La Marseillaise

I am sick. I am sick to death. I cannot function any more under these conditions. My apartment has too many contrasting features. There is cleanliness and filth. There are food smells mingling with bleach. The world outside is balmy, repulsive with the sweaty flatulence of summer. The apartment is cold, my feet are cold, everything is cold. My stomach is acidic. I've been drinking a lot of water, rootbeer, and apple cider. My steak was marinated in some sort of lime vinaigrette. There is too much acid and cold and heat and filth and cleanliness and...

...and I drank all of the soy milk.

I can no longer tolerate any music. I tried listening to the Beatles and I almost vomited. I almost vomited 2 minutes into Blue Jay Way. I cannot tolerate Blue Jay Way. It seems the only thing I can tolerate listening to is La Marseillaise, sung by Edith Piaf.

Pareidolia, apophenia, and synaesthesia trouble me because I don't have them.

From Overheard in New York

I just love when people realize just how stupid their peers are...

Guy #1: Hey. Is it hailing out?
Guy #2: Hail yeah!
Silence for a few seconds.
Guy #2: I said...
Guy #1: I heard you. Shut up.

Girl #1: But I wasn't laughing at him, I was laughing at his little white penis in a black condom.
Girl #2: Yeah. Chris's penis is crooked, and I told him he could never wear one of those yellow banana-flavored condoms, because I might forget I was blowing him and think I was eating a banana.
Girl #1: You're an idiot.

Scrabble girl: "Gooeesay" is so not a word.
Scrabble guy: That's "guise."
Scrabble girl: Ha! Well, smart guy, you spelled it wrong. "Guys" is spelled G-U-Y-S.
Scrabble guy: Are you serious?
Scrabble girl: Sorry, there's no way I'm letting you get away with that after you wouldn't give me any points for "Steve."
Scrabble guy: How long have we been dating?

This one is just gravy:
Little boy to duck: Uh, what the fuck, dude?

a total stranger one black day by E.E. Cummings

a total stranger one black day
knocked living the hell out of me--

who found forgiveness hard because
my(as it happened)self he was

--but now that fiend and i are such
immortal friends the other's each


Also, Strouse is the King of the Day. We shopped for knives, dropped off my dry cleaning, ate Indian food, and watched lacrosse. He told me about the goalie's crease and I told him about the spring blossom of youth and beauty. It was fine. He's my new companion while Jessica is out of town.

but no, not THAT way. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

My Dream by Ogden Nash

This is my dream,
It is my own dream,
I dreamt it.
I dreamt that my hair was kempt.
Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it.

From A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

"Actually the Mississippi River is a treacherous and sinister body of water whose eddies and currents yearly claim many lives. I have never known anyone who would even venture to stick his toe in its polluted brown waters, which seethe with sewage, industrial waste, and deadly insecticides. Even the fish are dying. Therefore, the Mississippi as Father-God-Moses-Daddy-Phallus-Pops is an altogether false motif begun, I would imagine, by Mark Twain."

Paperback Swap

A little while ago, Honey Lou (Bard of Bean Water) suggested I register for an online service/community called PaperBack Swap. It is, predictably enough, a way to swap your untreasured paperbacks for other volumes. I balked at first; I was already a member of BookCrossing and couldn't quite see joining another such organization, especially one that "may collect annual dues" in the future. On the other hand, BookCrossing was a great disappointment. There are not many other members in the area and what members there are do not seem to be particularly active.

So I joined PaperBack Swap. The first thing I noted was that their book selection was fairly shitty. I am a book snob. I may occasionally read contemporary popular fiction, but I do not add it to my library and when I actually utter the phrase, "contemporary popular fiction", I probably give the distinct impression that the words are as welcome in my mouth as a World War II surplus sardine might be. I would not stoop to leave a Robert Ludlum or a John Grisham anywhere near the cherished books that I have made permanent in my collection. I reserve my shelves only for those books that I have loved and that I would want people to find in my room when I die. I do have a Stephen King book in the linen closet of the bathroom. That is precisely where it belongs. The bathroom is not a place for the absorption of toxins; it is a place for excretions. Like Stephen King's work. I am not saying that it is badly written—some of it is quite good—it just has no substance...there's nothing to take away from it. There is nothing to contemplate beyond his words and nothing he writes is exceptionally worth remembering.

