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What matters

Tuesday, May 27, 2003

You know something? One of my most secret truths is this: I am a bit egotistical with my writing. I’ll never be the prettiest, the smartest, the strongest, the thinnest, or the most clever, but damn it, I can write. In fact, I always secretly suspect that I’m one of the best writers out there. Like I’m on par with John Irving and Margaret Atwood. We’re a peer group, hanging out and having tea with Douglas Coupland. Ernest Hemingway? I’m way better than him. Shakespeare? If I wrote in iambic pentameter, I suspect that I’d be lauded by millions too.

Now, in truth, I know damn well that Atwood is a freaking goddess of the written word and there’s no way that I can touch John Irving. (Although even in my most lucid moments, I still think I can do better than Hemingway.) And most days? I’m totally fooling myself. One could argue that to write at all, one must contain a healthy dose of hubris, if not to just assume that anyone has a desire to read whatever it is that you’re writing about. Especially if it’s just a bunch of fart jokes.

And perhaps the very proof that I am no Irving, no Atwood, not even a passable Helen Fielding, is that fact that I can’t even explain the egoism or the need for such a thing without sounding like a pompous ass. I am a good writer. I NEED to be in order to write. Which is the chicken and which is the egg. It’s the delicious conundrum that drives most artists to abuse substances or succumb to insanity, chasing the truths that we are both brilliant and idiots at the very same time.

Those rejections from the graduate programs both confirmed my inner-suspicions and shocked the hell out of me. In fact, they haunt me still. Thank god writing isn’t brain surgery. Or maybe it’s too bad that it isn’t, because if it were, we would never have been inflicted with the tumor that is The Bridges of Madison County.

The truth of the matter is simply that there are a finite number of words that must be written before something brilliant comes from your pen. And for someone like Margaret Atwood, that number is something like 132, whereas for someone like Wally Lamb, the number is probably in the six-digit range (go ahead and kvetch in the comments section but I really really HATED She’s Come Undone and I read it when it came out, pre-Oprah, pre-Renee Zellweger film, pre-everything. It was schlock. It could have been good and instead, he beat the reader over the head with every bit of schmalz he had stored in his noggin. And he had the focal character commune with whales. With WHALES. I’m getting mad again just thinking about the bad plot devices in that thing. So, seriously, I’m glad that the book changed your life and made you cry or commune with your inner fat girl, but it just didn’t work for me.)

And me, I’ve just got to remember that in order to be good, one must simply work towards that internal word limit. You’ve got to earn it. No matter how much as it sucks. No matter how much easier it is to just play Warcraft for hours on end and rest my weary head upon a freelance article, a fiction competition or a Diarist Award. Like miles on a long road trip, you have to concentrate on the road left to burn. Even if you go about the entire trip pretending that you’re already there.

Thus ends the proselytizing. Sometimes what I write here is just for me. Sometimes I forget that.

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Try harder

Monday, March 17, 2003

I have made a decision about graduate school. Apparently, my whole grad school affair is filled with \”should haves\”. I should have applied to more colleges. I should have written something fresh and sparkling for my manuscripts rather than using things I wrote before because I am lazy and watched Bring It On for the forty-second time instead of writing something new. I should have tried harder. I should have included nude photos of myself. Should should should should should. At this point, I await notice from only the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, a program I actually used to attend. I’m not fond of that program, although it is a very nice program in general, but I didn’t have warm fuzzies about it.

Thus, I have decided to put everything off a year. This allows me to apply to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, which accepts fiction students only even numbered years, as well as retry to the programs I already have as well as venture into some other less-prestigious programs and possibly ones further away from Wisconsin. I may take a workshop at UWM this fall.

All in all, it’s very good for me to have been rejected. It’s going to make me try harder. I tend to be a very passive aggressive person and in general, things come very easy for me. Whenever I put my mind to something, I make it work and am very good at it, which sounds like I’m bragging, but I’m not. It’s something I’m actually ashamed of because it gives me no excuses. I’m lazy. I’m lazy as all get out and tend to take the path of least resistance. So this is a wake up call for me to get off my hubris and try harder.

And this is the part where I advertise my motivational seminars and inspirational poster line, available for sale in the lobby.

But I did decide that a reasonable substitute for fulfilling my life dream would be a nice shiny Lincoln LS. With a sun roof. And a kick ass stereo. Maybe silver. Yes. A Lincoln LS. In silver. Or maybe jet black.

There’s no ennui in the world that can’t be cleared up with something shiny. That’s all I’m saying. Shiny. Pretty. Gimme. I think I was a a raccoon in another life.

That and if watching Bring It On forty times is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

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Rejections, little and big

Thursday, March 6, 2003

I am not the girl who will be attending the University of Iowa’s graduate program.

I got two thin letters yesterday, one from Iowa and one from Minnesota. Apparently, they had 740 applicants with 25 spots and 400 applicants with 13 spots, respectively. On the plus side, I’ve now got the autograph of a Pulitzer Prize winning author. On my rejection letter. Jake commented that it would make for an amusing little anecdote when I accept my own Pulitzer prize. As always, my PA knows exactly the right thing to say. Ah well, I’ve still got two applications out there and I have decided that whatever happens, I will try to get into Iowa again next year.

Because this girl will not give up. Nope. Not me.

But I may need a bit more vodka.

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Fish, bubbles, and handwritten journals

Tuesday, February 25, 2003

I have a whole little pot of Body Shop lip balm. Born Lippy, it’s called. I think that’s what I should have called my web page. It’s too long. Too wordy. Seven big ass syllables, which is a whole lot when you consider that we live in a world where everything needs to fit into a two second sound byte. Andy Warhol was wrong about the fifteen minutes of fame. No one has time for a whole fifteen minutes anymore.

But Born Lippy. However, it’s yet another mickey fickey trademark. Fucking copyrights. They Plague Me (TM).

But the other night, something unique happened. It was an epiphany of sorts, although it had nothing to do with the war or anything else. I got two incredible pieces of mail, from two writers I admire greatly. It was actual mail, on paper, with a stamp and writing. And one was from my college friend Laurie, whom Esteban always called ‘The Girl With The Shit In Her Face’ because she was very decorated.

I found her on the internet and while she doesn’t email a whole lot, she likes regular mail. I sent her a Valentine and she sent me back her chapbook and a lovely little letter with her crooked handwriting that I recognized immediately. It’s funny, that kind of thing, handwriting. Mine has multiple personalities, honestly. Sometimes it is thin and cold slanty perfect and othertimes it is fat and loopy and giggling and listening to Cyndi Lauper and Madonna on its Walkman while snapping lime green Hubba Bubba bubblegum. So I read her lovely little letter and then some of her poems, which were incredible and made me want to steal some of the lines, which is how you know when you’ve found something really good. Instead of appreciating it, you are jealous because you wish you had written it. Like Jincy Willett. She makes me jealous too. And Ethan Canin, but mostly because he attended and now teaches at the University of Iowa’s writing program.

No, I think the sound stopped now’ I don’t hear it anymore’ but let me finish.

So Sunday night, I gathered up all of my loose stuff and started trying to combine all of my pieces and scribbles of poems and vague writing into my current journal. Every homeless piece of something that I have stored on computer or in my planner. And I didn’t get very far, but it was lovely just the same, especially when I’d find the original of some poem and then the second and third versions all typed up and official. I could have done it for hours. Actually, I did sit there for hours, but I could have gone on all night. Literally.

The act of holding a pen, of scribbling your little glyphs onto paper. It’s so intimate. Not like these perfectly formed Times New Roman letters where I can type off a sentence at 100 wpm and then obliterate it just as quickly. It forces you to write at the pace of your breathe. A heartbeat for every word. It’s a strange thing, watching those random slashes and scribbles.

