborigines in my doctor’s office was an autographed photo of John Glenn in uniform (many years later, 400 million Sea Monkeys would accompany him in his trip into space). “I created you, sure, but I just followed the instructions.”</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It’s a parable,” the female Sea Monkey interrupted, stretching out her long fingers to look at her nails, “You don’t take it literally. We’re just explaining why we haven’t gone into space recently. That and your fly trap ate the last four missions. But what we’re here to tell you, actually, is that we finally figured out the second law of thermodynamics, and we’d like to tell you to stop feeding us. We’re the last generation that will have had things better than their parents. It’s all going to end in a great collapse of sediment and dispersal, with the last survivors of the species understanding the point only as there ceases to be a point any more.”</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Look,” I said (I was just saying out loud what I was thinking), “if I don’t feed you, obviously, you’re going to die; I don’t understand the second law of thermodynamics, but when I start to think too big, about, you know, purpose and meaning, I wait a few days.”</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“In a few days we’ll be gone,” she said, “We have glimpsed the future and it’s mostly prop comics..?” (Carl nodded here) “And it’s frankly not something we care to deal with; centuries of art and commerce, and what do we have? Continued unfulfilled promises of solar power and flying cars and over in France they’ve mastered the non-contagious yawn; we are so over France (our France, not your France). We’ve reached inbrededness levels heretofore only traversed by Dalmatians and the Amish, and we’ve all either done everything there is to do or have the capacity to read about it. We’ve also discovered print media, by the way. We assume you have too.” </span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I didn’t say anything and they didn’t say anything and then they sank, and they didn’t stop sinking until they hit the bottom. What should I have done? </span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I told you I had lost the instructions. What should I have done? I’m asking you, here, now. What do you think I should have done? What I did was I did nothing, but maybe you are a “man of action.” Or a woman. With regard to the joke about the light bulb, when there are too few Sea Monkey males, the females are able to start reproducing asexually. But I stopped feeding them.</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I stopped feeding them, and I watched breasts shrivel and stomachs become distended and aqueducts collapse. The beards of the men kept growing at first, as did their fingernails, but then they shriveled up too. Tiny pyramids crumbled and fell like fragile cakes and settled down to form sedimentary coral reefs and Sea Monkey ghost towns. </span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the mail a week or so later was the issue of </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Avengers</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> where you learn a new potential origin of the Scarlet Witch (“Wanda”) and Quicksilver. It’s an interesting issue, one that resolves about nine plotlines and introduces Bova who is like a cow-woman? It is hard to explain but it reads well, it really does, but the thing I couldn’t stop looking at was the ad toward the back. In small letters at the bottom, the ad said that the picture did not represent </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Artemia salina</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. So why had I expected </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Artemia salina</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? I had checked the box for the super-rush order (50 cents extra). “A Bowlfull of Happiness.” </span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sic. </span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Instant Pets.” It </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">was</span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> an instant. Everything is an instant (I would one day learn). Everything will disappoint you. Comic books turn sepia and are sold on eBay. Harold von Braunhut was a member of Aryan Nations.</span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My Crazy Crab left his shell – I looked in with the X-ray specs (“loads of laughs and fun at parties”) – and the fly trap died because I had successfully rid the five-block area around my house of flies and the manual didn’t offer a backup plan. I waited for the mail to come daily, painfully, for a Boba Fett action figure I had ordered with proofs of purchases from other figures. </span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I didn’t know it yet, but the one that would eventually arrive in the mail would have the ability to launch a small plastic rocket from his back and would be recalled by Kenner a month later. </span><span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rockets! </span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I thought, momentarily slipping into an exclamatory sentence. I made him fly around the room, and I buried him in the sandy area in our backyard (making a treasure map to the site; ten steps past the rain barrel, and left four) and I said to myself then: I will dig him up again later, maybe, many years later, perhaps, many years from now, when he is worth something. </span></div>
</span></div>DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-18964814633414342732011-12-19T16:25:00.002-06:002011-12-31T13:58:54.868-06:00The Year's Best Book<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">...of 1977! </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">#switcheroo</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">SO: I waited for another indie band to <a href="http://splitsider.com/2011/02/instead-of-playing-music-yo-la-tengo-performs-an-entire-seinfeld-episode">act out a sitcom</a> for a while and it didn't look like it was going to happen, so instead here is <span style="background-color: #fdfdfd; color: #272727; line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://splitsider.com/2011/12/inside-the-strange-writer-centric-1977-snl-book">a write-up I did on a book edited by Anne Beatts and John Head</a> about the first two seasons of Saturday Night Live on <i>Splitsider</i>. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fdfdfd; color: #272727; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fdfdfd; color: #272727; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>IT IS DEFINITELY WORTH SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 98 CENTS AND $82.78.</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fdfdfd; color: #272727; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fdfdfd; color: #272727; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fdfdfd; color: #272727; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Everyone who reads this write-up gets five dollars!</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fdfdfd; color: #272727; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">xoxo</span></span>DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-17852732081463039162011-02-10T14:06:00.000-06:002011-02-10T14:06:11.070-06:00Someone should really update this blog or something<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">...thought the pirate who then proceeded to dig for BURIED TREASURE!</span></i><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">(still got it)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Hello; here are two recentish things that are not here, but rather elsewhere:</span><br />
