The Blog of Wistar Watts Murray

I give you the best multimedia feature about arm wrestling the Daily Progress has ever done.

Today’s Morning News features an essay by Todd Levin in his “Consoles I Have Known” series. Levin is a singularly gifted writer and comedian with a website and a love/hate relationship with video games. In this essay, entitled “Praystation,” he tackles both the phenomenon of Great Writers Who Move to New York City to Be Famous and End Up Writing Shitty Online Copy about Bass Fishing,  and the Chinatown bootleg gaming industry. This is the read of the day unless I write something equally brilliant later, which is unlikely.

Nerve and IFC present. . .

The 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time.

But they’re burning up on the VQR blog.

Birds are pretty cool, but in the springtime they are always instigating fights with clean windows and mirrors. If I think about it too much, I might start losing respect for the cardinal that keeps hurling himself into my boss’s car, asking that punk rearview mirror, “You think you’re better than me? You think you’re a hotshot because you got into the MFA program and I didn’t? Oh, so you’re going to cry now, you whiny baby?”

I have bookmarked a hundred things that I want to blog about, but all the links are on my home computer and I’m currently at work. And I refuse to write about what I did over the weekend, because that’s no one’s business. Even though what I did was REALLY cool. I could win the gold medal in the Drivin’ & Cryin’ event at the Olympics. I can simultaneously cry, steer, change gears, make note of the speed limit, and find the most tearjerking song on the radio. But I’ve been training ever since I got my license. I keep tissues in the glove compartment. Maybe I just own the world’s saddest Honda.

I respect Hollywood couple Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy for writing an intelligent article about autism, even if it does end with an unnecessary exclamation point. It seems that McCarthy’s five-year-old son Evan is one of the children who has “recovered” from autism through a strict food regiment. Yes, the connection between childhood vaccines and autism is still very controversial, but McCarthy has a point that something environmental is obviously triggering this condition. That unknown agent needs to be explored in full, no matter what the corporate consequences. So I never thought I’d say this, but kudos to Jenny McCarthy. “Where’s the cavalry?” she asks. “Where are all the doctors beating down our door to take a closer look at Evan?” Good question.

I’m the new male genitalia correspondent for the Virginia Quarterly Review! Best literary blog in the world! On its way downhill starting today! Unless they fire me!

1. If you’re applying to an MFA program at a prestigious university affiliated with Thomas Jefferson, perhaps the fiction you submit shouldn’t be about the following:

a) oral sex

b) dildos made out of balloons

c) shit smell

In case there’s anyone else out there who didn’t know that intuitively, consider this cautionary tale my gift to you.

2. If a big-name New York literary agent tells you that MFA programs are a waste of time, and then two days later you are rejected from an MFA program, guess who is your new hero.

3. Don’t waste your time being hateful, just find out how to be employed during the 08-09 academic year.

4. The best revenge is blogging for the VQR, my spectacular new gig.

5. The second best revenge is curling up on the couch for two hours. That’ll show ‘em! Yesterday I babysat Tula, my sister’s puppy, and she was so happy eating my slipper and peeing in the grass and sniffing dead worms while I miserably buried my head in the couch cushions, and I thought, “There’s probably a life lesson in here somewhere.” But no, in fact there wasn’t. I took Tula home so I could grieve in peace.