Itinerantdaughter's Blog

…or get oh-so-slightly wrong.

Tautology

Teleology

Scatalogical

Trope

Apotheosis

Apotheopesis

Apostate

Apostolic

Polity

Pedagogy

According to the still-venerable baby name book Beyond Jennifer and Jason…

“Good looking names for boys can be divided into two categories: nice guys and not-so-nice guys. The nice guys are sensitive and sweet and tend to offer a goodnight kiss at the door; the rogues don’t call the next morning, although women usually wish they would.”

Handsome Rogue Names

Plus some free association, by me. Obviously. It’s my blog. I get to say what I want. Fuck off.

Addison

Ash

Austin

Bailey

Beau

Brady

Brock (Hudson? Gay, right?  And by Brock I meant Rock.  Sorry, D.  You know all the gay idols.)

Chad (Will never be the same after that election)

Clay

Clint (Eastwood.)

Cody (My mind immediately thinks Gifford, and that’s always funny.)

Dallas

Dalton

Darcy (Do these count if they’re last names, too? I think of Pride and Prejudice. My roommate hearts Mr. Darcy like woah.)

Davis

Denver

Devon

Dylan

Flint (A lot of these names are old guy names)

Gavin

Gray

Hart

Hunter

Jackson

Jasper

Jefferson

Jesse

Judd (Nelson)

Keil (I’m still thinking about Cody Gifford. Ahhhhhahahahahahaha.)

Lex (Luther?)

Logan

Luke

Quinn

Rex

Sebastian

Shane

Wiley

Wolf (Grrr!)

Wyatt

Zack

Zane

This is one of my favorite lists to make! When you meet a person who does/is this, run in the other direction…

Has two first names

Is a Roman numeral (John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith the III)

Is a Doctor, and calls him/herself “Dr. First Name”

Speaks about him or herself in the third person

If he/she is on a television show and is speaking English but has subtitles any way

For girls (dating): men really into Freud

For guys (dating): women really into Grey’s Anatomy

People who “can’t get a vein”

People who enjoy hearing their own voice tape recorded

blink too often

talk a lot about their workout regimens or dietary habits

swear in foreign languages

have an accent that does not correspond with where they GREW UP (and yes, Madonna, I’m talking about you, and if you didn’t exhibit this red flag, you’d be screwed any way. See two prior.)

There are about eight million more, but I needed to publish this so I could start drafting another list. It irritates me when there are too many unfinished drafts…

I actually began writing a book of excuses, hopefully to be sold as a novelty text at like Urban Outfitters or in the Humor section at Barnes and Noble, but then I saw exactly that at UO!  I was pretty devastated.  Still, I think mine would have been better because it was going to be a practical book; essentially, you could flip through and open to a page and find yourself an appropriate excuse!  “Sorry I can’t come to your son’s brit milah tomorrow…I just found out I’m on duty for neighborhood watch.”  Etc.  This book I saw was a tiny, pretty thing with a section for famous excuses from history and clever categories like that but mine would have been much more systematic…less “In Praise of Excuses” and more “Excuses You Can Use!”

Here are some that I like to call Universal Excuses, ones that can serve as the scapegoat for any sort of general shittiness…

El Nino

Santa Ana winds (specific to California I GUESS)

Hormones

The Economy (sub-excuse: “I’m broke”)

Irritable Bowel Syndrome

“Family Problems”

Dissociative Fugue

Studying for a big test (LSAT, MCAT, GMAT, Realtor’s License, etc.)

Religious conflict

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!

http://jacksonpollock.org

www.freerice.org

Watch Mike Seaver proselytize:

http://www.wayofthemaster.com/watchepisodes.shtml

http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/

www.findagrave.com

http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/all/

These are the only things I know on the Internet. But I guess if you’re here, you’re probably already bored..

Thanks to my constant, B, for pointing me in the direction of many of these websites, and being more technologically savvy than I am.

In this program, we have to pick a “personal bibliography”: twenty books we plan to read in a few months that will either inform our writerly existences or directly influence the manuscript upon which we are working. The following is a rough draft of my personal bibliography, just for kicks:

D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths

Beloved childhood classic, and one of the best customer reviewed books on Amazon I’ve ever seen. If you are even a little educated in these classic plot lines, you will realize how much Western culture descended directly from them.

The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker

The Pulitzer Prize winning effort by Ernest Becker to evaluate all human behavior in light of fear of death.

Her Husband by Diane Middlebrook

I’m reading this now, in my breaks from Infinite Jest; story of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath’s marriage.

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

DFW!

Appetites by Caroline Knapp

What I’m up against, I think.

A Writer’s Life by Gay Talese

Self-explanatory.

Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy by Irving Yalom

Part of my manuscript deals with the potentially negative effects of group therapy, and so I’m going back to one of the pioneers of the practice, Irving Yalom.  He wrote quite a few seminal books on therapy but this one feels most relevant.

Girl, Interrupted by Susannah Kaysen

This will be a re-read.  It relates to my MS as well.  I don’t want to give too much away, otherwise you won’t buy it on Kindle!

Can Somebody Shout Amen!: Inside the Tents and Tabernacles of American Revivalists by Patsy Sims

Patsy Sims runs the program here, and she’s the sweetest little old Southern woman who, in her youth, infiltrated such potentially hostile, male-oriented spheres as prison, the Klu Klux Klan and snake handler’s churches.  I myself have a fetish for communities on the fringes of society (I’ve expressed this before, I’m sure, a million times) and am really interested in how these groups operate.  She’s given me driving directions to a snake handler’s church, which ought to be pretty interesting, when I’m ready…

Diary of a Genius by Salvador Dali

Anyone who has the balls to title his book so deserves to be worshiped.  (I jest.  Infinitely.)