<br />
<ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">A frankly inconsequential piece on Kavalier & Clay: <a href="http://bookgum.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/%E2%80%9Ctell-don%E2%80%99t-show%E2%80%9D/">"Tell, Don't Show"</a></span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">A short write-up of a Yo La Tengo show which comprised an entire episode of Seinfeld over at <a href="http://splitsider.com/2011/02/instead-of-playing-music-yo-la-tengo-performs-an-entire-seinfeld-episode/">Splitsider</a></span></li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(And, of course, there is my <a href="http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=site:videogum.com+%22Patrick+M%22">other blog</a>.)</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">(I guess)</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">XOXOXOXOXOXOOXO </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">LOVE YOU! MEAN IT! </span></div>DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-4856105169583033622010-05-25T23:55:00.000-05:002011-12-27T14:55:15.185-06:00The Dog Party<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Brief Introduction</span></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> <b><i>Or: What We Were Doing When The Dogs Came In</i></b><i><br />
</i> <br />
I had a book when I was a kid called <i>Go, Dog, Go</i>.<br />
At the end of that book, a bunch of dogs have a “Dog Party”. <br />
<br />
I actually got to see a kind of Dog Party, and this is basically that story.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">My sister was doing a word jumble and I was about to watch something on television when our two German shepherds (Abby and Pepper) came in.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">They looked at each other and then the older one, Abby, said, “We want to go for a walk.”</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We didn’t know what to think! This was the first time we had heard her speak, but we decided to go along with them. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
(To clarify, we’d said “Speak” to them before, but this was to get them to bark. We had not asked them to speak when Abby asked to go for a walk.)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I took Abby’s leash because I was older, and my sister took Pepper’s leash, since she was the smaller dog. Pepper was not the brightest dog in the world, but she meant really well, and you could tell she really looked up to Abby.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We took them for a walk. I was afraid that we were going to miss an important show, like </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>The Krypton Factor</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, the American version, which was hosted by Dick Clark, and which I had been dying to see, but the longer we walked, the harder it was for me to remember what show it was we were going to watch. My sister said, “You know how to speak English?” and Abby nodded.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> <br />
“What other languages do you know?” she said, but Abby just gave her a weird look. I thought maybe Abby had learned English from listening to us or maybe television and wouldn’t have any idea that there were other languages. But then I thought of Godzilla movies. And I kept trying to remember what the show was. <br />
<br />
“What show were we going to watch?” I asked my sister. She shrugged. I got the feeling that she didn’t really watch television for herself or to improve her understanding of the world, but rather to spend time with me. I thought maybe what I was doing seemed inherently cool to her, because I was older (in the same way Pepper looked up to Abby, maybe). I was still thinking of these things, when we came to the Ditch.<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Quickly, About the Ditch</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span> <br />
The Ditch was a ditch that separated the bad part of town from the good part of town. Bad kids hung out at the Ditch. One of my friends always said that he found a bunch of old rubbers there, but I didn’t believe him. It was like one of those things where he said his friend’s friend had found them. We hunted for crawdads there, and once I caught about twelve and brought them home, and my mom, after consulting with the neighbor, decided they were OK to eat, and so we had them for dinner with corn on the cob and spinach because my mom insisted that there be something green on the table. <br />
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Whenever we ate at the kitchen table, Abby would look in the window at us from the backyard, her paws up on the brick window sill outside. Her nose was short, so she had a distinct look from other German shepherds; she looked more like a panda in a lot of ways when you faced her head on. I said, “Hey, Abby, do you remember the time I caught those crawdads?” and she furrowed her brow and shook her head. “You were looking in the window,” I said.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The dogs hadn’t spoken in a while, and I was beginning to think that I had imagined it all. If my sister hadn’t been there I’m not sure I would have kept going. We had been walking along the ridge of the Ditch, but now we went down into it and into a huge drainage pipe. I didn’t see any bad kids. <br />
<br />
