johnny cash is the fucking shit. enough said. no explanation or sappy words needed. who else in the entire world can you describe so accurately, so perfectly, so succinctly with the words "(blank) is the fucking shit"? can you say simply that richard simmons is the fucking shit without talking about his frizz ball hair or sexy girlish legs? can you say that martha stewart is the fucking shit without wondering aloud if she is the reincarnation of john a. macdonald? hell, no. thank you goddess for giving us johnny cash and his wonderful voice and his wonderful songs and for my mp3 non-ipod device in which i can store my entire johnny cash cd collection.
follow up to yesterday's post: the publisher of the plagarized author's books do not accept harvard chick's apologies or excuses for her blatant knock-off. i sense a lawyer in this girl's future. while my compassionate self continues to feel sympathy for harvard chick, my prevailing emotion seems to be glee (obviously my compassionate self is a tiny little honey-i-shrunk-the-kids sized person). i have a smile playing at the edges of my lips and again, nelson munsen keeps repeating "hah hah" which is interfering with my johnny cash listening pleasure. you know.... i wear the black for those who have never read... hah hah. damn.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
testing testing 1,2,3
it has come to my attention that my comments function isn't working. so hopefully it is now. but i really suck at computers, so it probably isn't.
guilt post
well, i haven't had a blog for all that long yet, but already i am writing my first guilt post. as an avid reader of blogs, i have noticed that all bloggers, no matter how talented they are, no matter how many great ideas they have floating around in their heads, eventually get to a place where they post only out of a panicky guilt feeling. like, oh, shit, it's been so long since i posted that if i don't write something soon, all of my readers are going to abandon me! you can discern these posts by their random quality, their lack of cohesion or theme, and babbling. that's right, babbling. useless words with useless meanings that run on and on and on and on. babbling. (sigh. i just realized that my pooh post could be considered a babbling messy... thing..., which would mean that this really ISN'T my first guilt post. but i really did feel like a chubby little tubby all stuffed with fluff that day. i did.)
since this is my first guilt post, i will indulge another first, but one that will likely become the first of many given my obsessive morning reading of the new york times online edition. i am going to write for the first time about an item in the news. about a week ago, i was reading about this chick who got a $500,000 book deal as a sophomore in college. now, said chick is very privileged, and recieved her book deal because of some quality networking between her college admissions coach (yes, that's right, a college admissions coach) and said college admission coach's connections with several publishing houses and publishing agents. naturally, my first thought was a jealously uttered "bitch". my second thought was "oh, jeebus, what's wrong with me? i am 24 years old and have never ever accomplished anything worthwhile in my whole entire life!" ahem. so, yeah, it was a little dramatic and completely illogical, but i may have been on my period, who the hell knows? this morning, i start surfing the net, and i find a story about last week's chick and how she might have plagarized 13 passages in her book from a popular author of young adult drama, and that another 29 passages bear "striking similarities" to scenes in the popular author's novels. naturally, my first thought was a nelson munsen inspired "hah hah!" my second thought was "my stuff may be shit, but at least it's original." my third thought was "i feel kinda bad for this chick. her book was about the pressure on young women of her class to perform like circus dogs, to be successful in walking tightropes and fetching brightly colored balls, and she becomes successful because of this book, and now she's a freaking plagarist." then i reverted to my usual cynical misanthropic self and decided that she deserves what she gets cause if she's smart enough to get into harvard, she's smart enough to realize that she has plagarized one of her favorite authors. its something that all writers have to face, i think. i struggle all the time to balance between being inspired by my idols and just repeating their ideas and style in my own work. (if you laugh because i am referring to myself as a writer, i will kick your ass.) it requires a huge amount of self-criticism and self-reflexivity. everytime you write something, you have to ask yourself, has this been done before? where did i get this idea? am i writing in my own voice, or in the voice of the last author i read? but you HAVE to do it. because while it's true that there is very little in the literary world that is truly original, you can't be a writer by imitating the style or stealing the words of real writers. i guess this harvard chick was more interested in the $500,000 than she was in being a writer. or maybe it was just fan fiction like that star trek novella i wrote in the seventh grade.
since this is my first guilt post, i will indulge another first, but one that will likely become the first of many given my obsessive morning reading of the new york times online edition. i am going to write for the first time about an item in the news. about a week ago, i was reading about this chick who got a $500,000 book deal as a sophomore in college. now, said chick is very privileged, and recieved her book deal because of some quality networking between her college admissions coach (yes, that's right, a college admissions coach) and said college admission coach's connections with several publishing houses and publishing agents. naturally, my first thought was a jealously uttered "bitch". my second thought was "oh, jeebus, what's wrong with me? i am 24 years old and have never ever accomplished anything worthwhile in my whole entire life!" ahem. so, yeah, it was a little dramatic and completely illogical, but i may have been on my period, who the hell knows? this morning, i start surfing the net, and i find a story about last week's chick and how she might have plagarized 13 passages in her book from a popular author of young adult drama, and that another 29 passages bear "striking similarities" to scenes in the popular author's novels. naturally, my first thought was a nelson munsen inspired "hah hah!" my second thought was "my stuff may be shit, but at least it's original." my third thought was "i feel kinda bad for this chick. her book was about the pressure on young women of her class to perform like circus dogs, to be successful in walking tightropes and fetching brightly colored balls, and she becomes successful because of this book, and now she's a freaking plagarist." then i reverted to my usual cynical misanthropic self and decided that she deserves what she gets cause if she's smart enough to get into harvard, she's smart enough to realize that she has plagarized one of her favorite authors. its something that all writers have to face, i think. i struggle all the time to balance between being inspired by my idols and just repeating their ideas and style in my own work. (if you laugh because i am referring to myself as a writer, i will kick your ass.) it requires a huge amount of self-criticism and self-reflexivity. everytime you write something, you have to ask yourself, has this been done before? where did i get this idea? am i writing in my own voice, or in the voice of the last author i read? but you HAVE to do it. because while it's true that there is very little in the literary world that is truly original, you can't be a writer by imitating the style or stealing the words of real writers. i guess this harvard chick was more interested in the $500,000 than she was in being a writer. or maybe it was just fan fiction like that star trek novella i wrote in the seventh grade.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
oh boy
i went to bed pretty early last night, an optimistic thing to do after a four day weekend of staying up late and sleeping in even later (thank you jeebus for this most precious holiday). contrary to my usual pattern, i was on the verge of sweet dreams (well, probably not sweet dreams, probably more like weird dreams, under which heading most of my dreams can be categorized. not scary weird. scratch-your-chin-and-wonder-what-the-hell-is-going-on-in-my-deranged-brain weird.) at about nine p.m. when days (truthfully weeks and if i really want to admit the reality, almost months) of tossing around ideas for a book in my head, of tracing out possible plot lines and character traits, of setting down a setting of time and place, culminated in the formation of an idea. an idea for my book. not just an idea for my book, but a good, workable, and i believe, entertaining idea. i kept my head on my pillow and told myself to remember all the things that were popping up in my head, one after another, going off like an automatic weapon. i told myself that if i kept repeating these ideas as they were coming to me that i would be able to remember them in the morning. i didn't want to get up because being near sleep at nine (well, it would be about nine thirty at this point) wasn't worth hopping out of bed to grab a pen and paper. my brain continued to spin off the central idea and my body continued to flip and flop in bed. chris, who was dealing with his own bout of the sunday evening back to work blues, finally asked me why i couldn't sleep. so i told him "i've got it. i've got the idea for my book." at which point he asked simply, "why don't you go write it down?" count on chris to be logical on a sunday night when our room is too hot and the covers are all messed up and i can't sleep because i have finally found the pooper scooper and baggie to pile all this shit into that has been buzzing around my head without a place to land for the last two months or so (i think i mixed metaphors there, and my fly got stuck in my shit or something, but oh well). anyway, i got up and grabbed my notebook and jotted down all the floaties that were floating through my head and in about fifteen minutes i had about three pages, all of it the musculo-skeletal structure of what could end up being a long, long story. book length, in other words. i am very very excited about this, hence my title: oh boy.
however, i am also very scared about this. i am scared because i don't have any more excuses to start -- or to not start. i am scared to tell people about my idea -- what if they think its stupid and my balloon gets burst? i am scared because of the committment actually sitting down and writing my thoughts represents. i am scared that i suck too much, or am too lazy, or whatever, to get this done. oh boy.
so i guess now the responsible, smart thing to do would be schedule some time every day to write. right now with a full time job, it's a little hard to imagine getting more than a couple of pages per week finished. however, i at least have my beginning, and my character, and my setting, and my plot, and my structure. i hope that i don't do with this one what i've done in the past -- disregard it as already been done, or dumb, or poorly written. i need this to work. i need to work at this. i need to prove to myself that i am good enough, smart enough, and that gosh darm it, people like me. no pressure. oh boy.
however, i am also very scared about this. i am scared because i don't have any more excuses to start -- or to not start. i am scared to tell people about my idea -- what if they think its stupid and my balloon gets burst? i am scared because of the committment actually sitting down and writing my thoughts represents. i am scared that i suck too much, or am too lazy, or whatever, to get this done. oh boy.
so i guess now the responsible, smart thing to do would be schedule some time every day to write. right now with a full time job, it's a little hard to imagine getting more than a couple of pages per week finished. however, i at least have my beginning, and my character, and my setting, and my plot, and my structure. i hope that i don't do with this one what i've done in the past -- disregard it as already been done, or dumb, or poorly written. i need this to work. i need to work at this. i need to prove to myself that i am good enough, smart enough, and that gosh darm it, people like me. no pressure. oh boy.
