Bad literature

I am not talking about pornography, though I could. Recent stories include having someone promote around a piece of drippy erotica on Facebook without prefacing it with anything but "read what I just wrote"; I function poorly as a social human and was unable to say anything more than, "Wow, you didn't tell us it was rated!" I hate being confronted with others' bad judgment. Another woman broadcast there her insomnia caused by birth control pills, this shortly after her Catholic wedding (at near 40).

Yesterday I spent about an hour reading terrible literature. I am operating as a volunteer juror or reader for an online magazine … I seem to recall hearing decent work at their live readings, so the quality of this latest batch of entries was particularly disheartening. I could see it in a good light, that the competition locally is poor; however, that just makes me think that the decent writers have chosen to abandon this market or at least online literary magazines (though who buys the printed journals anymore?).

There was a poem that contained the phrase "want my husband to spank me" and a short story of no plot, a vignette about Iraq-stationed contractors. The latter had some decent turns of phrase, but they were to no unified purpose. There were poems about the elderly that always ended too bitterly to carry off any point, and the first short story I read was the longest, 13 pages, mostly dialog (that did not advance any plot — again, it was a prolonged scene and full of cliches and irrational grammar) and the creative-writing-101-ruse of loads of song lyrics operating as much of that so-called dialog, a compendium of useless pop-culture references and unnecessary profanity. Another poem was a long lyrical representation of copulation. The entries were distributed anonymously. I do not ever want to know.

I am disinclined to go to the live meeting tonight; I see no point in it, after having sent in my opinion in the form of a spreadsheet with ratings of 1 to 5 (overall only, no categories).

Lately I am disinclined to do a lot of things. The weather has taken its cue from the equinox and become cold. My nose wishes to drip, my hands are literally near-blue, and I've already put on the shearling-lined boots. The tree in the back yard had already dropped most of its leaves by the first day of fall; it had just been waiting for a pretext, having suffered all summer looking like lace for the insect perforations. The edges of most of the foliage around here are perennially brown.

So weather is one excuse. Are there better ones? My cousin seems to be transferring to a college close to home. Florida, I suspect, is too far from her boyfriend. I am always cynical about decisions of career and education that are predicated on romance. He is in his 20s but struck me as very quiet the one time I met him. She probably has changed her major from marine biology, too. Maybe she just misses her lizards and her '90s Toyota.

School is a burden to me, as well. I lack any discipline for accomplishing anything; I have always loathed writing about things forced on one as exercises. Training for a time when something interesting presents itself is boring by definition. Doing so for money is less loathsome; paying someone to make you learn is an odd arrangement.

I have a number of items to post, and all of them have been lingering in the queue for ages. A main set of administrative tasks also linger. The probability of undiminished returns is waning, but now an intern seems to be making a request. Do I really like to manage writers?

Writing is a preference. A friend of mine recently had a little epiphany, a self-guided decision, really, to avoid restrictive employment terms in order to preserve time for creative acts of one's own.

The main reason I undertook this educational endeavor was to learn some things formally for my position. As the position barely exists at this point, the original impetus is gone. Not much of an auxiliary one grew up meanwhile. Does 2014 sound all that distant to you? Also, it's not as if I had the $5,000 or will have the $7,000. I've enjoyed what I've learned, but the joy of depth and esoteric mastery is not very strong. My opinion has not changed from the day I completed undergraduate life, though I tried. I even used my older-now wisdom. I only wish for credentials, and clearly I'm not interested in working for them.

Please note that none of this is "good" writing.

I remember a writing teacher's telling a fellow student (who relayed it to me), "What do you do when your student is a better writer than you?" and finding that a bad case all around. If anything, it has provided me the foundation upon which to judge a certain (low) level of others' work.

Sure smells sweet

Seriously

… I am so moving to Byzantium / Constantinople / Istanbul …

Note

I did trip and fall on Tuesday … on a decline, in chunky yet inflexible heel sandals …
Left ankle became parallel with the asphalt earth,
Right knee and ankle-bone bear red witness to the occasion.

I was speeding up based on someone I had just passed (whom I did not fear, but I always have to make my point).

He did not see me fall.

What is nice to report is that my left foot (isn't that a movie?)
Can almost do everything it's asked to do today, only 30+ hours later.

So, it wasn't the worst thing ever.

But it still hurts like … well, if I were a mere Homo erectus, I wouldn't have made it,
Unless those theories about caring (among that genetic strain) are true.

No photos of my brick-red scrapes are available.

Half of the 154 remaining messages

ARE FROM TODAY

Inbox down to 198

to-do items downloaded from inbox so far, greater than 40.
inbox task not complete. expect action-item highs in the mid-70s.

Choosing Between Lividity and Levity

All my silk slips have severe snags.
Quel tragedie.
Kerosene?
No.

"To Prevent Becoming What You're Busy Not Doing"

Four large tasks on the plate, and there are no eggs or bacon on the side.

That chicken farmer owns too many farms and doesn't seem to care much for hygiene. I'm surprised there were not sickened egg-eaters sooner.

Back from that aside, I am letting the rain make me feel the opposite of the heart palpitatious nervousness that made me un-sleep at 7 instead of 8.

"I Don't Like"

Do you think the majority of people have an easier time coming up with things they dislike than with those that they enjoy, appreciate, or look forward to?

Do you think that, even if that number were in balance, that the people who claim to like such-and-such, especially the kind of people one used to call a Pollyanna but who have become complicated and often religious, actually feel, on the whole, that their likes are weightier than their hatreds, dreads, and sorrows?

You know that my answers are yes and no, respectively.

I wanted to say that the egg video is mainly an audio track with (here) low resolution and poorly lit (fluorescent) ambiance. It was not meant to say anything in particular except that I think everyone should roll hard-boiled eggs around and see what they come up with. Maybe I'm just interested in eggs, either from a snake's point of view (I do eat chickens, after all, out of habit) or that of a caretaker of egg-making animals.

It's late, and I have encountered a great many things today (yesterday/Friday) that I did not like. Large, small, inconsequential inconveniences, and time-consuming trying encounters. I have to be at a museum in about eight hours … for school … my group of four has been directed along with the others to go and choose four artworks about which we're taking up two short essays. It might be only two, actually, and we then choose one. So I guess this teacher cares for comparing what people come up with. There's another blechier project due near the end. Something about a problem, a PowerPoint, dear grouchiness, and a final paper. I haven't made anything but a haphazard bibliography in a long time. Actually, probably never, as I tend to be a fishing researcher, and this class seems to be about teaching us to be discerning, but in a particular way.

The wall of Academia is visible again, and I still do not like it, though some of its decorations have improved; by that poor metaphor, I mean that technology has made it quicker and more comprehensive to find "quality sources." I guess journalists aren't experts enough (even with an informed opinion — and it occurs to me that the teacher, who was an early advisor of mine, referred to my being a critic, in public, when I was merely in a prelude to the "introduce yourself" part of the class; I knew what I meant to say — I had taken notes; you know I can't do anything without writing something down, but she may have meant no harm, being a somewhat sketchy and quick talker, starting sentences she diverts from midway, somewhat like someone else I know). But no matter; I don't really have anything I do care about in art history; and it was odd — so many of the women in the class (they were all women) expressed interest in 18th century France or ancient Western art, which is boring to me. There was one person with tri-colored hair who had taken an incomplete the previous semester and just had to sit in and do the work now, though and then could graduate. She flatly stated, "I am not going on in art history; I'm not interested in anything." I am glad I'm not in her group; I didn't see who she teamed up with.

I got two people who were geographically next to me, as well as the girl across the arc who made eye contact with me and who was the only other person I recall as being interested in architecture, albeit construction and fabrication methods. Still, she was smart and had a well-spoken introduction. I think I might have sounded stupid; I will not quote myself, though I do remember what I said. I have notes, after all and it was only the other night.

And I am cooperative and cheerful and will come up with something to write about eventually; the thesis is years away, unless I can mentally, financially, and temporally fit more than two courses into a year's worth of time.

Anyway, I'll let you know what boring pictures we pick. I don't like being limited to committee choices.

Do you?

I like eggs

Low Skyline of DC

Laid Back

Lots of people are waiting for for 65 so they can sit back and not ever work again.

I guess I'm glad I've been working that time into my life as I go.

I am not saving anything.

So far.

It's kind of a silly joke. I don't appreciate enough what they above me have done for me.

I have never worked for a company that had a pension — except when I was in Japan. Once I worked for a religious organization, and they had something, too. I suppose I was silly to blow those few thousand dollars. But it was the 90s, and my parents were not involved in the decisions, and there had not been the kind of subliminal training that drove me to put "it" "somewhere."

Of course now it's more like 70.

Lemurs got frozen fruit; random dialogue is fun

Well, I never

I miss expressions that don't use the word "fuck" — or that require a bit more thought than simply sneering:

Gone to pieces.

Give a hang.

All broke up on you.

I shouldn't wonder.

A: "We never go out any more."

B: "You're just a head in a rusty metal box."

A: "If you had been more careful, I wouldn't be just a head in a rusty metal box."*

Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance!

— except that I gave up dancing about five years ago.

It was a wide but brief window.

We're all wondering whether the blogging window also is on the list to be shuttered.

Unlike an old building, it won't deteriorate upon abandonment; however, like Miss Doxie, Diary of a Mad Brown Woman, BiblioBoy, etc., untended blogs may be retained as archives, but they won't be consulted.

I rarely even read anything old that I've written, much less all your words of wisdom or the hundreds of articles I've bookmarked or cut-and-pasted into text files … or downloaded as a student from JStor and other databases …

Reading old paper-based diaries proves consistently to be depressing and repulsive. I know now why my mother burned hers, why it upset me, and why I both wish to burn and probably will not … so much now is electronic; it will survive "all" but easy cyberwarfare.

