I took a writing class this summer with Lisa Russ Spaar at UVA (namedrop!), and one day she brought in a blue 80s ankle boot and told us to write a scene or a poem about it. So I wrote about a Peace Corps volunteer’s more fashionable sister. Last night when I saw my mom at a cocktail party at a nursing home, she said that maybe my sister Margaret shouldn’t see my blog because of my blue boot story. Granted, Margaret is extremely well dressed and likes to shop, but she is not the sister in the story. Margaret was far from my mind when I wrote that story. For one, I could not see Margaret in those blue boots. They just wouldn’t work on her wide-set feet. For two, Margaret studies Geography and she is way more globally aware than I am. The other day Darren pointed toward the mountains and asked “What’s in that direction?” All I could think about was walking in that direction until you wrapped around the earth and arrived back where you started. I could not mentally remove myself from the small plot of land where I was standing in my swimsuit. Anyway, I don’t think either sister in the story is very sympathetic, whereas Margaret and I are both really awesome and humanitarian. So take that, Mom.
Unusual Deaths
When I was a kid, I fell in love with a book called The Grim Reaper’s Book of Days which chronicled extraordinary and gruesome historical deaths in great detail for every day of the year, including your birthday. Tonight StumbleUpon showed me this Wikipedia site about unusual deaths. These lists favor ironical, horrific, comic, and bizarre accidental deaths. I find them fascinating, because I don’t have enough to worry about. If I died tomorrow, I would probably make the list. “Blogger blogs about dying and bites it the day after her post.” Maybe I won’t leave the house.
“2002: Richard Sumner, a British artist suffering from schizophrenia, disappeared and was not located again until three years later when his skeleton was discovered handcuffed to a tree in a remote forest in Wales. Police investigators determined the death was a suicide, with Sumner securing himself in the handcuffs and throwing the keys out of reach.”
Let’s Kill Them All
This Vanity Fair article will make you sick to your stomach. If you stare at the photograph of Kevin Federline, Pete Wentz, Steve Aoki, Benji Madden, Cisco Adler, and Joel Madden long enough, you will definitely lose your breakfast.
I Am a Soccer Mom
Last night I had a nightmare that I couldn’t finish my shopping at a Super Wal-Mart. Every time I thought I could check out, I thought of something I needed at the other side of the store. Then a bunch of assholes were in front of me in line. Then I needed a special kind of milk. Then I saw some broccoli on sale. It took me hours to get out of there. The climactic part of the dream, the part that woke me up in a cold sweat, was when I realized the day after the shopping trip that I had left all my groceries in the hot car.
When are things going to start happening on my internet?
Shit, maybe I should have gone out tonight after all.
Google Rank
I’m so pissed that when I Google my name, my blog does not appear. What does appear is a page that has haunted me since college – “WISTAR DESTROYS EVOLUTION.” Darren says that sometimes it takes more than 24 hours for a new web page to show up in searches. Someday I hope to beat the Wistar rat (link is awesome for word “odontoblast”) in Google rankings.
How to Get Attention
1. When you are having a bad day, say that you are having the second worst day of your life. When someone asks you what happened on the worst day of your life, tell him that was the day your mother killed herself on the way to prison to serve a jail sentence.
2. When you are having a great day, say that you are having the second best day of your life. When someone asks you what happened on the best day of your life, tell him that was the day you won the lottery and decided to give all your money away to friends and kind strangers in $10,000 increments.
3. When you are eating a slice of pie, tell people that it is the third best slice of pie you have ever eaten. When they ask about the other slices, tell them one had an engagement ring in it and the other one was made out of meat.
4. When you are swimming in a public pool, go number two.
5. When you are going to a party, bring a really good-looking baby. When someone compliments you on the cuteness of your baby, say “Thanks, but this is only my second cutest baby.” When your new friend says “ORLY?,” you say, “At home I have a shrunken fetus in a jar that I dress up in comical outfits.”
6. On a river tubing trip, make sure you drink enough rum punch so that you will throw up on the car ride home and then cry because you threw up.
7. Make sure you eat a lot of fried chicken, Doritos, and chocolate chip cookies before said trip.
8. Make sure that all your older brother’s med school friends see you throw up, but they don’t offer you first aid because they are too drunk off Natural Light.
9. Make sure you call your brother lots of times to thank him for cleaning up your parents’ van.
10. Take a trip somewhere exotic, and then host a slide show while serving expensive hors d’oeuvres like brie cheese and sushi. Then give everyone cash for coming over.
Fake Cripple
Tonight Darren and I were driving to his sister’s house for dinner, when we both spotted an old man walking down the sidewalk. In front of him, at shin-height, he held a metal walker. It seemed to me that trying to walk while carrying a walker was just creating more work for the man, even though a walker is meant to make life easier for those with bad legs and hips. He was struggling not to kick the metal while he navigated the pavement, and honestly, the thing looked heavy. I am 26, and do push-ups, but I probably couldn’t carry a walker for more than a block. So what was this old man’s story? Was he trying to get downtown quickly, where he would ground his walker and begin limping behind it like a cripple, begging for spare change? Was the sidewalk too bumpy for the walker’s wheels, so he was forced to carry it? Was it a walker he found beside someone’s trash can, salvaged with the expectation that he would need it someday? Watching him struggle, I kept thinking of someone with a wheelchair perched on his head like a bucket, jogging along with the upside-down wheels turning in the breeze. Or someone strapping a bicycle to his back and sweating on his walk along a bike path. If I ever break my ankle, I am going to buy crutches, and instead of using them to take the weight off my foot, I am going to make stilts out of them and start training for the circus.
Dinner was really good. We had vegetables from Jennifer’s garden. Big props to Jennifer in case she is reading this. I apologize for the word props. The best part of dinner was when Harper stopped in the middle of her ramikin of homemade chocolate chip ice cream to tell her mother, “I like to lick you sometimes.”
Christopher Hitchens on Harry Potter
I get the feeling that Christopher Hitchens took it easy on Harry Potter because otherwise his young daughter would not forgive him, but I still appreciate his mostly benign review. The notorious hater incorporates Hitler, George Orwell, Dickens, George W., and Arthur Conan Doyle in his criticism of the Deathly Hallows, but begrudgingly he also shows himself to be well-versed in Harry’s magical world. From a safe distance, Hitchens honors Hogwarts, even going so far as to complain about Harry, Ron, and Hermione being away from their beloved school for so long in the Hallows. I think the atheist in him probably appreciates the absence of religious references in JK Rowling’s books, even though it pains him that Christian ethics somehow infiltrate the magical realm. I also think he got paid a lot for the review. But good job Hitchens! Maybe you are becoming less of a snob. Maybe you are getting soft in your old age. I would expect a harsher treatment of Harry than of Mother Theresa, but you defied my expectations. You tried to hate, but you failed. You’re still just a little English schoolboy at heart, even though you smell like whiskey shots and your three-pack-a-day habit.