Itinerantdaughter's Blog

CRZ: Okay, gotta make cornbread for people with addiction. Bye.

ID: That sounds fun, making cornbread for addicts!

CRZ: Yes, at the risk of sounding something or other, as I wrote that line I thought Cornbread for Addicts would probably be my heartbreak number if I were writing a Broadway musical about a Chassidic addiction treatment program set in the Deep South. The part where the gal is standing all alone after she’s been dumped, in her kitchen late at night, with nothing to do but make cornbread for addicts.

“While my wife was pregnant with our fourth child, she was called for jury duty.  Since her due date was looming, her doctor wrote a letter to the court, asking for an exemption.  When I went to the courthouse office to deliver the letter (my wife was at work), I was taken aback by how long the line was.  Everyone had a reason for trying to get out of jury duty.  When it was my turn to talk to the clerk, I proudly explained that we were expecting our fourth child, which was due at any moment.  I expected the clerk to coo with delight and maybe wish me mazel tov.  Instead, she berated me in front of everyone in the office.

“The angry clerk asked in a loud voice, ‘How can you have four children when the world is overpopulated?  You’re a drain on the planet!’

“I put up with her length lecture in silence –– and was rewarded with that exemption.  As I walked away, I overheard the next woman in line explaining her jury-duty excuse: she was a contestant on The Biggest Loser and couldn’t miss her only chance for reality television fame and fortune.  Not only did she get her exemption, but the clerk insisted on having her picture taken with the future celebrity.”

~ Simcha Weinstein, The Case for Children

“I also began to read David Foster Wallace’s thousand-page dystopian novel Infinite Jest, because a pompous professor had once been horrified that I hadn’t read it yet.  With a dictionary in hand, I read through the novel, stopping every other word or so to find a definition.  I kept a running file of all the words that I needed to define from the book.  The words I picked are obtuse to me even now, but they are also strangely illuminating:

effete (adj.): no longer fertile; having lost character, strength or vitality; marked by weakness or decadence

Teratogenic (adj.): of, relating to, or causing development malformations

Lazarette (noun): sick room

Despite this studious attention to vocabulary, when people asked me what the book was about, I’d have to confess, ‘I have no idea.'”

–– Susannah Cahalan, Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness