Wail away.
Watch the hullabaloo at the Western Wall live here.
Archive for the ‘I Hate Writing’ Category
Bored?
September 22, 2012ANXIETY
September 11, 2012I think I will write something for the Anxiety column of the Times about how anxious I am while writing an Anxiety column for the Times. Meta, eh?
Presented With Minimal Comment
September 4, 2012I’m pretty sick right now, and just slogged through a three day novel contest (and yes, wrote a novel –– more accurately, a novella –– in just three days!) so I’m not really in a place to be educating or writing or operating heavy machinery, metaphysical or otherwise, so here’s a little video clip of the first part of the episode of This Is Your Life featuring Frances Farmer. If you don’t know who Frances Farmer is, please review the following:
1. Any nutshell biography of Frances so you get the foundation
2. Frances’ award-winning essay, written when she was just 17, titled “God Dies” (published both on this blog and elsewhere)
3. The film Frances starring Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard in a role which is enormously grating (he still looks good, though)
4. The song “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle” by Nirvana
Then watch the below, and report back to me. (Still searching for the show Frances did –– post-lobotomy? –– called “Frances Farmer Presents,” but YouTube doesn’t seem to have it. Paley Center, here I come!)
Sneak Peek?
September 4, 2012Now DON’T LAUGH (or do, I guess):
In the background, phone rings.
“Jewish Joke Factory,” LuLu says answering it on the first ring. (She’d become much efficient in the time since the boon.) “Oh yes, ma’am, hold on one second.” She cups her hand loosely over the phone but neglects to lower her voice. “Charlie, it’s a GRACE KENNEDY for you?”
Edgar looks at Charlie, shocked. Charlie makes a hubba-hubba motion with his eyebrows, then skips jauntily over to his desk to pick up the line.
“How… Charlie, how did you… ?”
“I called in a favor. Sheldon owed me one.”
Now everyone turned to Sheldon.
“Shel?”
“He, uh, he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
“And that was… ?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Well never mind, just tell us what you did for him!”
“I, uh… I might have gone up to Hilarity Incorporated and… uh… done a singing telegram for her.”
“Oh my Gawd…”
“You didn’t.”
The group starts giggling in little spurts and soon enough, everyone is weeping imagining Sheldon doing a song-and-dance routine for Bombshell Kennedy.
“Sheldon, Sheldon!” Goldie says between sobs. “Did you wear a costume!?”
“I, eh, I may have worn a suit like a teddy bear, no big deal.”
Their laughter begins anew at this extra detail.
“Vat, vat?! I’m helping out a friend! Oh, for heaven’s… you wanna see the dance? You wanna see it?! Well, HERE you go! You think it’s so funny…”
And Sheldon began doing a little jig in a circle in the middle of the office, his face bunched up into a tight knot of irritation, as he sang the Nat King Cole song, “I Love You (For Sentimental Reasons.)”
“I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you…”
Okay I KNOW I Said No Posting BUT…
September 2, 2012Big problem here, people, BIG: you know how sometimes if you’re writing or reading you start to envision a character as a famous actor or personality, or occasionally someone you know, and that becomes the character’s face? Well, I’m envisioning this Jewish nudnik of sorts as Matthew Morrison from Glee –– which I might mention I don’t even WATCH –– and it has to stop now before his character starts mixing martinis and hitting on women with names like Buffy or Whit rather than cracking wise and saying, “Oy!” HELP ME!
Okay, Let’s Try This One More Time
August 30, 2012You guys,
I thought we already had this discussion. Of course, I’m referring to this, from People.com:
LeAnn Rimes is seeking help to address emotional issues.
“LeAnn has voluntarily entered a 30 day in-patient treatment facility to cope with anxiety and stress,” her rep Marcel Pariseau tells PEOPLE in an exclusive statement.
“While there will be speculation regarding her treatment, she is simply there to learn and develop coping mechanisms. While privacy isn’t expected, it’s certainly appreciated.”
