“It’s like this. I have been appointed judge in the penal colony. In spite of my youth. Because I assisted former commandant in all punishment-related issues, and also I have the best understanding of the machine. My basis for deciding is this: guilt is always beyond doubt.” ~guess
Archive for April, 2013
Welcome to the World
April 15, 2013Thoughts on Ghostwriting
April 14, 2013Re: Craigslist posting that reads:
“~Need someone to help me write a love letter~~
I am not a very talented writer and I need some assistance in writing a love letter to my ex. If you are interested and feel that you could help send a reply.
Compensation: yes”
HS-D: Oh, wow. I always want to do things like this–same with working for those places who help people write online dating profiles–but then I always worry about the implications of someone else taking credit for that writing. Not because I want the credit, but because good writing is so attractive, and I feel like it’d be awful to think that the guy you were into was a great writer and then later find out that it wasn’t his writing after all. A complicated issue.
ID: I know, right? As an extension of this idea, what if you wrote a really beautiful letter, and it resulted in the couple getting back together, but they were a terrible match for one another and lived a miserable life together, acrimoniously divorcing in middle-aged and forever scarring their children and creating a legacy of domestic unhappiness?
HS-D: Exactly! On the one hand it doesn’t seem fair to penalize people for poor writing skills, but on the other hand, I feel like it’s almost never a good idea to help people pretend to be something they’re not.
ID: It’s so intimate, too –– a love letter. I’d have a much easier time ghostwriting hate mail.
HS-D: Oh, definitely. I have a vague idea that love differs a fair amount from person to person, whereas hate is just hate.
ID: But on the other hand –– “compensation: yes.”
Movie Idea
April 13, 2013Twenty-something with a bevy of psychiatric problems gets a service monkey (they exist) who teaches her to be happy. Maybe they fall in love. It’s like Max Mon Amour for the hipster set.
Not My Monsey Tours!
April 12, 2013Between the shrink-wrapped kohain and the sex-segregated playground in Kiryas Joel, my friends the Hasids are having a WEEK! Oh, that, and also, a bus they operate almost ran over my boyfriend and destroyed my chance at a happy domestic life middle-age. Bastards!
Ed note: unclear whether it was a Monsey Tours or a Monsey Trails bus.
ML: i want to give you one guessabout which bus companyowned the busthat almost just ran me off the road on my way to schoolID: megaML: nome: bolt?ML: nome: fung wahML: noit’s you-specificID: schwartz busesmonsey trailsML: closefucking monsey tours
me: can you tweet at monsey tours bus company?i wonder if they have twitterML: i called themfiled a complaintand called the copsi hope the cops stop the busbut i doubt they willme: omg!wowyou went on a warpathoh i see, they have a baltimore lineML: i am so fucking angryok i need to workme: ok let me know if you want me to go up to spring valley and crack some skullsML: i’m not kiddingi will never forgive monsey tours for this
The Real World
April 11, 2013Ever since I finally made my Real World Seattle gif, which you can see here, people have been encouraging me to reminisce about other seasons of the Real World –– the prime ones, mostly, like San Francisco and New Orleans, which was an excellent one, what with Julie the Mormon and Kelly who ended up marrying SCOTT WOLF OMG and that enormous beautiful mansion they lived in. Oo-wee! And as my friend JW pointed out this morning, they mostly got along, too, which is far more interesting to watch than the squabbles and bathroom hook-ups and declarations of murderous hatred. Anyway, JW was telling me all about his obsession with Melissa, about whom I had completely forgotten, and about how he reads her blog, so I Googled it and I just spent basically the past thirty minutes blacking out on the Tumblr of that tiny Filipino princess, who apparently has converted to Judaism (mazel tov!) and is married to the guitarist from Glassjaw and was super super pissed about Casey Anthony getting exonerated. And guess what? She’s also hilarious.
A very young person on Twitter just said he’d like to start “a blog or something with just words.” I instantly felt old as shit recalling the days I’d sit in my studio apartment in LA putting up “web entries” before I knew it was even called “web logging,” then shortened to just “blogging.” In the year 2000, y’all. I kept that blog going into 2009. Just words. One place. Old school PrincessMelissa. It had exactly three looks in nine years. There were the icons of my paintings on the original. Then there was the splash page where you click on the sofa to come in, like “Have a seat and read with me.” And then there was the tiny PrincessMelissa logo all over with the tag line “Them chickens is ash and I’m lotion.” People really liked that last one because it had font control! Make this bigger, wow!
I want the old school PrincessMelissa! I could read that shit for years. Also, at one point she says she heard that JWoww and Snooki were looking to buy a house in Long Island so she tweeted at them that her house was for sale and would be perfect for them, which sounds like something I would do (except replace Tweet with “write long missive in microscopic handwriting and send via messenger pigeon.”)
Diagnonsense
April 10, 2013The piece on Vulture where a psychiatrist evaluates Don Draper reminded me that my friend and I wanted to start a blog a la the Composites where we’d diagnosis various literary and film characters with different mental disorders. Here is a list of possible subjects, so far. I don’t know why I bother with these caveats, as it’s not like they’re binding, but don’t steal my shit! Or maybe I should say, a la Michael in Mad Men, “Whatever, I got a million great ideas.”
