Tuesday, February 25, 2003 "I'd rather shovel shit in hell.
I just read Helen's column on journalism, and I laughed myself stupid right here in the computer lab. I've blogged before on how I got into "journalism," but I really don't think I've talked enough shit.
I hate news writing, first and foremost because of how deceptively easy it seems to be. The same stupid-ass pat phrases that hacks like me have been using since the mauve decade ooze onto the page before I can stop them. I know who to ask what questions to get the same weak-ankled "A good time was had by all" responses from the parade marshall or the lecture attendee, or the burn-scarred fire chief. Cutesy leads (a word I refuse to spell any other way) occur to me as naturally as breathing. I've come up with kickers so sugary as to send both my readers into a diabetic coma.
You think I'm joking? In my first assigned article for the Podunk Weekly, where I had a summer-long internship, I had to visit a nursing home for a woman's 104th birthday. They wheel out this poor, cloudy-eyed old thing with claw-hands and a drooling problem, and I have to decode her mutterings into quotes.
It is more depressing and scary as it sounds.
I trotted back to the office and wrote. In my article, the birthday party became a real celebration rather than a puzzling ordeal. The hulk tossed folksy remembrances my way, and then salivated, not because she couldn't help it, but because she gave a shit about eating the cake the attendants were putting in front of her.
I ended the piece with something like "after 104 years of life experience, Fanny Mae Hogswallop was faced with another difficult decision: Should she eat the chocolate cake, or the vanilla?"
This is what happens to me when I pretend to be a journalist. When you write this way, you can do a story in your sleep. I know I can do better, but then I start thinking, "why?" Judging by the letters to the editor I had to type up, the Weekly's readership was composed exclusive of the sub-literate and the senile. (My favorite line from a letter to the editor was "Our son---was born with no forearms and personality plus!")
The editor gave my cell phone number to one of our most persistent cranks, and she called me for months wondering when I was going to interview her about her town, which is the worst place I've ever been to. That's another blog.
I feel myself getting all excercised, but let me just say, this "novel" crap better work out. Otherwise, I'm getting my bindlestiff and lightin' out for Californy to seek my fortune as a prospector's burro. News writing is not for me.
posted by Frenz | 2/25/2003 02:12:00 PM
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Friday, February 21, 2003 In space
People keep asking me what I've been up to lately, and there's really nothing I can truthfully tell them that's not incriminating. Lately, instead of yitzing about my novel-in-progess, I tell them I've been watching a lot of Star Trek. It seems easier to admit I'mthat kind of nerd than to admit to being a lit nerd.
I've gotten kind of fascinated by the uniforms on the different series. There's really no topping The Next Generation. The Picard shirts are hot, hot hot. Voyageur is the worst, fashion-wise, but I like thatt it keeps to the rule that the sexiest female on board the ship is required to wear a skin-tight purple jumpsuit, even out in the Delta Quadrant. The Federation didn't get to be where it is by fucking around. I don't watch Enterprise, because I don't actually watch television that's not in syndicated re-runs. The best thing about the Star Trek franchise is that at least one or more of the series is on constantly.
I have wasted my life. posted by Frenz | 2/21/2003 02:42:00 PM
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Thursday, February 20, 2003 Cockapoo
In these cold and lusterless days, things have been getting weirder and weirder around the cul-de-sac. The other night all the _Shining_ jokes everybody was making kind of came true when one of the neighbors went crazy and threw his mother out into the snow, shoeless and in her PJ's. She described her son as "a very religious person," and said he'd been an honor roll student and the perfect son.
Apparently, he'd become convinced she was the devil, and tried to forceably annoint her with oil. After he tried annointing an officer of the law, he went off to jail.
The mate and I responded as best we knew how: by playing Nintendo and giving the dog an ongoing and increasingly ridiculous haircut. It started because she had filthy doggy dreads all around her muzzle. Trimming them off was kind of like doing topiary gardening, and by the time we were done, her face had eyes and a clearly defined snout for the first time since I'd met her.
Later, the mate decided the bouffant spray of further doggy dreads on top of her head was a little gauche, so he chopped it off. Now the cockapoo looks a little like George Costanza, and we just can't take her seriously any more. posted by Frenz | 2/20/2003 04:30:00 PM
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Monday, February 17, 2003 Meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat
I don't eat the stuff, but as I type this, the mate is in the kitchen mushing foreign substances into ground beef, and then molding it into balls. What a country!
The special needs child has calmed down a little. He's been out in the snow and it made him feisty. The hot cocoa he got on returning from the snow didn't help, but then somebody turned the tv on and he calmed right down.
I've been taking advantage of the snow day by watching the neighbors get their cars stuck in various piles of ice and slush. They've effectively barricaded the cul-de-sac (yes, I live in a friggin' cul-de-sac. Want to make something of it?) I'm never going to school ever again.
I know this post isn't very funny, but I haven't murdered anybody with an axe today. Gold stars for me!
posted by Frenz | 2/17/2003 07:30:00 PM
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Saturday, February 15, 2003 What is so rare as a moosie first edition?
A few days ago my sister Helen requested that I post one of my childhood epic short stories, "Che e il signor smith?: The story of a malenchanted polar bear named St. Ignatius".
I got the title from an Italian phrasebook. I got the plot based on photos I clipped from old magazines. If I'm ambitious on Tuesday, I may scan them in and post them. This story is pretty typical of the stuff I wrote from 7th to 9th grade. Note: I did not have friends.
One day as St. Ignatius Polar Bear was wandering alone in a artic wasteland, intently searching for something to kill (he was not particularly hungry, but was looking to kill for the wanton pleasure of it, as bears of teh polar persuasion are wont to do.), he realized that being the masterful hunter he was, he had wiped out every ;iving thing for miles, even the Fox teevee camera crew that was filming a follow up to the parasitic ice worms episode of the X-files. Unfortunately, St. Ignatius polar bear also attacked, mauled, and ate both Scully and Mulder, and therefore, of course the world would never know whether they (Mulder and Scully) would ever just rip each other's clothes off and do, you know, the do.
Somewhat stymied by the boundless desolation that filled his eyes at every turn, St. Ignatius Polar bear hesitated for a moment, then headed towards the water. By snagging a stray rope on a passing Cruise, he, St. Ignatius Polar Bear was carried off to sunny Italy!
"Chi e il Signor Smith?" asked one local (text illegible), for St. Ignatius had taken the name of "Mr. Smith" and "Chi e il signor Smith means "Who is Mr. Smith?"
The second local, who was, as was his neighbor--smeared with mud and wearing a grass skirt, scratched his filthy head with his equally filthy hand and proclaimed quite confidently, "I don't know, but he is certainly not a large polar bear who kills not for the alleviation of hunger, but for the wanton pleasure of it."
At that moment "Mr. Smith" emerged from behind a Marinara bush and slew them both with his mighty left paw. The villagers never suspected "Signor Smith," and he eventually killed every villager. Now, more than ever, the menaing had come back to his life. Thank goodness!
Some notes on the text
This story fit the standard formula of the stuff I wrote when I was just jazzing around as a pre-teen. It was very short, gory, and filled with really scatter-shot cultural references that a well adjusted twelve-year-old has no business finding funny. I didn't turn most of of them in for class, because my English classes barely required you to be literate and almost never asked for creative work.
I probably could have with no problem, because this was years before Columbine, and my teachers took the weird shit I wrote about as evidence that I had a good imagination, rather than as a sign that it was time to incarcerate me.
The "literary culture" at Dead Prez. U. attracts a lot of kids who ooze pretension like I ooze stank, and more often than is healthy, a professor asks everyone to go aorund the room and talk about "your writing background." Creative writing profs. are masochists, but this strikes me as really beyond the pale every single time.
There's always somebody who talks about the novel they wrote when they were eight, or the stories they wrote before they could wield a pen, dutifully copied down by a parent. I want to hit these kids. I don't even know why. I don't doubt their sincerity, but my God! Didn't they have anything better to do when they were little? There were cartoons to watch, trees to climb, knees to scrape, dirt to eat! Then these little shits sit here and say they were dictating friggin' novels to their mothers?
I can picture little Cara trying to pull a stunt like that. "Ok, Mom, drop everything, because I'm four and feeling literary." I would have gotten the thrashing I deserved.
The thing is, I think I resent these kids because they make me doubt my writerly "cred." I can remember feeling ths way even when I was like eleven or twelve. I knew full well that other kids had been doing this nonsense since they could crawl, and I felt like I was way behind. I still kind of do. I feel like the bright but disadvantaged kids in a million Very Special Episodes who confess to the Warden, or Steve from 90210, or Mr. Worf that they got all the way through highschool and never learned to read. I'm almost all through college, and I still can't really define most litspeak. I get through pretentious conversations at the receptions after poetry readings by the skin of my little teeth, I tell you. I find that cocking an eyebrow and repeating the gist of whatever someone has just said, but in a more ironic tone, helps as well. Then I start talking about something delightfully different and earthy, like Blind Date, or what a holding cell is REALLY like.