All through my old journals are pictures of fish. All sorts of fish. Lots of sharks, some googly-eyed cartoon fish, little segmented eel things, plankton, shrimp. I never realized that my doodles had a theme before.

And in one place, I found a little written conversation that I had with laurie, who only writes in lower case. It went something like this.

‘I ate too much peanut sauce.’
‘I’m sorry’
‘I smell pickled.’
‘Nope.’

And then there are little giddy children figures dancing across the page, off into the margins. Those have to be laurie’s, because my figures would have been chased by sharks.

So I did about a third of the organizing that needed to be done and ended up writing a couple of poems too, so now my current leather journal is a compilation of uncataloged poems, scribbles, song lists, poems all neatly typed out but then cut out crooked and taped onto the page, and a poem that I love by a friend I miss about the Hayakutake comet. And during all of this cutting and taping and scribbling, I realized that long fingernails have no place on the hands of a writer. So I cut them off and took off the polish. Ok, a bit extreme. I’ll likely polish them again, but for the moment, they are plain and short. Certainly not the nibbled nubs that they were when my notebooks swam with crill eaters and cartilaginous life, but shorter just the same.

You have my permission right now to club me over the head repeatedly with a Spiegel catalog if I decide to stop shaving my legs in the name of my art.

But the important thing there was that I realized as I sat there working through all of this stuff that was for me, just for me, that it was the best thing I’ve done in months. MONTHS. And I can’t believe that it never even occurred to me to do such a thing before then. Oh, I’ve gone through my old stuff, particularly while I was compiling my applications to the various grad school programs, and I’ve kept writing more, but to sit there and just dive wholly into the bulk of it, all of those really private words and scribbles and where I could see exactly how hard or how lightly I pushed the pen into the paper’ it was like the compass had aligned and was pointing straight north once more.

Sometimes when you think you’ve lost something, it’s exactly where you left it.

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Little

Sunday, December 29, 2002

I’m a horrible loanee, really I am. Never lend me anything. It actually makes me uncomfortable, because I know that I will be beholden to it and hyperventilate when I find some long ago borrowed item floating around my house and know that the owner has been not mentioning it but undoubtedly thinking ‘That punk ass bitch Wendy still has my Bodeans CD! Damn her all to hell’. Must keep straight face’ must not let her know I now hate her filthy rotten guts.’

I think it all hearkens back to the great library book scandal of my childhood, when the Brown County Central Library refused to loan me a book for the entirety of 1979, insisting that I was harboring a book called ‘Little‘. This was in the day of hand written notations, undoubtedly upon a stone tablet using a chisel. I was completely puzzled, because I knew, I KNEW that I had never read a book with such an insipid title of ‘Little‘. It just seemed to scream Kindergarten and I was a very worldly and posh girl of fourth grade standing.

Finally, using my superior fourth grade powers of deduction, gleaned from surreptitious readings of Encyclopedia Brown seated in the Children’s Library on Saturdays, when the furnace was set to 112 and brightly colored tissue paper fishes swam languidly in the Amazonian heat, I thought about the book I had checked out months ago, found excruciatingly dull and abandoned by page 15, but dutifully returned called ‘Little Vic’. I asked the Librarian who the author was and she confirmed that the authoritative stone tablet of Children’s Library deadbeats listed D. Gates as the author, I was smugly able to present her with their copy of ‘Little Vic‘, still containing my signature and stamp of return in the little card pocket. She shrugged and expunged my record without even so much as a ‘I’m sorry about that, dearie’ or ‘Here, you may check out more than the Nazi regime limit of three books per child to make up for our grievous error!’ Or maybe ‘Curses, foiled again, Holmes! Must you always disrupt our devious plots!?’

And yes, I guess you could say that I’m still a little bitter. And the sight of brightly colored art projects in January makes me a little overheated and filled with a sense of proletariat injustice.

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The beating of a raptor’s wings

Monday, December 16, 2002

I had to drive out to the University to have them put in paperwork to send my transcripts to various writing programs. Apparently, one of the program’s deadlines is this Friday, which completely sneaked up on me, despite my very organized method of applying to these schools and a separate page for each in my planner.

Because of their crazy bureaucratic hours, I had to leave work in the middle of the day and drive to the University, which is exactly kitty-corner on the map from where I work. Basically, I did a circle tour of Green Bay to get there, all the while sweating over the flood of emails and voice mails that were undoubtedly filling my various receptacles. Luckily, I remembered the sneaky little temporary parking places so I tooled into the area behind the Union and parked there, using the tunnels to get to Student Services.

My Alma Mater was constructed like a rabbit warren’ buildings connected by a series of underground tunnels, some of them neatly exposed little terrariums in coves where songbirds bang heartily into the reflective glass and fall like deflated plums nearby. It makes perfect sense for a school sitting on a hill at the base of the Bay, a place that sees frigid temperatures and winds that seem to have taken the expressway straight down the St. Lawrence Seaway from the North Pole. Whenever I think of my years at college, in my mind, it is freezing cold and the sleet is biting into your skin, red and rough and hardened. Whatever you were wearing, it was never enough. I had a long black wool trench coat that saved my life on more than one occasion. I didn’t know how the people with the short butt length coats handled it. Some days I gladly accepted an $8 parking ticket rather than succumb to some remote parking spot and a death defying walk over parking lot ice four inches thick.

I had almost called Steven and had him delivery my signature and addresses to the Records office, but I was glad I didn’t. He gets lost in the tunnels. He’s only got a limited grasp of direction and I believe he relies on the position of the sun and stars. What is more, I would have told him to look for an office with a row of windows but when I turned corner after corner through the maze, searching for my transcript chunk of cheese, I found that the windows had been removed and I was allowed to actually enter the Records office. That was unnerving. I expected the Records Gestapo to swoop down upon me at any moment and demand a $5 fee, as nothing but nothing gets done with any University without a $5 fee.

Twenty-six dollars and six small forms later, I had the transcript of my junior and senior years in college. It is $5 per official copy at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. I have similar requests sent to other of my colleges. It’s $4 a copy at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point. It’s $3 a copy at the University of Wisconsin Fox Valley, which is a small UW-Center I attended when enrollment was at its peak and I was surfing off the slacker track I had been on at UWSP, placing me low on the totem of prospective students. And it is $6 a copy at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee, where I need a transcript for one lowly little grade for a Graduate Fiction workshop I attended in 1998. I think the cost of sending just that transcript to various graduate programs (some of them demanding two official copies!) is greater than the actual cost of tuition for that course. If I hadn’t gotten a nice shiny A, I probably wouldn’t bother including it.
It was strange walking through those halls again. I don’t think I’ve been to Student Services since I was a student and I felt my eyebrows perpetually perk as I expected to see someone I knew around each and every turn. In some ways, the summer of 1997 was a complete upheaval for me. I graduated college, spent a huge amount of time in England, and then came back and was employed by my current employer. The world changed. I went from having no money to complete financial security, complete control over my fluctuating schedule to walking into the office at the same time every day and leaving at the same time every day, without fail. From overnighters to a bedtime. From being a word architect to being a coding bricklayer. And more and more and more of that.

Steven has mentioned that I am infinitely happier when I am in school. I usually tend to disagree with him, but I think he’s right. I love the insulated little communities. I love the possibilities’ the constant change, the lunar tide of productivity and rest. Every semester is a mental binge. It shouldn’t make me happy but it does.

Then I got back in my car and felt somewhat accomplished, swooping around the arboretum in my car, staring up at the battleship landscape and the winter-bitten trees. There isn’t any snow yet, but the Bay was covered with ice, like the waxy layer atop a homemade boysenberry jam. And I had a sudden urge to turn back around and park in my secret library parking spot and take the elevator up into the thin library, up to the sixth floor where I had a favorite reading spot–a deep 1978 Rust Orange armchair that sat in front of a floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the entire Bay and was positioned directly under the heating vent, so you could read facing this stark frozen landscape but be softly fluffed by hot air until you were driven to the drinking fountain by a parched throat and chapped lips. Once when I was reading some musty study on Gender Role Development in that orange chair, I happened to look up out the window at the precise moment a large Peregrine falcon swooped up and hovered at eye level on the air currents, regarded me for a moment with his cold raptor eyes and then dropped just as suddenly below view. It was one of those magical moments that just takes your breath away. I was ruined on science for the rest of the day and could only reread Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood and dream of Virgin Mary apparitions in the form of winged predators.

I sent an email to my old adviser Denise Sweet with a reminder about recommendations to the programs. She wrote back, asking if I had anything I wanted particularly highlighted in the letter other than my ‘brilliance and keen fashion sense.’ Heee! That even still makes me smile. She also asked if I’d be interested in an informal writing workshop this spring at her house, which I’m jumping upon. One summer, I did an independent study for credit with two of my Creative Writing English program pals and a few other stragglers. It was a fabulous summer because I was working with these three guys and writing all of this poetry every week for these workshops we’d have in our apartments and coffeehouses.

When school resumed, we organized a large poetry reading, which I, in general, SUCK at. I hate reading my own poetry. It feels awkward and pretentious and I hate the sound of my voice because I think it detracts from the words and I have a Midwestern white girl’s sense of rhythm. I always feel apologetic for my poetry, which is why I’m an accidental poet. For me, it’s like slipping on ice. It’s not something I try to do but it just happens and turns the world upside down, if not only for a little while. And when it’s over, you can only look back and wonder “Now how did THAT happen?” Even so, the reading was one of those wonderful things, something we created from nothing during the summer that turned into a full house of wide eyes and wistful faces. I’d like to think we brought poetry off little white squares on the refrigerator and into their brains, but I know that’s almost too much to hope for.

So as I was driving back to work, happy in the sense of school and the feeling of once more striving for something that answers a very basic need (uhoh… Wendy’s getting all metaphysical and new age– everyone make sure their life vests are securely fastened), and I passed my high school. It’s all changed now, with a huge addition replacing the heritage oaks that wrapped around the auditorium. It was well after school had let out but in the premature darkness of winter solstice, I could see high school age kids somehow overcoming the dorky connotations and practicing some kind of group dance. It was like some medieval thing, with linked arms and spins and twirls and hops. And I flashed back for a moment to a game I used to have. I think it was called Trouble. The pieces were little cones reminded me of Bugle corn chips and you could stick them on your fingers and have vampire claws. The dice for the game were encased in a little clear plastic bubble. To roll the dice, you’d press on the bubble and it would make a crisp packlePUMP! sound and the dice would pop up and over into some sanitary hands free roll. And that’s what those jumping kids looked like. As though someone was pressing down on their plastic bubble making them jump.

And it was a wonderful thing, that packlePUMP . It made me ready to press the dice and see what comes up.

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100 reasons why I am dumb

Saturday, November 2, 2002

So I’ve mentioned how I’m applying to some graduate programs in English, right? Well, I was surfing today and found a list of some publisher’s 100 essential modern novels. And now I’m reconsidering because man, I realize I went to a stoopid local liberal arts college and I realize that I skated by with a bunch of creative writing classes, but seriously. I am ashamed to call myself an English major. Let’s take a look, shall we?

1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
Heh heh, shows how much they know. I’m pretty sure that Ulysses was written by Homer or something. Some Greek dude. Heh heh. Look who’s stoopid now, huh Random House?