My sister and the dogs were able to walk OK in the pipe, but I had to duck down. There were bugs that looked like cockroaches, except that they were red, running around the walls of the pipe like in the game </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>Tempest</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">. The diameter of the pipe seemed to be getting narrower and narrower as we walked, and the light from the opening of the pipe was getting smaller as we got further and further away from it, so that it was almost a small dot of light, like when you turn off TV and everything compresses like a reverse Big Bang, and finally when I didn’t think I could go any more without getting down on my hands and knees, Abby took a sharp left turn and we followed and came out into an opening. The area was lit with low wattage bulbs that hung from somewhere up high but the ceiling of wherever we were was saturated too dark to see. There were about twenty dogs there.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Introductions</span></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> <br />
Abby introduced us to the dogs, and after each introduction would say something conspiratorially under her breath, like she would point to a West Highland Terrier and say “This is Laddie,” and after Laddie said hello and walked off, Abby would whisper, “Laddie loves to play board games but isn’t very good at any of them. He thinks a Ouija board is a board game, and the object is to be the first one to spell an embarrassing word.” Or: “This is Thunder.” (A husky.) “He doesn’t understand what glass is.” Or: “This is Fletch.” (A golden retriever.) “He barks at Asians and people wearing hats but not Asians wearing hats.” They weren’t all bad, though. There was an Airedale whose name I forgot who knew how to work an Atari, and there was a black and white dog named Buttons whose face his owner had taken a picture of and pasted on a kite that was entered into a Cub Scout kite flying contest and he got third place (the Cub Scout did).<br />
<br />
After each introduction, the dog would say hello and shake my hand, and then walk over to my sister and shake her hand. Their paws were all wet from walking in the ditch, but I didn’t think much about it. None of them seemed too concerned that we were going to run off and tell people they could speak English.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Then they had a meeting. I couldn’t really follow what was going on. I asked my sister if she understood what was happening and she said not really. But I wasn’t scared! It wasn’t like they were planning world domination or how to move up the food chain or anything like that. It was sort of like a social club. They talked about new food some of them had had. Buttons had just had Kibbles ’n Bits for the first time, and this other mop-looking dog looked like he was going to go crazy, because he was the only one who hadn’t tried it. Pepper said she liked Kibbles ’n Bits even more than Gravy Train (which you add hot water to and it makes its own gravy). I made a mental note.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Dog Chanteys</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span> <br />
Then after all this, the dogs began to sing a bunch of songs they called “dog chanteys”. And this is the reason I am telling you all of this. Because no one has believed me ever since. Even my sister. Like a week later, I asked her, “Remember when the dogs took us to that dog party?” and she looked at me like I was insane. I told her, “Pepper said she liked Kibbles ’n Bits more than Gravy Train,” and she said, “Gravy Train is gross,” and I said, “It’s not any more gross than Crazy Cow!” (Which is a cereal she eats. Crazy Cow turns your milk into chocolate milk.) I don’t know why she didn’t remember.<br />
<br />
But even though I couldn’t get anyone to believe me, sometimes when I was alone with the dogs in the garage after throwing the ball for them after dinner, or if I remembered that I had forgotten to give them their heartworm pills and I went into the backyard to give it to them late at night, or just sometimes when I would go out to say goodnight to them before I went to bed, I would sit down next to them, and make eye contact with them, and sing one of these songs, and they would join in quietly (it always worked best at dusk). The one I could always get them on was the one about the Space Dog, Laika, although I think I’m missing some verses from that one.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Dog Chantey #1</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Good Laika flew / On Sputnik II:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">November ’57. (Hey)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Formica’s new / Now, so are you;</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Your eyes survey the heavens. (Hey)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">O Procyon! O Syrius!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">O my Dog, you must think me delirious.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>CHORUS</b> <i>(sung by all dogs)</i>:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Though it’s howl at the moon</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Upside-down in a spoon,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">A dog is your buddy, or so you’ll know soon.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Good Laika, she / Faced heat and stress</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But she could not absorb it. (Hey)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But what we see / As “sky”, this noblesse</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Muttnik knew as “orbit” (Hey)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">So dreaming dogs at late o’clocks</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Must kick their dewclaw, plus their hocks.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>CHORUS</b> <i>(sung by all dogs)</i>:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Though it’s howl at the moon</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Upside-down in a spoon,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">A dog is your buddy, or so you’ll know soon.</span><br />
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This was one that Abby knew really well and all of the rest of the dogs were struggling with it and at least Buttons was pretending to sing but not actually making any noise; he was just moving his mouth and looking around nervously. This next song was a dog favorite, though, it was clear to me.<br />
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<div style="margin-left: 18pt;">
<b>Dog Chantey #2</b><br />
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She sang like St. Bridget an’ shone like a kibble.<br />
Her outside was “Gidget” but inside was “Sybil”.<br />
I’d run the Iditarod,<br />
Bite an Olympic God:<br />
New Bedford, I long to seeeeeeeeee you<br />
<br />
<b>CHORUS:</b><br />
Aw-wooo, blow you bully dogs.<br />
All are drunk but the coxswain.<br />
Aw-wooo, blow you bully dogs.<br />
Your alleys smell like dachshund.<br />
<br />
She smelled like flea/tick shampoo, turkey and fennel<br />
There’s atheists in foxholes, but none in the kennel<br />
I’d reject my dog-a-mas<br />