The weird little nonsense stories I wrote when I was a kid seem better now than they did when I wrote them. I don't think they're gems, nor do I think they indicate special talent, but I made them, dammnit! I made them with great effort, but also lots of pleasure. When I'm sweating over my thesis(as I'm supposed to be today) it helps to remember what it was like to not give a shit about what I was going to DO with my end product, or character arcs, or trying to establish a tone. I really do want to write for the joy of it again.
That said, I now have to produce three times the amount of writing as I just did Writing About Writing. That's the rule I used this summer when I was working on my rough draft in the word-count building spirit of NaNoWriMo, and it worked then.
Also, my housemates are home, which means its my cue to go hide in my room. posted by Frenz | 2/15/2003 10:46:00 AM
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Thursday, February 13, 2003 This is worse than the rockin' pneumonia
I have a writing disorder, and the internet just enables me to continue with my unhealthy behavior patterns. I go through periods of not writing so much as an e-mail, and then something triggers a binge of rambling on about whatever the hell is in my head.
I just found out that Dave Barry has a blog. I'm really pleased. Instead of having to write 800 words of padding and 200 words of funny, he can cut the shit and get right to the funny. Tomorrow, when I'm less lazy, I'll post a link I got off of his page.
I'm really tickled. It seems that bunch of Cuban Coast Guard soldiers were on border patrol one day, and they were bitching about how much Cuban stank, when one of them realized "Wait a goddamn minute! We're in a *boat.*" so they putt-putted the 90 miles to Key West and surrendered to local authorities. posted by Frenz | 2/13/2003 05:30:00 AM
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A clue!
The sumptuous Pravda offices are located in the basement of an all girls-dorm. How could one tell it was an all girls dorm at an upper-middle class liberal arts school? The vending machine is all out of both bottled water and Diet Coke. posted by Frenz | 2/13/2003 05:03:00 AM
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"...and a good time was had by all."
It's early Thursday morning, so that must mean the wall I'm staring at is in the dingy basement offices of a college paper I will call Pravda. I don't mean to be so itchy about security culture, but one of the main reasons I had to delete a previous online journal was that some Pravda employees found out (based on my ungrammatical jabbings at the keyboard) that I did not think the sun rose and set out of their dewey pink anuses.
I realize that I'm not exactly hiding my identity here, but that's ok. The only reason the Pravda employees found my other journal is because a former friend had it in for me and decided it was her job to broadcast my bidness to anyone who could stare at a glowing screen. She wears band t-shirts and steal Adoral from her ADD pals.
So yeah, Pravda. My problem with it right now is that I hate it. It's not the worst job I've ever had by a long shot. I've had so many laughable shit jobs that I don't have a clear-cut victor in the "Worst Job Ever" title fight.
I edit Pravda. I never thought of myself as the type who does that kind of thing. I've been sneering at this publictaion since my rawest early days of freshman year, for one thing. Even at my most optimistic and naive, I knew the school weekly was for those with poor skin and posture. The articles were dull, the writing was bad, and I wanted no part of it. Every now and then there was an outstanding piece, and many more quietly competant ones ran every issue. Still, I'd come to this school (I will call it Dead Prez. U. in this and further blogs) to be what my freshman advisor called a "writing jock", not a plucky cub reporter.
Then at the end of last year, a friend decided to apply for the editorship of the [Fop], the school's monthly newsmagazine. In a moment of whatever is the opposite of laser-precise insight is, I decided to go for Pravda, just because it would be funny if she and I had a lock on the school media.
The irony of it all is that another candidate got the Fop, and is currently running it into the ground. Meanwhile, I'm sitting here in the newshole when I should be sleeping.
I really, really resent this job. I think it's because I feel like I have the freedom to do whatever I want, but only within an extremely restrictive framework. For one thing, Dead Prez. U. is a little-ass school. We've got something like 1200 undergrads and like, 4 grad students. We're located in a small town in an areaa of the country so rural that my house in suburban Delaware feels like Gay Paree in comparison. There ain't much news, son.
We scramble to fill twelve tabloid-size pages a week. Our budget is such that we can't attract reporters with money. Our reputation, as you may have gathered, is shitty. The writing jocks won't come near us unless they owe me a favor. That means our labor pool is the kids who are either too dumb to realize how unrewarding the job is, or so optimistic that they just don't care.
