I’ve decided that from now on, when someone asks me what I do for a living, I’m going to respond, “It’s kind of complicated. Have you seen that movie Inception, with Leonardo DiCaprio? It’s basically that.”
Archive for the ‘Jesting, Infinitely’ Category
Party Trick
April 15, 2016New Year’s Resolutions
January 5, 2016ID: any other big goals?
AC: I have a list of things that I want to do (mostly one-off things) in the service of my abstract goal to have more fun and like things more
I really want to make a music video, for no real reason
ID: that’s amazing
AC: I even know which song
ID: which one?
AC: It’s this weird song about Nietzsche to the tune of call me maybe
ID: “stare into the abyss and the abyss will call you maybe”
i just laughed the deepest, most evil laugh i’ve ever laughed
Guys, Don’t Freak Out
December 10, 2015But you probably missed the sale on Maine coon cat calendars from at Down East Magazine.
This cat is basically the feline equivalent of one of those women who can have orgasms without even being touched. He has rub-face but there isn’t a hand in sight.
Letters to Jail
March 17, 2015If you’re sending a letter to someone in jail, do you think it’s awkward to use this stamp?
Eek.
Mwahaha
November 4, 2014In an act of revenge that will seem meaningless to everyone but me, I stuck my galley copy of Diane Von Furstenberg’s new memoir The Woman I Wanted to Be (cringe) into Jonathan Safran Foer’s mini-lending library outside his $8 million brownstone. Enjoy, suckers!
Photo of a comparable mini-lending library in Brooklyn.
BOUNCEBACK TRAGEDY
October 31, 2014Dear Paul Rudnick,
Some years ago, a former colleague gave me your email address. I don’t remember why he had your email address, but he thought that somehow you could help me, in a mentor-y way. I put off emailing for lack of anything to say, really––”can you help me be famous?” seems like a bad choice of opener. Back then, some-years-ago, I was working at a publishing company as the assistant to a cantankerous but smart independent publisher, and I wanted to reach a point where I could write full-time. Perhaps my former colleague thought that: Paul Rudnick (your last name autocorrects to “Redneck”) writes for a living, so he can tell you how to do that!
But years later, here I am, writing for a living (if you want to call it that) and I realized, gee that’s pretty stupid. It’s not possible to give someone a map that charts how to reach the kingdom of freelance. Even if you could, why would you? It’s a small country with extremely limited resources, and you wouldn’t want to share them!
But maybe the ex-colleague thought: well, Paul Redneck (I’m leaving it) is funny, and ID is funny, so they’ll get along. Lots of people are funny, though, and that doesn’t mean they’re deserving of career advice, or that they’re likable in any way. And I happen to be hysterical in real life, but my writing career has been built on pretty melancholy topics: psychiatric disturbance, suicidal poets, Ingmar Bergman’s novels (which are maybe unintentionally funny.) So then that entree––let’s be friends because we’re both funny!––started to seem even dumber than the original one.
All this to say: Addams Family Values is the best movie of all time. That is all.
With admiration,
ID
My Fiance, the Crackhead
October 21, 2014ML: you know that really big homeless guy who’s always asking for money near our house
ID: ugh yes
what about him
ML: so i was walking towards him
he was sitting on one of those fence things around a tree
and coughing so hard he was like puking
ID: oh goodness
ML: and then i walked past him and i think i inhaled second hand crack smoke
ID: AHAHAHA
are you feeling wacko?
ML: i did for a few minutes after
i tried playing sudoku on the train and my times were way down
might have just been in my head though
Games
September 24, 2014I would like to play this version of Candy Crush. Anyone want to join?
I’ve also always always wanted to play Calvinball, but it seems previous efforts to “organize a game, like this one from back in 2002, have come to naught. Again, let me know if you feel like getting in on this.
“a league should be formed that hosts the popular game presented in Bill Watterson’s cartoon Calvin and Hobbes. The general premise of the game is that you make up the rules as you play and you can’t play the same way twice.
Since there will really be no winners, rankings and rosters are unnecessary.”
So sorry I’ve been a rather shitty correspondent recently. Traveling, procrastinating, and then getting engaged––this kind of stuff really ties a girl up!
A Piece I Want to Write
September 18, 2014“The Magical Negro and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Go on a Date.”
Hilarious, right?
Unfortunately I’m super busy at the moment so can someone else take the reins on this? ASAP, tks.
Research trip?
Oof
September 18, 2014I’ve been gone for quite some time, and I’m so, so sorry, but you see, I have four weddings to attend in the span of four weeks (only one left!) and that, plus other travels, have taken me to Providence, Rhode Island, Ohio and Boston. So needless to say, I’m a little tired. I thought that I would spend my many hours in transit, however, catching up on some reading I really should have done in high school, so I took the collected poems of Emily Dickinson out of the library. I think in high school, I found her work too quaint and formal for my tastes, but then recently I was thinking about poem 260 (“I’m Nobody! Who are you?) and I figured I ought to give it another shot. If you want don’t want your baggage to go overboard or your mind to feel sharp and lively, though, I wouldn’t recommend it. The below, though, took me aback; my reaction perhaps belies my mature exterior.
159
A little bread –– a crust –– a crumb —
A little trust — a demijohn —
Can keep the soul alive —
Not portly, mind! but breathing — warm —
Conscious — as old Napoleon,
The night before the Crown!
A modest lot — A fame petite —
A brief Campaign of sting and sweet
Is plenty! Is enough!
A sailor’s business is the shore!
A Soldier’s — balls! Who asketh more,
Must seek the neighboring life!
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