Rimes – who checked in on Wednesday, the day after her 30th birthday – tells PEOPLE she hopes to emerge from treatment with better tools to deal with the life she’ll be returning to.
So this time around, let’s be really, really clear: stress isn’t a psychiatric issue. It’s even LESS of a diagnosis than “exhaustion.” There is no treatment for stress, and there certainly is no diagnostic code for fucking “stressed.” Imagine if someone tried to check in to a facility for “stress” –– how exactly would a health insurance provider react to THAT, if they have as much trouble with the “normal” diagnoses that they do? Of course, all of this is not to mention the pretty bad but still TOTALLY UNAVOIDABLE point that Leann Rimes probably doesn’t do her own laundry, cook her own food (too easy!), clean her own house or even pay her own bills, so what is she rehab-admission-worthy stressed about?
I really wish celebrities would stop doing these kinds of things. They’re either a) denying their serious problems or b) trying to dramatize their really un-serious problems, and both are offensive to the general public at large, mostly notably me.
So, in conclusion, Leann Rimes and ESPECIALLY Marcel Pariseau for being worthless: Fuck yourselves.
Two Problems
August 25, 2012Doing research for my novel (big time oy) and…
1. For some reason the Old Jews Telling Jokes website won’t open for me.
2. I don’t know whether technically repeating a joke one has heard or read is plagiarism or not. Like, for example, if I wrote the following within dialogue:
“What’s black and white and read all over?”
“A newspaper!”
Would that be plagiarizing?
Motherfucking Overwhelmed
August 23, 2012When you’re feeling super overwhelmed by life, there’s only one thing to think about: TEENY TINY FRUIT!
This JPEG was titled on my desktop “mini-4,” but sadly I don’t have three other pictures of baby fruit.
Harper’s Index!
August 22, 2012
Oh, Harper’s Index! Why do you confuse me so? After being bombarded with your many statistics, I somehow never know what to do –– should I be depressed, or angry, or submissive, or amused? Are you trying to compel me to action in some way, and if so, what sort of action shall I take? What kind of conspiracies are you alluding to when you parallel a statistic about the estimated portion of Colombian cocaine revenue that is laundered through banks in First World countries (9/10) and one about the ratio of the number of genes in microorganisms inhabiting the human nostril to the number in the human genome (168:1)? Are you trying to tell me to do cocaine, or to feel bad about being white and a helpless bourgeoisie, or to use a neti-pot? Is it wrong to want to respond to each of these statistics, which in the end sound hollow and pointless, by retorting, “Yeah, well, 86.4% of statistics are made up”? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO FEEL, HARPER’S?
Some examples of frustration this week:
1. [Amount] at which the average college-educated woman’s [salary maxes out] at age thirty-nine: $60,000
Damages awarded in June to an Oregon woman who contracted herpes from a man she met through online dating: $900,000
This seems to be telling me that it would be more lucrative for me, as a lady, to get an STD from a stranger than to just, like, work and be normal.
2. Average number of eggs a bedbug will lay after feeding on “clean” human blood: 44
After feeding on blood with an alcohol content of 0.10: 12
I think you’re telling me… to be drunk, always, lest I risk the wrath of the dread bed bug.
3. Percentage of US households that are headed by millionaires: 4.3
Of Swiss households: 17.1
Duh. Moving on…
4. Chances a Republican believes today that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the time of the 2003 invasion: 2 in 3
Amount paid at auction in June for one of Annie Oakley’s guns: $143,400
We care too much about guns?
5. Number of plastic spoons Northern Ireland stockpiled as part of a recently declassified plan to prepare for nuclear war: 58,292
I… really have no idea what to do with this information. Maybe… nothing?
6. Minimum gigabyes of data stored in a typical gram of human feces: 10,000,000
And we’re done here.
How I Feel Today
August 21, 2012
Sleeping. In a shoe.
Half bottle of wine + 7,500 calories + a fitful sleep = really, really not cool.
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