1. Scarlett O’Hara
2. Quentin Compson
3. Infinite Jest –– Hal Incandenza
4. Apocalypse Now –– Colonel Kurtz
5. Black Swan –– whatever Natalie Portman’s name is
6. Jan from The Office (definitely Borderline)
7. Holly Golightly
8. George Costanza
9. Holden Caulfield
10. Christian Grey (50 Shades)
11. Heathcliff and Whatever her name is from Wuthering Heights (codependent)
12. Marla Singer from Fight Club
13. Withnail from Withnail and I (depression, substance abuse disorder)
14. Isabelle Huppert’s character from The Piano Teacher
15. Job
16. A muppet?
17. Madame Bovary and/or Anna Karenina
Welcome Back, Neruda
April 9, 2013Pablo Neruda’s body is being exhumed in Chile, and based on a picture of the scene in the Times, it appears there is a group of musicians playing. How did they get there? Were they hired? And what did they play? These are very important questions.
THE GREAT CONTROVERSY
April 9, 2013I received a free promotional book here at my office titled as above, and it turns out it’s a seminal text of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, though that’s not indicated on the cover. Perhaps they thought a reader would be turned off by such proselytizing, but they weren’t prepared for the likes of me! The back matter makes it all sound so consequential!
“Unparalleled changes taking place around us forecast rapid and distressing events of the greatest magnitude.
“Already, in many hearts, there are sorrows and ills that no human balm seem able to heal. In many places, there are restless and unsettled state of affairs, causing political and religious forces to forge unprecedented alliances. And, wholly beyond the control of humanity, there are unregulated forces of nature which unleash calamities one after another in quick succession: earthquakes and tornadoes, destruction by fire and flood, often with great loss of life and property.
“Solemn and important, indeed, are the events taking place in our times. But what do all these really mean? Could these be warning signs, arousing us to some imminent danger? What should be our role in the fast-approaching events soon to break upon the earth?
“The book in your hands provides definitive answers. [ed note: eeeeee!] Drawing upon lessons from history as well as Bible prophecy, The Great Controversy reveals that the world is a theater of conflict. The actors –– you and me –– are preparing to act our part in the last great drama. And our choices and actions have a part to play in the outcome of this agelong struggle.
“You owe it to yourself to read this book. For, ‘those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.'”
You had me at “ills that no human balm seem able to heal.” Poetry!
In other news, I had an elaborate dream about the Counting the Omar Tumblr last night.
Not Much To Say
April 8, 2013I haven’t written a lot lately because I haven’t had much to say, but my anxiety as neglecting the poor blog for more than five days got the better of me (I suppose I’m as much as a victim of the Internet culture as everyone else) and so now I’m here to… say nothing. Some more.
1. Something keeping me going these days: the saga of Amanda Bynes. What will she do next!? I only know I want to join Twitter because one time she tweeted that if she isn’t following someone on Twitter, it means she hates them, and I just couldn’t live with myself if I thought Amanda Bynes hated me.
UPDATE based on Nicole’s comment: I do think that the reason her crash and burn is so fascinating is because there seems to be an organic (maybe) mental illness there, and therefore it’s a little sexier than the straight wild-child-deterioration narrative of Lindsay Lohan, let’s say.
2. While looking at reviews on Barnes & Noble for William Styron’s Darkness Visible, I came across this mildly disturbing one:
Anonymous
Posted October 16, 2003
dont think it
I’ve read alot of great children’s books such as Ella Enchanted, Destiny, Defender of the small, and The Time Warp Trio books, but I’ve never read a ‘sophisticated and grown up’ book before. I’m twelve, how else should I describe it? I do think this book is good. I had a hard time understanding what it meant at first, but later on I understood that no one who has not been afflicted with isnomnia will truly know the full depth of madness and emptiness that they feel. Styron, with intimate details, creates an illistration for us.
*What the fuck is a twelve-year-old, fresh off Ella Enchanted, doing picking up Styron’s memoir of depression? WHERE WERE HER PARENTS!?
Because You Watched…
April 4, 2013So I’ve been quite for a week (if only I were given such latitude in real life!) because I had THE FLU! The dreaded flu. And yes, it was horrible, and yes, I will never, ever eschew getting a flu shot again, but I did get to lie in bed and watch about 70 movies for four days, even though of the 70 movies I probably only finished about 10 due to sleepiness. Oddly enough, my choice in movies while sick is very different from my choice in movies while well/sober.
Well: Preferably European art house with no discernible plot and only a vague moral about the meaninglessness of life
Sick: 90s American made by a big studio, preferably starring Julia Roberts
I know, embarrassing, but I tell you this because after watching a particular choice Roberts flick, I noticed that Netflix was offering me a very strange suggestion. It said: “Because you watched Sleeping With the Enemy,” why not try:
which is really pretty hilarious, if you think about it. Also, is that the real cover of the show’s DVDs or did Netflix employees, tasked with designing their own, just say, “Aw hell, fuck these people?”
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