2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ok, this one I can get behind. I read this in 11th grade and loved it. I have the last two paragraphs memorized, just like Lily in The Hotel New Hampshire. And it’s become useful because I can quote it at snobby gatherings and sound really smart and stuff. It doesn’t even matter what the point is of the snobby gathering. Once you start with ‘the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us’, people get really quiet and just look at you in awe. It fits almost every situation. Funerals, football games, Tupperware parties. Not that Tupperware parties are ever snobbish, but you know what I mean.

3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
Joyce again. Gah. I’ve never read Joyce. I’m afraid to admit that lest the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents knock on my door and take my diploma away. I still owe the government $30,000 for that damn thing.

4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
I’ve never read this one either. I know that there was a movie, with Dominique Swain and I believe Jeremy Irons. Or possibly John Malkovich. I get those two confused sometimes. But at least I’ve heard of this one. Ok, it’s mostly because Sting sung about it in ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’.

5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
Um, I’ve heard of it. I think it was a movie. I don’t know who was in it though.

6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
I’m starting to get a little uncomfortable with where this is going. Ok, I’ve READ Faulkner’ just not this one. I think they made a movie of this one too.

7. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
I know they made a movie of this one’ which I’ve never seen. But I’ve used the phrase ‘catch-22′ in conversation. And I know that one of the characters is named Major Major.

8. DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
Seriously, is that even a book? I think they made this up.

9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
D.H. Lawrence. I think I saw his grave in Westminster Abbey. And they probably made a movie about this too. But I haven’t seen it.

10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
Dude, I SAW this movie in 11th grade English Lit! It had Henry Fonda in it. He played Tom Joad. That’s about all I remember though. I did read Steinbeck’s The Red Pony in 8th grade’ that counts for something, right?

11. UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
They made up this guy. They had to. I’ve never heard of him’ like ever? Have you ever heard of this guy? He’s the publisher’s brother, right?

12. THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler
How did I get an English degree? Seriously? The only books I’ve read on this list so far were in high school. Or on my own. What is up with this?

13. 1984 by George Orwell
Oh, I read this one on my own accord. In 1984. I was in seventh grade. I thought it was boring. I liked Animal Farm better.

14. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
I don’t know who Robert Graves is. I only vaguely know who Claudius is. In high school, we had an exchange student named Claudio that my best friend had the hots for. Honestly, I never really understood what she saw in him. He was very zitty and had spiked hair and I’m old, but I’m not that old. It was 1989, after all. Spiked hair was so 1984.

15. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
I’m afraid. Of Virginia Woolf. Of Thomas Wolf. Of Tobias Wolf. Of all the authors I’ve never read. I think I might just be a vegetable and don’t yet realize it.

16. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
I don’t think they made a movie of this. If they did, I apparently was too busy watching it because I was studying the gunk between my toes or watching MTV. Want to know the lyrics to Purple Rain? I’m your girl. Want to know who Theodore Dreiser is? I’ll give you a blank stare.

17. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
Oooh, I read this one. On my own. I don’t remember it.

18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
You’d think I would have read this one. But I haven’t. I’ve heard the movie was good though. I gave Vonnegut a try last year with his latest book. Something about time shifting. I don’t care enough to go look up the title or dig through my bookshelves to find it. It was bizarre. I actually have this on my list of books to read, but it’s really far far down the list. After like, everything on my wishlist, anything new that comes out by T.C. Boyle, Margaret Atwood or John Irving, and the backs of some very interesting cereal boxes.

19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
Finally a book I read in college. For a psychology class. Mofo English degree. Actually, this is an incredible book and I highly recommend it.

20. NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
Um’ next.

21. HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow
I’ve never read Saul Bellow. I think I’m going to shoot myself.

22. APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O’Hara
I don’t even know where Samarra is. I think I that I saw some stuff from there at Pier One? And John O’Hara? That Scarlett’s brother?

23. U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos
Seriously…I make Anna Nicole Smith look intelligent.

24. WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
I’ve read some Sherwood Anderson short stories….In high school.