Friday, April 07, 2006
tubby little chubby all stuffed with fluff
i feel a little bit like winnie the pooh today, like my head is stuffed full of cotton that has surely molded from the slobber of children that have chewed on my ears. when taken with the facts that i am wearing a red t-shirt that resembles pooh's almost as much as my body type does, that i am hobbling around without balance due to sore calves caused by the fifteen consecutive flights of stairs forced upon my beleagured body by a personal trainer, and that i feel a near constant need to mutter "oh, bother" and eat honey out of a jar with my hands...well, if it thinks like a pooh, and talks like a pooh, and walks like a pooh, and looks like a pooh... it must be me today. i come to this conclusion after determining that i deviate from the pooh standard in two major ways: i lack his consistent good nature AND i'm wearing pants. they might have holes in them, but they are still pants. well, jeans, not pants. really, old, scruffy jeans.
(i just realized, at the ripe age of 24, after watching winnie the pooh for about 20 years or so, that none of the folks living in the hundred acre wood, with the exception of christopher robin, the lone human, wear any pants and that the likely reason for this state of pants-less abandon is that pants imply genetalia to hide, and as far as disney is concerned, while gender can and should exist, genetalia should not. who knew they were so progressive? i shouldn't be surprised. they have gay day after all. yet while i respect their progressive views, i would not want to give up my genetalia or my boyfriend's genetalia, even if it meant that we could walk around in public without pants. it's perfectly satisfactory to let loose with the pants-less-ness in the privacy of one's own home.)
believe it or not, i am thoroughly enjoying my pooh-like bumbling. my head was so full of fluff this morning that i did not care about the fact that my jeans are almost completely destroyed or that my t-shirt is probably inappropriate to wear to work or that my flip flops are four years old (i paid seven bucks for them in 2002 -- best shoe value ever!). why? because i am comfy, dammit, and my feelings of comfi-ness are translating into a very concrete sense of well being. if i knew dressing like a bum and staring off into space while humming "the wonderful thing about tiggers" (the wonderful thing about tiggers, tiggers are wonderful things, they're bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy, etc. etc.) would be the key to self-actualization, i would have adopted this lifestyle a long time ago. power suits, my ass. screw the yuppie dream! for goddess's sake, read the words of the prophet pooh (or whoever wrote for pooh) and rejoice:
"the sky is perfectly blue/the clouds are perfect too/and here i am with you/what could be more right/a quest has come to an end/and home's around the bend/and here you are my friend/what could be more right/nothing can go wrong/if everything is right/and everything is right somehow/nothing can go wrong/as long as everything is right/and everything is right, right now." (well, except for that i am at work and no one else is here and i have seven hours to go before this song will really be appropriate.)
hmm. i think by now it's obvious that someone has slipped me some kind of fabulous pharmacuetical and i should go have myself checked. or maybe i should just have some breakfast. anybody got any honey? i guess yogurt and a granola bar will have to do. strangely, contemplating my breakfast is starting to cause an eeyore-like response. hopefully i will not begin to take eeyore's physical traits as i have taken on pooh's. i mean, eeyore has a nice ass and all, but would i really want to be a blue donkey with a black mohawk? then again... i could probably get some sick leave from work if that condition were to develop. will you listen to me? since when have i looked on the bright side of things? it looks like pooh's possession of me continues after all. what's next? getting stuck in a rabbit hole with my ass hanging out? lucky for me (and for the rest of you, incidentally), it's (it being my ass) covered in my old blue jeans.
(i just realized, at the ripe age of 24, after watching winnie the pooh for about 20 years or so, that none of the folks living in the hundred acre wood, with the exception of christopher robin, the lone human, wear any pants and that the likely reason for this state of pants-less abandon is that pants imply genetalia to hide, and as far as disney is concerned, while gender can and should exist, genetalia should not. who knew they were so progressive? i shouldn't be surprised. they have gay day after all. yet while i respect their progressive views, i would not want to give up my genetalia or my boyfriend's genetalia, even if it meant that we could walk around in public without pants. it's perfectly satisfactory to let loose with the pants-less-ness in the privacy of one's own home.)