Then walk ’round in pa-ja-mas<br />
New Bedford, I long to seeeeeeeeee you<br />
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<i>(Repeat Chorus)</i><br />
<br />
Though she was a malamute, her voice was husky<br />
We were halfway to heaven but stopped in Sandusky<br />
In the corner stands a boxer<br />
It’s her biological clock, sir<br />
New Bedford, I long to seeeeeeeeee you<br />
<br />
<i>(Repeat Chorus)</i></div>
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Especially “New Bedford, I long to seeeeeeeeee you”. That really got them! They hit that line and it was like they were seeing an old friend.<br />
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This next one is the last one they did. I realized during the previous one that maybe I should be writing these down, so I ended up with more notes on this one (I took my sister’s word jumble pen and wrote on my arm). Pepper was the lead chanteydog on this, which is a little surprising. I got the idea that Abby had been helping her for the past week or so to get all the lyrics down, because while Pepper was singing, Abby was mouthing the words, and when Pepper was done, Abby smiled really big. (I should add that when dogs open their mouths just in general it looks like they’re smiling, no matter what, but I really think she was actually smiling legitimately.)<br />
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<b>Dog Chantey #3</b><br />
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<b>Chanteydog:</b> Merry lads, let’s roll an’ go!<br />
<b>Crew:</b> Howl-a, oh, Howl-a for FDR’s Fala<br />
<b>Chanteydog:</b> A Scottie’s a Thane in the neck, doncha know<br />
<b>Crew:</b> Howl-a, oh, Howl-a for FDR’s Fala<br />
<br />
<b>First Crewdog:</b><br />
Fala was a Scotch Terrier<br />
In the White House was nobody hairier<br />
Eleanor groused,<br />
“Get him out of the house!”<br />
So he bit her on the derriere... Oh—<br />
<br />
<b>Second Crewdog:</b><br />
Who was the Real New Deal Reformer?<br />
If you say “Fala,” you’re getting warmer<br />
Since his presence implied<br />
That the Prez had arrived,<br />
The Service dubbed him “The Informer”<br />
<br />
<b>Chanteydog:</b> It’s time for us to roll an’ go!<br />
<b>Crew:</b> We all set sail for Guatemal-a!<br />
<b>Chanteydog:</b> The dog that survived po-li-o<br />
<b>Crew:</b> Howl-a, oh, Howl-a for FDR’s Fala<br />
<br />
<b>First Crewdog:</b><br />
At home with the Wealthy and the Plebian<br />
A terrier American and European<br />
As poor FDR died<br />
Fala stayed by his side<br />
Fireside “Chat”? More like “Chien”... Oh—<br />
<br />
<b>Second Crewdog:</b><br />
Fala passed on in ’52<br />
They erected his statue<br />
At the Roos’velt Memorial.<br />
My editorial?<br />
I think it looks quite nifty, too.<br />
<br />
<b>Chanteydog:</b> Now boys, at last we roll an’ go!<br />
<b>Crew:</b> We won’t get scurvy, if we praise Allah<br />
<b>Chanteydog:</b> His favorite Doctrine? The Mon-roe!<br />
<b>Crew:</b> Howl-a, oh, Howl-a for FDR’s Fala<br />
Cute as a koal-a was FDR’s Fala<br />
Yes, we’ll Howl-a, oh, Howl-a for FDR’s Fala</div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Brief Conclusion</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span> <b><i>Or: Something You Might Try</i></b><i><br />
</i> <br />
Let me say again that I am not good at remembering things, and I feel like I have left out some stuff for all of these. Like, there was another one about Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli that at one point went something like:<br />
<div style="margin-left: 18pt;">
<br />
“There are three kinds of lies:<br />
(1) Lies, (2) Damn Lies, and (3) Statistics,”<br />
He said through his chapped lips,<br />
For he had no Blistix.<br />
<br />
(1) Ten Downing Street’s lonely,<br />
(2) Will Gladstone’s a cad,<br />
(3) (An’) there’s a 12% chance<br />
I will bark at your dad.</div>
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
But I don’t remember the part of that one that had to do with dogs, other than the “bark at your dad” thing. What I’m saying is that on all of these I think I’m missing some verses, or the song requires several other dogs to join in, which ruins the eye contact part if you wanted to try it. And again, this only worked with my dogs. I never again saw Laddie, or Thunder, or Fletch, or that one anxious mop dog, or Buttons, and I was never able to get other dogs to join in. And I wasn’t ever able to get the dogs to sing with me when there was someone else in the room with me, but if you want to try, it’s worth a shot, right? To see if you can get your dog to talk to you? And even if your dog doesn’t sing, he or she at least will appreciate it, because one good thing about dogs is that they won’t think you’re crazy no matter what. My sister to this day says she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. And Abby and Pepper have long since died. Pepper was hit by a car and had problems after that. I don’t know if it was related to that or not, but she also had trouble breathing, and when they X-rayed her, they found a huge knot of cancer in her throat, and we finally put her to sleep. I guess cancer and being hit by a car can’t be connected in any way, but in my mind they are. Abby was just old.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
She died a little before Pepper. It makes me sad to think about it, and so when I sing these dog chanteys to the different dogs I meet, I tell them first: my dogs were Abby and Pepper. Two German shepherds. They were Good Dogs. They knew how to speak English and they took their heartworm pills without incident, especially if you said, “Want a cookie?” beforehand. And intentionally or not, they taught me these songs. And this is how they go. And if you want to just listen, that’s fine, because we can certainly become friends that way, but if for some reason, you know these songs, and if you trust me, and if you want to join in, then please please please please do.<br />
</span><br />