I don't mean to talk too much shit about the reporters, because they really do try, and I've seen some of them improve dramatically. I'd like to think this is because of my firm guiding hand, but it's probably more a case of practice paying off.
I get pissy about the ones who slack off and either have no concept of how to gather information ("You see, Doofus, what you do is, you ask people questions and write down their answers." {Reporter bursts into tears and gnaws at notebook.}) or haven't bothered to make more than a token effort to get a variety of sources, etc. Worse, though, are the ones who *try*. I mean, they really knock themselves out, and still turn in shit that's barely comprehensible. Heather Havrrilesky of the Rabbit blog did a bit where she translated a piece of her writing into Portugese and back again. It was sadly familiar. The hilariously mangled syntax, the non--words, and the poignant little stabs of readable declarative sentences that it engendered hit a little too close to home.
My plan is to ride this out for the rest of the school year, partially because I need the peanuts this job pays, otherwise the elephant will go hungry, and partially because it does have certain rewards. I do feel accompished and tough, even hard-bitten once I put each week's issue to bed. I like bossing people around and delegating authority. Still, some days, llike today, I feel like I just ain't got the power anymore.
posted by Frenz | 2/13/2003 04:43:00 AM
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Tuesday, February 11, 2003 wet work
Last night I went to see Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, the movie about the trash-t.v. producer who claims to have been a CIA agent. It's funny. In the past year or so, when I'm watching a movie I've been able to pinpoint the momeent my attention span runs out almost to the second. There was such a moment last night, but i couldn't identify the scene. It was one with the guy playing Chuck Barris and Drew Barrymore, but I can't tell you what was going on in it. It was not a film fulll of memorable scenes.
It was also not good. It could have been, I think, but no. It didn't seem to have much of a point.
Luckily, no one at the theater seemed to care about selling tickets, or collecting them, or much of anything. I guess we snuck in, if wandering slowly in and talking to employees counts as "sneaking."
Hey, maybe I could be a spy! The moral of Confessions (by the way, could they have come up with a worse title? Short of childish scatological terms?) of an Irritating Man seems to be that they'll let any old body be a spy. You, me, Julia Roberts. Shit, it's open season.
I have to go an do a little "wet work". By which I mean pee. I'm real mature.
posted by Frenz | 2/11/2003 01:52:00 PM
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Monday, February 10, 2003 Moose, squirrel, sloth
The mate and I are getting fat. It may be the all-candy diet, or our habit of eating out too much, or our general lack of activity, but we're getting to be a pudgy couple. You've seen the pudgy couples, perhaps at the mall, or at highway rest stops. They both have the belly pouches that Berkeley Breathed used to draw on his Bill Gates character in Outland. Their clothes fit a little too tight, or are excessively baggy in a vain effort to camoflague the pudge. Oftentimes, they're toting a pudgy child or two along with them.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-pudge, in general. I'm too naturally moosie to ever want to live in a pointy, wraithlike narrow body. Still, I don't want to turn into a lazy little sea cow before I'm 30. I feel, too, that my 20's are my time to be hott, and that if I don't maximize that, then I'll be a hopeless frump later in life.
So, how do I ( and the mate) get less slack and flabby? He's been doing sit-ups. I've been considering miracle weightloss pills.
What I'm really hoping is that the threat of excercise works on me the same way it did last summer, and pushes me into working on my writing project in order to have a good excuse to avoid it. posted by Frenz | 2/10/2003 12:43:00 PM
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Thursday, February 06, 2003 hottttt
An astute reader has tipped me off that there's supposedly a steamy sexcapade video with Mark Paul Gosselar and Lark Voorhies. All is right with the world, and God is in his heaven if this is true. If it is not true, the world is cruel and hostile and God is dead. Lark, Mark-Paul, if you're reading this, it's not too late... posted by Frenz | 2/06/2003 08:00:00 PM
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Monday, February 03, 2003 Timberrrrrrrrr!
I'm relaxing right now in the comforts of my parents' house.
Last night I took a shower, and there were clean towels. Like, lots of them. Also, I'm the only
special-needs child running around here, and everybody here flushes the toilet after they do their business.
In my current household, there's a phantom, um, lumberjack who tends to leave some logs a-floatin'. I have a very short list of suspects, but I can't really confront anyone. It's an awkward subject to broach.
The scariest aspect of all this? Ol' Paul Bunyan never leaves paper behind. posted by Frenz | 2/03/2003 11:41:00 AM
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