Does the world really need more information from me? Granted, unlike manufacturing anything but recorded verbal ideas, writing doesn't tax the world much; it does not add to much pollution — one can use recycled paper and pencils, after all, instead of relying on available electricity (non-solar — you can read a Kindle in the sun, but you still need power; books use power to be produced … all the tree-moving and processing and inking and re-distribution, so many trucks; I so would like to know the environmental impact of our books … book-carbon-footprint). The weight of words in our information age is diminished by dilution. Even our static thoughts, thoughts recorded, are mere blowing puffs.

My point is that I don't have much to say.

To clarify, I have lots of experiences that I could indulge myself in recording, but I doubt their narrative value to others as well as their usefulness to me. And my greater desire is to be humorous, which is funny in itself — I can not translate life into funny stories. (I haven't given much time to trying that : )

Additionally, the things I want most to talk about are exceedingly private the more public my professional persona becomes. Already there are plenty of things I can't say on Facebook. Today I want to complain about being undercut. That's about as much detail I can provide. Tossing in this idiom may help elucidate: If you snooze, you lose.

Please note that it is only the appearance of sleep, and there is certainly no rest involved. I maintain that there is nothing wrong with refusing to be forced to volunteer. I am not one of those good people. I recall a few semi-voluntary giving-of-time sessions, and also one willing and rewarding one, and a number of repeated-event forced ones that seem to have turned me off from unrenumerative uses of my time that involve having to please others instead of just solely myself.

Asking more and providing less. Great recipe; would rather be at the zoo — it's Wild, Wacky and Wet Wednesday, and they are giving the animals ice and other frozen treats all day long! $2 admission, $2 hotdogs, $2 train rides!

*Saturday Night Live c. 1990.

It's like a cake made of rock

Ribbit

From earlier drafts / context lost #1

quite weary of not saying nor being able to say what she really means.*

most manners are meaningful diversions, formulaic conventions of politeness, of (yes, i am sure you did not mean to hurt anyone's feelings, and this is my abtruse and polite way of mentioning that you probably did hurt them regardless) honestly felt sentiments.

despite the way "they" eat dying-almost-all-gone whales all the time, the japanese have a cultural way of dispelling 91% of the BS i seem to encounter daily.

anthropology has the way to go.

*like: you're a f*ing slut (vocationally speaking; your artwork is crap; i hate your tedious lies; etc.)

**look for lost-drafts #2 around april 29.

It helps

To look at lapines:

http://www.disapprovingrabbits.com/2010/06/meatball.html

http://www.disapprovingrabbits.com/2010/06/cassidy.html

Cut grass today. Pulled things out. Ate all the ripe black raspberries off the bush (diminished yield this year … did a cull last fall … new canes will fruit in 2011), did not get any insect bites nor see the yard-snake.

Found 100 rolly-pollies (pill bugs) under the smoking wood soaking in speckleware on the table (wooden magazine rack). Moved it, removed rolly polly fodder.

Need to plant lilies of the valley. One lily, destined and hoped to spread. Not unlike the stupid virulent vines (some are morning glories; some are "wild;" and some are rouges of larger flower from the seeds I used two summers ago; don't worry, I'm winning against them and the walnut stump-tree).

Did a modicum of editing; spent 2 hours running grant supplements to destinations; spent $3 at FedExKinko's to make them look nice.

Have to pack. Am leaving in the morning for Salina, Kansas. Need to check weather.

Found new leak source. Will deal later.

Bacteria-town

I believe that there are at least 3 infections in her body right now.

That thing that seemed like "the usual carpal pain" is really that oven-rack burn from Friday that blistered 20 hours later and then peeled off a few hours later … the back of the hand is quite sensitive. Red circle. Sore. Hoping it fades.

Am not going to go further.

Has laundry drying on 4 floors. You can cross-reference that.

Ate pork two days in a row, 3 meals, all on these fun new-to-me flattish bread multi-grain things that my cousin and I both thought were cookies. My godmother let me take a bag of them home. I swear they are not in my city's stores yet. East-coast / West-coast. (Are far apart; my cousin once rode Harley-back with her hubby to Vegas. "Never again," though they are going that route to Chicago in 2 weeks for my brother's wedding. They are quite a-typical in the Harley set, in my non-described opinion.)

They're going to NYC this Thursday, and we're heading to Salina. We are taking the train to Chicago — driving to Salina, of course. We drove to a wedding in Salem in November … probably never again (at least not in 48 hours : )

You can take that to the bank.

has become an infrequent poster

let's blame facebook, purveyors of anti-privacy;

let's blame a hard drive failure, destiny of anyone on such a machine;

let's blame her fifth grey hair, which is really quite silver and blends almost not-so-poorly with the semi-golden ones and enjoys the privilege of being the first not to be yanked;

let's blame politics, where her energy has fled; she's quite upset by the oil-leak;

and the rest of the time she's watching japanimé.

and then there is work.