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</span>DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-46499175308426310212010-05-19T09:04:00.006-05:002010-05-26T11:08:58.551-05:00Congratulations Matthew Broderick!On having the lead in the longest running production of <i>Equus </i>in history<a href="http://www.celebritybrideguide.com/happy-anniversary-sarah-jessica-parker-and-matthew-broderick/">!</a><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Boo, that joke.</span>DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-77184422502314486842010-04-17T20:29:00.000-05:002010-04-17T20:29:49.104-05:00Ha ha, Library of Congress, you just acquired THIS!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxFYSuvJRKGAudszZJ_UNuHMWVYgEYJ7oQ8HSctpdi7TO11AtJ892CzPty54fl1EODGfHU-UgOQCcR_dCJWojYYn2Fkkcorh-uGayazh6YdYmyEk2zlECWD7aqc9_oJCbjkXuv/s1600/tweet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxFYSuvJRKGAudszZJ_UNuHMWVYgEYJ7oQ8HSctpdi7TO11AtJ892CzPty54fl1EODGfHU-UgOQCcR_dCJWojYYn2Fkkcorh-uGayazh6YdYmyEk2zlECWD7aqc9_oJCbjkXuv/s400/tweet.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">SUCKERS.</span>DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-39707453036204568822010-03-31T23:10:00.002-05:002010-04-25T14:12:07.444-05:00Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, etc.Towering over them all is Nicholas Sparks and he is naked, typing, his small fingers lively and quick and now in doubletime and bowing to Gena Rowlands, huge and tan and hairless, like an enormous infant. He never sleeps, he says. He says he’ll never die. He types a movie for Miley Cyrus and laughs deep in his throat and he is a great favorite, Nicholas Sparks. He has typed sixteen books and his fingers are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He types in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, Nicholas Sparks. He is typing, typing. He says that he will never <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2010-03-11-lastsong11_CV_N.htm">die</a>.DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-71457382828362640162010-03-25T22:40:00.000-05:002010-03-25T22:40:38.552-05:00The Closet OrigamistI’m interested in the Wild West; I am something of a “buff”, and I’ve been wondering lately about the “Dead Man’s Hand”. As in: I know it’s aces and eights, but I couldn’t find anything about the kicker (n.b. the kicker is the fifth card), or if there even <i>was</i> a kicker (Hickok could even have discarded it; source: <i>The Poker Encyclopedia</i>; Allen, Hayes), and I know that ghosts are always bitter little clowns (Ghosts: if you are reading this, I would be happy to be proven wrong!), but I decide to pay the 40 bucks and do that service where ghosts take you back in time to see stuff and explain the context.<br />
<br />
This is still a new service and there are kinks to work out, for sure. My experience with this has been that the ghosts won’t ever go back to their own moment of death; they just want to look at stuff that happened after they became omniscient, so I settle on the ghost of Davis Tutt Jr, whom Hickok killed in 1865. I calculate this should give me about 10 years of context.<br />
<br />
He comes the next night at 1am (ghosts always show up at midnight in the time zone they died in). He says, “Scroooooge just kidding it’s Davis.” <br />
<br />
I tell him what I’m interested in and he says, “What are you, a ‘buff’? OK, let’s go,” and then he takes my hand, which is the only part of the ghost you can touch, and we are flying through the air. The wind blows through his gunshot hole and plays the tune “Kingdom Coming” by Henry Clay Work (which was a popular song in the Old West (source: <i>Popular Songs of the Old West; </i>Gibbs, White); to which he sings along :<br />
<br />
<i>Say, darkies, hab you seen de massa, wid de muffstash on him face</i><br />
<br />
It makes me uncomfortable! <br />
<br />
But the way in which I am made to feel uncomfortable by this masks the barfing that is typically concomitant with time travel by ghost handshake and the next thing I know it’s 1866 in Springfield, Missouri and so points for Tutt there. “This is where the railroad came through,” he says, “I just missed it by a few years.” <br />
<br />
I tell him he didn’t miss it, actually, due to he was a ghost and therefore omniscient, but he tells me there’s a very confusing period after you die where there’s a lot of vengeance and you miss a lot. <br />
<br />
“Sorry, I’m not King Ghost, PhD or whatever,” is what I should say but instead I say, “OK, What I am interested in is the Dead Man’s Hand.”<br />
<br />
Tutt shrugs, which is weird when ghosts do it because they can actually shrug their shoulders through their ears: “Look over there, then,” he says, and we’re in a back room where Hickok and Sempronius Boyd, who was the judge for Hickok’s trial (source: <i>Encyclopedia of American Government, 1850-1899; </i>Herringsworth), are playing cards. Boyd has tens over nines and calls; Hickok does some weird legerdemain and reveals four Jacks. Boyd frowns and then leaves and later gives the jury mutually exclusive instructions in Hickok’s conviction, which leads to his acquittal. “As far as I’m concerned, <i>that’s</i> the Dead Man’s Hand,” Tutt says. Like a big pronouncement, like he’s earned the 40 bucks. Then he says: “If the jury had gone the other way, we might all have been spared ‘The Daring Buffalo Chases of the Plains’.” Like a joke, but if this is meant to be a joke, I don’t know what the joke is. We jump.<br />
<br />
Now it’s 1869, and Hickok is playing cards with Bill Mulvey, which I didn’t know he had done that (he will shoot Mulvey in another week or so; source: <i>Calamity Bill</i>, Rosa). Mulvey lays down a ten high straight, and starts to collect the pot, but then Hickok does another hand gesture and shows that he has a flush. I don’t get to see what it is a flush of before we jump again. <br />
<br />
Now we’re in a hotel room and Hickok is folding playing cards into little angular birds. Tutt elbows me, which I don’t notice at first because ghosts? Bad at elbowing. “One for every person he told George Ward Nichols he killed,” Tutt says, putting his shoulders through his ears. We jump to when Hickok shoots Mulvey by bluffing him into thinking there are more people there then there actually are: “Don’t shoot him, boys!” Hickok yells. Mulvey hesitates and Hickok guns him down, startling some meadowlarks upward. I remember the collective noun for birds is a “flush” and we jump to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Abilene to see Phil Coe unfolding a bunch of the folded up cards (and being a grouch about it) so he and Hickock can play a game. “I don’t know why this is my job,” he says.<br />
<br />
He (Coe) holds up a bird he is about to untessellate and says he once killed one just like it. Hickok says, “Did it have a pistol? Was it shooting back? I will be.” Pretty much unprompted! Coe will soon be Hickok’s last gunfight victim, I know from books, although “gunfight” is stretching it in this case. When they play, Hickok’s hand beats Coe’s two pair. It is either three of a kind or four of a kind. It can’t be five of a kind, obviously, but at one point it does look like that; we jump a few more years ahead. <br />
<br />
Hickok has pretty bad trachoma and his lashes fold inward like a flytrap as he writes a note to his wife Agnes whom he abandoned not long before. He signs off:</st1:place></st1:city><br />
<st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><br />
</st1:place></st1:city><br />
<st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><i>With wishes even for my enemies, I will make the plunge and try to swim to the other shore.</i></st1:place></st1:city><br />
<st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><br />
</st1:place></st1:city><br />
