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the latest
waddle: good morning, wordpress - 10:36 a.m. , 2009-07-03 elaborate murder attempt - 2:56 p.m. , 2009-07-01 building a tractor in the basement - 10:42 a.m. , 2009-06-19 ask no questions tell just a few lies - 3:17 p.m. , 2009-06-09 my long lasting flavor really lasts long - 1:10 p.m. , 2009-06-04
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I was complaining about how apathetic and generic I feel about everything, up to and including writing and posting here, and it was suggested that I have a guest author. But I'm really bad about delegating, so I don't think I want to do that. But if you are seriously bored---if all your friends have dropped off the face of the earth, if you set all your books and records on fire and threw your television and computer out the window in a fit of amphetamine psychosis (how many times have I told you to lay off that shit?), if you have been banned from every bar, museum, and restaurant in your fair city for your aforementioned crazy behavior, and you think it might be fun to pretend to be Mimi Smartypants for a few paragraphs, go ahead and write them. (Longhand or on a typewriter, I suppose, since you threw your computer out the window.) Did I ever tell you about my particularly evil undergraduate writing workshop experience? At the last meeting, instead of having us workshop a real poem, the workshop leader had us draw names and we wrote a parody of that person's writing style. Ack, I don't know why I'm even talking about this, it's too painful a memory. We all drank lots of wine to get through it. There's nothing like bleeding all over the page in a serious top-level writing program for four years of your life and then being reduced to clich� in five minutes by one of your classmates. As the BDB (which stands for Bestest Drinking Buddy [formerly known as him], not Business Development Bureau or Badly Drawn Boy), put it: "Just another step in the systematic degeniusing of kids." AND, a major factor in me deciding not to pursue an MFA in creative writing, despite some tepid-to-moderate interest in my stuff from excellent programs like the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Suffering through that exercise sort of brought it home to me that graduate school doesn't exactly encourage innovation: it encourages compartmentalization, and learning how to write the best trademarked name-brand "you" poem you can possibly write, the one that wins prizes, the one that fits in the chapbook, etc. This whole digression, which is now running out of petrol and sputtering to a stop by the side of the hot, dusty road, was heading toward this anticlimactic little destination: I changed my mind. Don't write a Mimi Smartypants parody, it will just make me sad and defensive. Here, I'll preempt the whole project and do it for you: 1. Say something filthy or full of innuendo. 2. Mention liquor. 3. Happy: some weird little thought you had. Sad: how no one understands you and the world sucks. 4. Name-drop some contemporary fiction. 5. Link some octopus-related content. Other animals that work well: anteaters, rhinos, lungfish, llamas. 6. Make arbitrary divisions between paragraphs. 7. Get all meta-bloggy: make sure you remind everybody they are merely reading text on a page. Web page qua web page. 8. Carefully control your ratio of sass to sincerity. Don't forget to have a certain detached and skeptical postpunk sluttiness. It's just a jump to the left, and then a step to the right, put your hands on your hips, take a pull from your flask, and now you've got your own faker Mimi. See how easy that was? (Cough. I joke on the outside but I am kind of moaning on the inside.) GUESS WHAT? No, it's not chicken butt. This is my Friday afternoon! That's right, I'm taking tomorrow and Friday off. It's not entirely slackerrific. I have some Huge Side Projects Of Great Stressfulness to do, and I keep saying that I will put some time aside to work on them at the office, and it goes on my list every day to do so, but it's just impossible. So I've floppied up all the documents I need and bundled all my many pieces of paper into a professional-looking folder, and I will use part of the days off to hopefully make some headway. But all work and no play makes Mimi a hard-core alcoholic---the mean kind, with spiral pinwheel spark-shooting pupils and a constant stream of foul language that intensifies as the night wears on---so I have some fun stuff planned for my mini-sabbatical as well. Such as: 1. Cupcakes and beer at the Hideout to celebrate a friend's birthday. 2. Napping. 3. 80s new-wave night at Neo to meet a fellow diarylander. 4. Reading from the stack of library books. I am reading three books at once again, a terrible habit. 5. A return to the making of art jello.* 6. Coffee-shop hijinks (the only word in the English language with three dotted letters in a row.) 7. Beer (but probably not cupcakes) and drag kings at Empty Bottle. *Art jello! I used to make art jello all the time. Art jello is a jello mold with unusual or non-food items suspended inside it, like hot-dog slices or paper clips or styrofoam peanuts or army guys. Art jello is a wonderful thing. Nineteen cents for a box of jello and a handful of small, lightweight items and you can have yourself quite a creative little time. Send your ideas to me and maybe I will use them and take some photos for posting here. ---mimi smartypants gets that way sometimes. back/forward |