The Next American Essay edited by John D’Agata

I met John D’Agata in California last year…he’s considered one of the pioneers of the “lyric essay”, and this volume (apparently, I obviously haven’t read it) attempts to showcase some of the new, inventive forms of the essay.

Faces in the Water by Janet Frame

Frame is one of New Zealand’s most famed writers.  This is a fictionalized account of her eight year on-and-off stay in a mental hospital for schizophrenia, a diagnosis that was later reneged.  Like Kaysen, she’s interested in the lines we’ve drawn that demarcate “crazy” from “sane”, and how it was that she came to be in the first group for a time.  Her Autobiography, which I have read, is superb, as is Jane Campion’s film version, An Angel at my Table.

Peeling the Onion by Gunter Grass

The formidable German writer examines his past and the fallibility of memory.

Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealey

I’ve always wanted to read this.  I’ve heard it’s just stunning, and it works because I’m trying to study the way people construct the narratives of their lives.

Play of Consciousness by Swami Muktananda

This is the “spiritual autobiography” of the guru of the guru I occasionally visit when I’m “home” in order to chant and calm the eff down. I’ve heard parts of it read aloud at “services”, and am curious to hear more of it, and to learn more about the teachings of “Baba”, as he’s called.

Architect of Desire by Suzannah Lessard

This is the memoir of a former mentor of mine, a fiercely smart writer with a history at the New Yorker and an eye sharper than a scalpel.  The book is about her grandfather, famed New York City architect Stanford White, and his many dalliances, bad habits, and eventual demise.

Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag

I haven’t read a lot of Sontag, and I really want to.  There was something else of hers I wanted to read, but I forgot which…this seemed thematically appropriate, as I’m also interested in catharsis via observation…Aristotelian tragedy, I guess.  I have to work on unpacking this subject, and building up my vocabulary/knowledge of it.  I once read that Susan Sontag directed a production of Waiting for Godot in a ruined church during the War in Bosnia, and the concept of this has been lodged in my brain ever since.

The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving

The New York Times Book Review calls it a “hectic, gaudy saga.”  Kickass.

The Story of O by Pauline Reage

French erotica.  Done.

Strangeland by Tracy Emin

The “autobiography” (diaries?) of a visual artist.  I don’t know too much about this one.  I found it on an old reading list I made while living in Paris.  I’m not entirely sold on this choice…

1. The fact that my copy of Infinite Jest, which I had overnighted to me (via FedEx) from my house, is stuck somewhere in a FedEx warehouse in Baltimore because, the website claims, of “incorrect address” (no!) and I am terrified it will get lost somewhere in the warehouse or in transit and I will have to mourn my copy.

“Why don’t you just get another one?”

“Because that one is MINE.  It’s where I put the orchid petal to dry it.  It’s where my notes are.  It has a life, and if one of your children gets lost, you don’t just buy another one.”

2. David Foster Wallace is quickly gaining iconic, and beloved (important differentiation) status in my mind, and this is…scary?

3. On August 31st, in the HBO documentary series:
Youth Knows No Pain: Follows filmmaker Mitch McCabe, the age-obsessed daughter of a plastic surgeon, as she journeys through America’s $60 billion a year anti-aging world.  In this “Alice in Wonderland” tale, McCabe spends two years traveling across the country visiting doctors and experts, living with a cross-section of characters from Minnesota to Texas who have gone to varying lengths to “beat the clock.”

4. Ted Hughes, and Sylvia Plath, specifically in light of:

“Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other’s face” (Hughes)

And Assia Wevill, of course.

5. The fact that when I went to the grocery store last night, I wanted to buy an avocado, and noticed that all the rock hard avocados had stickers on them that said, “RIPE NOW,” which is a fucking LIE!  I can tell you’re not ripe, and just because you wear a little button saying you ARE doesn’t mean I’m going to be fooled into believing you.  Asshole.

6. Shoes

7. I’ve never listened to This American Life and I feel super inadequate for this reason.  I always plan to and it always gets away from me.

8. I don’t know all the details of the Henry Louis Gates case, and insert consequences drawn from #7 here.

9. Calvinball, from Calvin and Hobbes

10. All the things I’d like to write that “later when I have time”, which…never? comes.

My dear friend PS (who you may remember from the Zoloft egg conversation) introduced me to the idea of the Uncanny Valley. Yes, Uncanny in this context is meant to imply all the Freudian. In his own words, the Uncanny Valley is populated by, “things that are a certain distance away from us that are sort of creepy and yet we’re comfortable with them because they remind us of something…a nostalgia, perhaps…like cabbage patch dolls=our childhood. They remind us of ourselves, of humans, but a little too much to be comfortable so they create a sort of revulsion.”

He contradicted himself, I see, but I hope it makes some sense, nonetheless. We’re comfortable with them yet they create a sort of revulsion, a kind that might make us a little nauseated but we aren’t totally turned off. Like the visual/psychological equivalent of whole milk, for many.

Things that Exist in the Uncanny Valley

Amanda Bynes

Puppets that are human-like (the cast of the now-defunct Avenue Q, par example)

PS: Toy Story — approaching uncanny

Baby chimps in diapers

Artistic renderings of babies, and even just infants themselves, seem to fall quickly into the Uncanny Valley. Have you ever seen that infomercial for the program Your Baby Can Read? Absolutely the most uncanny thing I’ve ever seen. One year olds READING! Terrifying.

www.yourbabycanread.com

Boy bands

Dolls that come to life (Twilight Zone’s Talking Tina, Chuckie)

Stephen Hawking, and other computers that read
The guy next to me in this computer lab just audibly farted…