<st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">He folds the hotel stationery into a little envelope with a “pull here” tab. Tutt and I hold hands; we jump.<br />
<br />
And here at last we are on August 12, 1876, in the Dakota Territory, specifically in the Black Hills, specifically in Dead Wood, specifically in Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon. Hickok sits with his back to the door. I peer over to see his hand: an ace of clubs, an eight of spades, a four of hearts, a Jack and three of diamonds. So, basically, nothing? I don’t get it. Hickok will soon be shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall. I tell Tutt, “I don’t get it.” Tutt waits until McCall comes in, then we zip back to present day. Tutt’s bullet hole whistles and Tutt sings:</st1:place></st1:city><br />
<st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"> <br />
<i>It mus’ be now de kingdom coming, an’ de year ob Jubilo</i><br />
<br />
And we’re back in my room. <br />
<br />
I would like it said that Tutt was courteous to me, and that is why I ranked him A+ and I know people are cheesed off at me for not ranking him lower, because that was the last A+ he needed to move on to the Afterlife. What I am saying is I am sorry for other “buffs” who may have had questions specifically for him (I hope you all “have wishes even for [your] enemies”! Source: above letter), and I will try to answer anything I can if you email me. I’ve gotten a few emails about parting words, and Tutt’s parting words were answering my question about my not “getting it” about the Dead Man’s Hand.<br />
<br />
“What’s not to get?” Tutt said, “He’s famous. But who will remember Sempronius Boyd? Who will remember Coe? Or me?” which I would say is empirically ridiculous, given I just spent 40 bucks on him, but maybe he meant, “Who, other than the ‘buffs’?” And then he said his last thing before his body spread out through the room and then turned into basically the air in the room; he said: “That’s how it is with guys like him: even when he folds, he wins.”<br />
</st1:place></st1:city>DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-44167732603724343002010-03-03T13:55:00.002-06:002010-05-26T00:22:08.263-05:00The Brooklyn Lady BloggersTo be clear, in the sex dream he had about the Brooklyn lady bloggers, he only had sex with one Brooklyn lady blogger, and it was in an implausible sex position, and yet the sex had been good enough that she subsequently chose to not blog about it.<br />
<br />
But aside from that one (and it is not the one you are thinking of, probably) there were all the other Brooklyn lady bloggers in the dream, including some that were just made up for the dream, and were just representative of as-yet unknown Brooklyn lady bloggers. There was that one from Fort Green, and that one from Carroll Gardens, and that other one from Carroll Gardens and that one from South Slope, and then some unspecified Brooklyn lady Bloggers.<br />
<br />
After the sex part, the dream shifted to a general appreciation of all of the Brooklyn lady bloggers, and the “plot” of the dream was that he was in the initial stages of dating one of the as-yet unknown Brooklyn lady bloggers, but this dating involved hanging out with all of them, as they traveled in a group. They were not individually solipsistic but if considered as a collective noun, then they were (in the dream).<br />
<br />
In the dream about the Brooklyn lady bloggers he got off a few good <i>bons mot</i>. One was about how he was trying to sit next to the Brooklyn lady blogger that he was just starting to date, but this necessitated moving the other Brooklyn lady bloggers around to other chairs. But the Brooklyn lady bloggers were subdivided into groups of BFFs, so he had to shift these concave polygonal groups of Brooklyn lady bloggers around in a way that was partly like a sliding tile puzzle and partly like getting a couch into a small apartment. At the resolution of the problem, when he at last sat by the Brooklyn lady blogger that he was in the initial stages of dating, he said something funny about chess that all of the Brooklyn lady bloggers thought was quite good, although he does not play chess in real life.<br />
<br />
Later, he and the Brooklyn lady blogger he was dating, and the other Brooklyn lady bloggers, including the one that he had had the good sex with in the beginning were all at an AIDS benefit. That was a weird part! What was that about? Shortly after, he was in the lobby of his office building, trying to convince his manager to get the law firm where he works to give a corporate donation to the AIDS charity, so at least you could say there was a call-back to that weird part of the dream. The Brooklyn lady blogger he was dating hung back by the revolving doors while he discussed this with his manager. In retrospect, this was the only time the Brooklyn lady blogger he was dating was separated from the other Brooklyn lady bloggers. Maybe it was because his subconscious was making him choose between doing actual work when he was in the office and surfing the internet all day. Oh man, nobody likes a preachy dream! Let’s get back to the sex part!<br />
<br />
But just kidding, because the vast bulk of the dream took place after the sex part, and the Brooklyn lady blogger with whom he had had the sex was a minor character for most of the dream, and honestly the truly pleasurable part of the dream was the part where he was in the initial stages of dating the lesser-known Brooklyn lady blogger, and it was that feeling when you meet someone new and it seems like: OK everything can just stop changing now and we’ll just stay like this because nothing about this person is annoying me yet.<br />
<br />
But the introduction of a real person from his life (the manager) seeded the clouds of reality and he started to remember pieces of his actual life that formed a mosaic and the mosaic said that he could not actually date the lesser-known Brooklyn lady blogger, since in real life he had been married for some time, and had an eleven year old daughter, whom he loved, God he loved her, but who at age eleven was probably perilously close to becoming a blogger herself, though not in Brooklyn (they live in Norwalk). How would he even know for sure? He uses the internet but he is not good at it.<br />
<br />
At this point he woke up, and despite the sort of abrupt ending, it was some time before the overall pleasant feeling wore off and during the next few weeks he could recall most of the details of the dream. The sex part of the dream seemed increasingly preposterous with the progression of time, but made sense in a way because it had been with the Brooklyn lady blogger of whom he had been the longest aware. It was like a Farewell Sex Act immediately prior to the onset of the new relationship with the lesser-known Brooklyn lady blogger, and the fact that it had not been blogged about made all the other Brooklyn lady bloggers think, “That must have been some good sex!” and this open secret inside the collective gave him some confidence with which he was able to pursue the lesser known Brooklyn lady blogger, and to state it again, there are some feelings that maybe can be summed up as “confidence” although that would seem to be selling the feeling short, feelings which his brain has tenuously correlated to post-thunderstorm sunlight, bourbon, certain bacons, the album “Star” by Belly, the smell of the inside of the cabinetry in the kitchen of the house he lived in during the mid-80s and the “good” caramels his mother kept there, which he was not supposed to eat, some feelings related to just getting to know someone that still seems amazing and brand new to you like an unscratched scratch-off card, that is like the light violet color of rubbing alcohol on fire, the way it burns but does not hurt you: that feeling stayed with him for several weeks afterward.DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-14275329354600245602010-02-21T22:28:00.001-06:002010-02-21T22:29:55.890-06:00I'm just posting this here to remind myself that when I am older it is my intention to try to be at least 10% this wicked<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8Mm9200XtjA&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8Mm9200XtjA&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-74570600348236571652010-01-29T15:50:00.001-06:002010-01-29T15:50:40.916-06:00Look I took something that I once thought was sweet and funny and beautiful and made it crappy because irony<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 5px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 5px;">I privately say to you, old friend, please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of very early-blooming sad faces:</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 5px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 5px;"> :(:(:(:( ):):):):</span></div>DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-16882274814113262632010-01-28T14:52:00.001-06:002010-01-28T14:52:48.310-06:00Good Reads<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUaVsfrXy6-dbNsx9BoMFvEPh57vD8haCrGW0ymh_aY9m3dc20EPhS_Ke6ACstOERD7833Q9rEC29FosYc4dlTUrU_YwCYetqAYrkjNQ2K7m_MVr-VB8GODeL5hJjcQANMHQRX/s1600-h/recommendation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUaVsfrXy6-dbNsx9BoMFvEPh57vD8haCrGW0ymh_aY9m3dc20EPhS_Ke6ACstOERD7833Q9rEC29FosYc4dlTUrU_YwCYetqAYrkjNQ2K7m_MVr-VB8GODeL5hJjcQANMHQRX/s400/recommendation.jpg" width="356" /></a><br />
</div>DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-71749588867017646132010-01-27T16:15:00.001-06:002010-01-27T16:15:32.339-06:00ARRRRRGH<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This is AGONY. The thing's been over for like <i>hours</i>. Just put <i>something </i>up there. ANYTHING to make me stop thinking what I'm thinking.<br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzOK3_erqGVhlrO65sqtVJYtbtBr6ssicoXsENJEoM_CS1szIAQKCgtLnZgiCbHmz8cXlv3_61JmxPmJKnCx3IeSATAZphMlwvH8N1hlcB0mq4W2wKXGR2h82QquIZie2_1qa-/s1600-h/gruber.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzOK3_erqGVhlrO65sqtVJYtbtBr6ssicoXsENJEoM_CS1szIAQKCgtLnZgiCbHmz8cXlv3_61JmxPmJKnCx3IeSATAZphMlwvH8N1hlcB0mq4W2wKXGR2h82QquIZie2_1qa-/s320/gruber.jpg" width="320" /></a><br /></div>DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-19806312318481651022010-01-26T15:53:00.001-06:002010-01-26T23:47:42.109-06:00HERE IS MORE OLD STUFFI'm not even bothering to look for old stuff on my hard drive to post here anymore; I'm just going to look for old stuff I already posted here to post here. I guess!<br />
<br />
I remember when I finished this, I was like, <i>It is depressing to work hard on something that is stupid.</i><br />
<br />
If you want to hire me for a commencement speech or something, please be aware, that's about the only insight I have about stuff.<br />
<br />
But anyway: <a href="http://recursivebee.blogspot.com/2006/09/letter-to-robert-burns-from-william_28.html">Happy Belated Robert Burns' Birthday</a> or whatever.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Ha! whare ye gaun, ye crowlin <a href="http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=13434987">ferlie</a>!</span></span>DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-66155632508436502022010-01-12T22:58:00.001-06:002010-01-15T10:38:59.505-06:00SestetI did not know what “Lots of Sand” meant,<br />
did not know this thing until <br />
I watched the movie <i>Ten Commandments</i>,<br />
filmed by Cecil B. DeMille<br />
(Charleton Heston’s eyes were lambent;<br />
Brynner’s voice, a fire drill).<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">(still finding stuff on my hard drive from ten years ago that I only have the vaguest recollection of doing)</span>DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-26018930935850927712009-12-18T17:03:00.004-06:002009-12-18T17:42:18.378-06:00Happy Holidaze (sic)I was looking for something on my computer and I found this thing that I only sort of remember doing (in MS-Paint!) in a computer lab in 1996, likely instead of working on an essay about hegemony and/or transgression (these were the only things I learned to write about in grad school) (I was not very good at grad school!).<br /><br />The Save Date on it is 12/8/1996 so it is a Christmas present from my 13-years-ago self to my current self (<i>Merry Christmas! Also, Memento Mori!</i>), but I'll show you too because I am generous.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2Ynw2xFhEFYahO0v8toHVl4lmCbpWu1Rb9UEfAbh1oCOJVRTiY6gxtUM55324hgWsCcY3Xu-R1cMEs8qPb-aOf3VE5GGZDdFsZG1Tk_I30IdmSHdUqwB3oLnkWO090Y7h6qkI/s1600-h/scrooge.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2Ynw2xFhEFYahO0v8toHVl4lmCbpWu1Rb9UEfAbh1oCOJVRTiY6gxtUM55324hgWsCcY3Xu-R1cMEs8qPb-aOf3VE5GGZDdFsZG1Tk_I30IdmSHdUqwB3oLnkWO090Y7h6qkI/s400/scrooge.png" /></a><br /></div>Ha ha, nice one, younger self. You don't even notice that it looks like it takes place on Bespin until you look at it for over a minute.<br /><i>Thanks. There is a giant bottom margin on this thing due to I did it in MS-Paint in 1996.</i><br />No worries, thanks again. I didn't get you anything, but <a href="http://babelpop.blogspot.com/2006/12/have-yourself-merry-little-christmas.html">here</a> is a link to something that will someday be your favorite non-Jessi thing on BabelPop. It is also Christmasy.<br /><i>Thanks.</i><br /><br /><i>(They make out)</i><br /><i>(Fade Out)</i><br /><br /><i>(Fade In, several hours later)</i><br /><i><br /></i><br /><i>(Simultaneously) <span style="font-style: normal;">"</span><span style="font-style: normal;">You are an excellent lover."</span></i><br /><br />um ok, enough of that.