believe it or not, i am thoroughly enjoying my pooh-like bumbling. my head was so full of fluff this morning that i did not care about the fact that my jeans are almost completely destroyed or that my t-shirt is probably inappropriate to wear to work or that my flip flops are four years old (i paid seven bucks for them in 2002 -- best shoe value ever!). why? because i am comfy, dammit, and my feelings of comfi-ness are translating into a very concrete sense of well being. if i knew dressing like a bum and staring off into space while humming "the wonderful thing about tiggers" (the wonderful thing about tiggers, tiggers are wonderful things, they're bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy, etc. etc.) would be the key to self-actualization, i would have adopted this lifestyle a long time ago. power suits, my ass. screw the yuppie dream! for goddess's sake, read the words of the prophet pooh (or whoever wrote for pooh) and rejoice:
"the sky is perfectly blue/the clouds are perfect too/and here i am with you/what could be more right/a quest has come to an end/and home's around the bend/and here you are my friend/what could be more right/nothing can go wrong/if everything is right/and everything is right somehow/nothing can go wrong/as long as everything is right/and everything is right, right now." (well, except for that i am at work and no one else is here and i have seven hours to go before this song will really be appropriate.)
hmm. i think by now it's obvious that someone has slipped me some kind of fabulous pharmacuetical and i should go have myself checked. or maybe i should just have some breakfast. anybody got any honey? i guess yogurt and a granola bar will have to do. strangely, contemplating my breakfast is starting to cause an eeyore-like response. hopefully i will not begin to take eeyore's physical traits as i have taken on pooh's. i mean, eeyore has a nice ass and all, but would i really want to be a blue donkey with a black mohawk? then again... i could probably get some sick leave from work if that condition were to develop. will you listen to me? since when have i looked on the bright side of things? it looks like pooh's possession of me continues after all. what's next? getting stuck in a rabbit hole with my ass hanging out? lucky for me (and for the rest of you, incidentally), it's (it being my ass) covered in my old blue jeans.
Monday, April 03, 2006
sleep? i don't need no freakin sleep
those of you who know me are probably fucking sick of hearing me obsess about sleep -- how much of it i get or don't get, how much i like it, how much i want it, how much i needs it, my precious. too. damn. bad.
four hours. four hours. i know that bryant gumbel and that katy couric bitch can function on four hours of sleep, but i am a human being, not an automaton programmed by aliens to get up at the butt crack of dawn in order to drone on about whether or not tom cruise is possessed by the spirit of l. ron freaking hubbard. ahem.
i apologize for my nasty tone. i get a bit testy when i am tired. perhaps it's the bleary eyes that looked like i've smoked more dope than woody harrelson and bill clinton combined. perhaps it's being more bloated than that whale that blew up from the inside out in taiwan. perhaps it's the feeling of fogginess, of my world being slightly slower than it should be. i have no doubt that my poor little axons are trying to fire neurochemicals at one another as bravely as the residents of the alamo shot at the mexicans, and with about that much enthusiasm. but like the texans, they are losing the battle.
how desperate is the situation? i am now contemplating taking a nap in the juevenile delinquent's room at our office. who knows what i might lay in? who knows what substances have soaked into those couches? will i get bedbugs? lice? syphyillis? do i really care? is having a nap worth getting some unknown skin disease? damn. i have nice skin. i don't want to break out in syphyillitic sores. i suppose i will have to tough it out. wish me luck. i feel a little bit like william b. travis writing to sam houston. that one's for you, jenny.
four hours. four hours. i know that bryant gumbel and that katy couric bitch can function on four hours of sleep, but i am a human being, not an automaton programmed by aliens to get up at the butt crack of dawn in order to drone on about whether or not tom cruise is possessed by the spirit of l. ron freaking hubbard. ahem.
i apologize for my nasty tone. i get a bit testy when i am tired. perhaps it's the bleary eyes that looked like i've smoked more dope than woody harrelson and bill clinton combined. perhaps it's being more bloated than that whale that blew up from the inside out in taiwan. perhaps it's the feeling of fogginess, of my world being slightly slower than it should be. i have no doubt that my poor little axons are trying to fire neurochemicals at one another as bravely as the residents of the alamo shot at the mexicans, and with about that much enthusiasm. but like the texans, they are losing the battle.
how desperate is the situation? i am now contemplating taking a nap in the juevenile delinquent's room at our office. who knows what i might lay in? who knows what substances have soaked into those couches? will i get bedbugs? lice? syphyillis? do i really care? is having a nap worth getting some unknown skin disease? damn. i have nice skin. i don't want to break out in syphyillitic sores. i suppose i will have to tough it out. wish me luck. i feel a little bit like william b. travis writing to sam houston. that one's for you, jenny.
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