I've unneccesarily digressed. I joined PaperBack Swap and quickly selected three titles from their lackluster registry. I am now the proud owner of The Portable Graham Greene, A Confederacy of Dunces, and The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway—courtesy of Kim from Salt Lake City, Mark from Vermont, and Lorrie from Chicago. The Hemingway collection is a fairly new book and in good condition. The other two books are just the sort of vintage paperbacks I would have been pleased to find at a book sale; they are yellow, smelly, and in reasonably good condition. I already have a copy of Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion en route. I've gained these soon-four books and I've only expended $4.77 to mail away three children's books that I registered on the site.

In conclusion, I win.
To further conclude, Fuck BookCrossing.
And with finality, Good Night.

A Note From My Father

I awakened this morning to the raucous croaking of my alarm clock, a pounding Benadryl headache, and an email from my father. I present it to you, the public, unabridged and with the knowledge that my father would want his sage advice spread as widely as possible.

Should you happen to go to the delicatessen store today, please use extra caution when contemplating the purchase of the liverwurst. Do you have any idea how long it has been there? It will make your insides awful sore. Don't buy the liverwurst! Don't buy the liverwurst! Don't buy the liverwurst! I repeat what I just said before, don’t buy the liverwurst! Don't buy the liverwurst! Oh, buy the corned beef if you must, the pickled herring, you can trust, and the lox puts you on orbit AOK (AOK). But that big hunk of liverwurst has been there since October first, and today is the 23rd of May.

Dad

(I don't think I've ever even had liverwurst)

Unfortunately, I cannot in good conscience allow you to question the man's sanity based on this email. He is merely quoting Allan Sherman, the lyrical parodist who was Weird Al before Weird Al was Weird Al, if you get my drift. As you cannot fail to notice, his name was also Al, but he was a lot weirder than Weird Al. Perhaps he would be less weird if I understood any of his lyrics; though I am quite familiar with his work, I have rarely heard any of the songs that he parodies because...well, I'm too goddamned young. I do enjoy his take on the folk song, Molly Malone, and his version of Old Lang Syne is, in my opinion, far superior to the original. Still, I just don't know what the fuck he is talking about most of the time.

I laugh at his songs because my father laughed and continues to laugh and will laugh until we're all dead and buried. Until that certain day, every New Year's Eve I will sing:

I know a man, his name is Lang,
And he has a neon sign.
And Mister Lang is very old,
So they call it Old Lang's Sign.

And I will know that wherever else my family members are, they'll, at the very least, be thinking the same thing and then I will spit in disgust because I just don't know sometimes what the hell I am doing and why and who the hell cares anyway?

The Mask of Evil by Bertolt Brecht

On my wall hangs a Japanese carving,
The mask of an evil demon, decorated with gold lacquer.
Sympathetically I observe
The swollen veins of the forehead, indicating
What a strain it is to be evil.

Weather Forecast by Harold Pinter

The day will get off to a cloudy start.
It will be quite chilly
But as the day progresses
The sun will come out
And the afternoon will be dry and warm.

In the evening the moon will shine
And be quite bright.
There will be, it has to be said,
A brisk wind
But it will die out by midnight.
Nothing further will happen.

This is the last forecast.

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota by James Wright

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

Old Men by Ogden Nash

People expect old men to die,
They do not really mourn old men.
Old men are different. People look
At them with eyes that wonder when...
People watch with unshocked eyes;
But the old men know when an old man dies.