<br />Have a good holiday if I don't see you, which I won't because I am a blog post.DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-4660213617454139602009-11-17T10:52:00.003-06:002009-11-17T10:56:14.908-06:00BoobieWatch!<span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Um this was a sonnet I wrote in the comments of a </span><a href="http://www.theawl.com/2009/11/ode-to-a-hot-chick-from-the-movies"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">post on The Awl</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> wherein Alex Balk wrote a poem summarizing Lynn Hirschberg's profile on Megan Fox. [?]</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /><br /></span><div><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">I know no one cares about </span><a href="http://recursivebee.blogspot.com/2008/04/morensters.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">inside-jokey sonnets I write in the comments on other blogs</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> (this is not Recursive Fimoculous! I think Rex Sorgatz used to include his comments on other blogs on his site, but I just looked and he either doesn't now or never did; anyway) or even on this blog, but it's the only thing I've "written" all week, so I'm putting it here mainly because sometimes I forget the last time I typed "boobies" and the answer is this. It was this time. I am sorry you have to read this.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /><br /></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">And in fact you should use this whole "post" as a means to just click over to the actual post, because it is great and there are more great things in the comments. I love the Awl comments, maybe even more than Videogum comments; I want Karen UhOh to follow me around saying things.<br />WE COULD SOLVE MYSTERIES!</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span></span>So, OK:</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span><br /></div><div><div>That cherry made my brain scream “Sherilyn Fenn!”<br />When I saw it in GQ magazine.<br />I never will forget her; then again,<br />I had to google “Brian Austin Green”.<br /><br />I guess that Hirschberg’s point is Things Transmute..?<br />Both crushes and the crushees take a bow.<br />The kneepad leggings gone that were so cute.<br />The Jolies meet the Jolier Than Thou.<br /><br />Red Lobster Biscuits yield to Truffled Fries<br />And a propensity for bad tattoos<br />(“We L.O.L. at gilded butterflies”)<br />Give way to smarts, re: “boobies on read-thrus”<br /><br />So in this way one changes tit for tat:<br />There ought to be a German word for that.<br /></div></div>DeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8822740.post-55293291306824736202009-11-11T12:33:00.006-06:002009-11-11T13:08:49.656-06:00Orienting ArrowA longass time ago, my friend Siobhan wrote a book that was funny and informative. I <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrbikferd/sets/72157594325192345/">drew some pictures for it</a>, and I think we all learned a little something in the process (about how I am bad at leveraging opportunities to do things I actually like instead of working for the same company for twelve years or whatever it is now just kidding please keep employing me I need the healthcare: anyway, that is what we all learned).<br />
<br />
It was called "30 Things Everyone Should Know How to do Before Turning 30", although you may know it by its <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3428558.30_Alles_was_man_k_nnen_muss_Blues_tanzen_ohne_dabei_wie_ein_Idiot_auszusehen_Eine_Champagnerflasche_ffnen_Ein_Baby_halten_Ein_Feuer_entfachen_Einen_Reifen_wechseln_Einen_Kompass_benutzen_">German title</a> (interesting sidenote: although they kept the "30" in the title of the German edition, the "How to eat a lot of cabbage before invading Poland in a well-made car" chapter was you know what it's not even worth finishing that line let's just go to the next paragraph. GERMANS, RIGHT?).<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">AND BUT SO</span><br />
In addition to looking at archived emailed from the early aughts to remind myself that I'm not as clever/funny/smart as I used to be, I sometimes search for this book, and here is what I saw today: this book, which is $1.54 for a used copy is currently going for between $93.55 and $184.13 for a new copy.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw6R7sH6SUCnnvEbc5ccKaZmN-ehSm7NhUAGX6hk0y4Gpbi3GwG5Yd4L_yYsr08yEexWmhSGeTHsx5sKNT4A8CFoIQ8vGrqiYZiGpqDJaGngNgsmdw5FZT50hny40W4riExkg2/s1600-h/30-thingz.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5402920924973727394" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw6R7sH6SUCnnvEbc5ccKaZmN-ehSm7NhUAGX6hk0y4Gpbi3GwG5Yd4L_yYsr08yEexWmhSGeTHsx5sKNT4A8CFoIQ8vGrqiYZiGpqDJaGngNgsmdw5FZT50hny40W4riExkg2/s400/30-thingz.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 191px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">NOW THEN</span><br />
Later on, my friend Siobhan wrote another book called <a href="http://recursivebee.blogspot.com/2006/10/jipster-jaiku-please-pronounce-that.html">Hipster Haiku</a>. This book featured zero illustrations by me (whoever's decision that was, I bear you no rancor, I pretty much maxed out my ability to draw hands with the first book).<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">BUT</span><br />
Let's see how this book is doing OH INTERESTING IT IS AVAILABLE NEW <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hipster-Haiku-Siobhan-Adcock/dp/0767923731/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_2">FOR $4.22</a>.<br />
Look, this is a funny book. This book is funnier than it should be. I think if you were to read it what would happen is you would likely marvel at the funniness therein. But $4.22? I think we see what's going on here.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">HENCE</span><br />
For a limited time, I will draw a picture on any book you want for the jaw droppingly low price of like I don't know a dollar or something (higher if I have to draw hands).<br />
I can basically guarantee (definition 4: "v. to guarantee sarcastically") that the book will increase in value TENFOLD within six years. I am contactable at pmortensen at g ma i l dot com (ha I just tricked some spambots SUCK IT SPAMBOTS I AM ONE STEP AHEAD OF YOU LIKE BOBBY FISCHER ONLY A NONANTISEMITIC VERSION, although I do plan to die of renal failure in Reykjavik, like him, so. OK call it even).<br />
<br />
This is a limited time offer. Once I am a millionaire I will probably stop to focus on damaging my kidneys and/or working on my parody of that Beyonce song tentatively titled "Shingle Ladies (Put Some Acyclovir On It)". That joke should probably have gone on Twitter and not here; I think that's how Twitter works. SO CONFUSING. Anyway, go ahead and send me money. THANKSDeleteMehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03745497092490330425noreply@blogger.com3