Regarding Match Point

When Jessica and I rented Woody Allen's Match Point, we only had two things on our mind: Scarlett Johansson's lips. While watching it, we went through nearly intolerable throes of nervousness; neither one of us is particularly well-suited to watching suspenseful films— particularly when we cannot guess the ending. Fortunately —eventually— we were able to relax and enjoy Ms. Johansson's mediocre abilities and exceptional presence when we realized that creativity is dead and that the plot was merely recycled, however vaguely, from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. I am very sorry to report to all of you who thought that Jessica and I were even remotely intelligent that we did not realize this until EONS after Woody Allen's long and lingering shots of the covers of Dostoevsky novels. Nor did we realize it after any of the other countless hints. It took until he was explaining his behavior to the ghosts of his victims to realize all of the connections. From that very late point on, we were able to look past the unremarkable acting and incredibly moving soundtrack that moved us into nervous paroxysmal anxiety into a comfortable place from which we could look on over the rest of the film and feel smart for getting the references.

And, might I add, that while creativity may be dead, Woody Allen's ending was far better than Dostoevsky's. I set aside a few moments each day dedicated solely to loathing Dostoevsky's epilogue to Crime and Punishment. It is a sinfully bad ending to a brilliant work. It is a complete and cowardly withdrawl from the existential brilliance of the rest of the novel. I've written pages on this very subject; the epilogue was shit. Woody Allen spruced it up just right and, in the end, I am approximately as pleased as Punchinello.

Indian Problems

The other night, Jessica and I ordered Indian food, but when we went to pick it up, the restaurant apologetically informed me that they must have lost our order. They retook it and offered to rush it for us and they prepared the food in under 5 minutes. Still, I wondered what had happened to our order. It was entirely likely that they had merely lost it. Still, they had never done such a thing before.

The fault had to be mine.

Later, while looking through my call log on my cell phone, I realized that my assumption was correct. The fault was mine and Bombay Grill was innocent of all wrongdoing. Furthermore, the people at India House Restaurant must be very puzzled as to why Mr. Jeff never picked up his Chicken Makhani, naan, and samosas.

It's because he was 300 miles away assuring another restaurant that he had in fact placed an order that evening.

What Hammurabi Said When Suffering From Acute Nasopharyngitis...

I hab a Code.

Mine eyes have seen the glory...

Not really.

I haven't been writing blog entries because I haven't had essays to write and I haven't needed anything to distract me, see?

I wrote a poem for you though. It goes like this:
Sing, Sing, Singapore, knocking on the bedroom door.
Finn, Finn, Finnegan, lying on the bathroom floor.
Cock, Cock, Cockerel, nosing gently 'gainst the shore.
Whip, Whip, Whippoorwill, calling softly on the moor.
Pop, Pop, Poppycock, telling lies forever more.
Sick, Sick, Sycamore, rotting slowly to the core.

It's not a very good poem; it is longer than it needs to be and it doesn't make a lot of sense. I have no idea of whippoorwills actually populate the moor, but it's cool that the name "whippoorwill" has two Ws, two Ps, two Is, and two Os. It pleases me.

and Honey Lou, the Bard of Beanwater (and my roommate) said:
"The vagina is like a rose made out of rotting meat. Maybe Pastrami."

and I told Jessica, Michelle, and her roommate that I preferred dead dogs to live ones because they were calmer.
Who says shit like that? I'm repulsive and very much on the edge of psychosis. Of COURSE I prefer living animals. Only a freak would say they prefer dead ones. The living ones are much preferable; you can hear them whimper when you bite into them.

Oh, sorry.

I mean they're really cute and cuddly and deserving of love, affection, and respect...just like all human beings. But not cows, because I'm totally going to Farren's with Jessica on Tuesday after my last final.

I am thirsty. And Weird.

And Here is a Two-Legged Dog To Amaze and Delight!

If you're neither amazed nor delighted, you're an anti-semitic gypsy with meth-mouth and I do not care to have you as a guest on this blog.

I've got shit to do...

Seriously, you cannot expect me to keep updating this blog everyday. I have got shit to do. Like wish various people a happy birthday. Like make up lies about Mark Twain and Vladimir Nabokov and their respective rampant egotisms. Like write essay after essay after essay. Like marshal the forces of the University of Illinois undergraduate literary magazine. I have got shit to do.

And by shit, I mean "a great number of tasks".


So enjoy these articles without any commentary from me.

Book Collector
Richer than Roth?
And if it's true?

I am proud not to be blogging about Kaavya Viswanathan.