25. A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster
What was I doing in college? I remember books! I remember carrying large books around! Were they empty? Were they just for toning my muscles? Were they to impress boys? What gives?

26. THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James

27. THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
I combined those because I’ve never read them, never even seen them. If someone made a movie of these books, I don’t think anyone ever watched it. But I do know that Henry James is dead. And I don’t think he liked women.

28. TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Poor Francis. Did you know that the F. stood for Francis? Yeah, I don’t blame him for going with the initial. And then he married a psycho named Zelda, who was actually a rather good writer on her own. But the book? I think Rod Stieger was in the movie they made of this. And Jackson Browne wrote a song about it? I’ve heard the song. Darryl Hannah was in the video I believe.

29. THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY by James T. Farrell
You already know what I’m going to say.

30. THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford
Um’…dude’s got the name Ford Ford. What the fuck is that all about? I can’t bring myself to read something by someone with a redundant name. I have this feeling that the book would be like ‘This is a book about a good soldier. He was very very very very very very good at being a soldier. He was so very very good that all of the other soldiers stood around talking and said ‘Wow, that guy is a real good soldier’.’

31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
Hey! I’ve read this one! On my own. In 7th grade.

32. THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James
Henry James again. Didn’t read it again. If I had to guess, I’d say it was about a college football game in January.

33. SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser
Unless this is a book about some psycho scary chick who kills everyone at her prom, I didn’t read it.

34. A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh
I’m really coming off bad here. I should just pretend I’ve read them. Um…This is a book about my bookshelves.

35. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
I’ve read this one. Hated it. ‘My Mother Is a Fish’ is one of the chapter titles and it’s all in first person, therefore the entire thing is written with colloquialisms and is very hard to read. I ended up sitting there sounding everything out and looked like a tard who moves her lips while she reads. Hate Faulkner. But not as much as Hemingway, whom I’m relieved to see hasn’t appeared on this list yet. Here’s hoping, anyway.

36. ALL THE KING’S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
Ooh, I haven’t read this, but I think it’s about Watergate? Am I right? And there was a movie? With Robert Redford in it? That I didn’t see? Getting warm?

37. THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder
I can say with great pride that I have actually seen this movie. And I know that I like Thornton Wilder.

38. HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster
Oooh, I’ve seen this movie too. Two in a row! And this one had Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompsen. I rock.

39. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
You know how I said I rocked up there? Forget it.

40. THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene
I know that he’s Canadian’. I think.

41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
Hey’. I’ve read this one! In 9th grade. And I’ve seen the movie! Go me!

42. DELIVERANCE by James Dickey
I’ve seen this movie too, although it was the cut version on TNT and they completely chopped the scene where they make Ned Beatty squeal like a pig. Didn’t realize that it was a book first though.

43. A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series) by Anthony Powell
Oh man.

44. POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley
Um’ he also wrote Brave New World. I don’t think they made a movie about this one.

45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
I knew the moratorium on Hemingway couldn’t last long. I’ve never read this. But I’ve seen the movie in 11th grade lit class (don’t ask). And I’ve been in Hemingway’s house’ that should count for something.

46. THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad

47. NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
Apparently, I don’t rock. I suck.

48. THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence

49. WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
I suck hard.

50. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
Ok, now I’m confused. Maybe it was Henry Miller and not Henry James who didn’t like women. Gah. I think I’ve always thought they were the same person. This is quite a shock to me.

51. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer
Um’ I want to say that he produced ‘All In The Family’. This sounds like a book about Jeffrey Dahmer.

52. PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
Portnoy was a character in Bloom County. A groundhog, actually. I know that because I was reading all 12 collections of Bloom County instead of reading anything remotely productive.

53. PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov
Ok, I was feeling a little smug about knowing that he wrote Lolita, but now…I had thought he was a one hit wonder.

54. LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
Fucking Faulkner. I hate the old white male alcoholic writer society.

55. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
Ooooh, except for Jack. I groove on Jack. And I’ve actually read this. Jack rocks. Dig it?

56. THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
And I’m back to feeling stupid. Although I suspect he’s another member of the old white male alcoholic writer society. Who also hates women. And they made a movie of it.

57. PARADE’S END by Ford Madox Ford
‘The parade ended. It was the end of the parade. The parade was full of soldiers. Good soldiers. They were such good soldiers that they had a parade.’

58. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
Hey! I’ve read that! Woot! And it was a movie! With Winona Ryder and Daniel Day Lewis! I didn’t see the movie and I don’t remember the book, but I seem to remember that as Winona Ryder’s character is being taken to prison for shoplifting, Newland Archer tells her to stay alive, no matter what occurs and that he will find her.

59. ZULEIKA DOBSON by Max Beerbohm
You know, I still haven’t gotten over finding out that Henry James and Henry Miller aren’t the same guy. I’m going to have vague unease about this’ the same way it was when I found out that Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro were in fact two separate people. The world is now a different place than when I woke up this morning and I am completely unsettled.

60. THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
I think they’re making these up. Because otherwise I am completely retarded.

61. DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather
I get points if I know who Willa Cather IS, right?

62. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones
This book was about how Deborah Kerr and some hot man kissed for three minutes in the pounding surf.

63. THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLES by John Cheever
Poor John Cheever. I’m impressed that he’s on this list. No one reads the poor man anymore and he’s brilliant. Although honestly I’m basing that opinion upon his short stories, because I’ve never read this book.

64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
Not only have I read this book, I actually own a first printing of it. I should get an extra point for that, right there.

65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
Um’ they made a movie out of this but I’m afraid to watch it.

66. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
The honorable old white male alcoholic writer society now is in session.

67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
This was definitely a movie. I definitely didn’t see it.

68. MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis
Um’ next.

69. THE HOUSE OF MIRTH by Edith Wharton
Yay! Read that. Read that in 11th grade. Don’t remember it though.

70. THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET by Lawrence Durell

71. A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes

72. A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS by V.S. Naipaul

73. THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
Did you say something? I wasn’t listening.

74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway had all of these six toed cats. They’re called Polydactyl cats, because they have the extra thumb like things on them. Supposedly it makes them good mousers. I know Tilly is not one of these cats because she let that mouse get away. I blame Hemingway for that.

75. SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh
Waugh Waugh Waugh. Sounds like the noise they played on the gameshows in the 70′s when the whammy showed up, huh?

76. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
Oh my god, isn’t this list done yet????

77. FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
I think I might have read this but the details are sketchy.

78. KIM by Rudyard Kipling
Does ‘The Jungle Book’ count? Well, watching ‘Disney’s Jungle Book’? Because I can sing ‘The Bear Necessities’ with the best of them.

79. A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M. Forster
This was a movie. That I never saw.

80. BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
Waugh Waugh Waugh. We’re sorry Weetabix, you’ve just lost $40K and five years of your life pursuing a worthless degree. We have some lovely parting gifts for you, from our friends at Rice A Roni, tell her about it Johnnie!

81. THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH by Saul Bellow
Only 19 more! Woot!

82. ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner
If you rearrange the letters in this title, you might come up with a book I’ve read. Like ‘Horton Hears a Who’.

83. A BEND IN THE RIVER by V.S. Naipaul
The ridiculous thing is that I thought this would be an easy way to do an entry. It has turned into this maddening display of how completely illiterate I am.

84. THE DEATH OF THE HEART by Elizabeth Bowen
You think you’ve got it bad. I CAN’T READ!!!!

85. LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad
Oh, it’s painful. But it really speaks to how clever I am, how I’ve managed to get through 18 years of schooling, be a technology professional and also have written over 500 entries when I can’t even apparently read what I am writing right now. Good Lord, I have no idea if I’m typing something like ‘Dubya is a weenie’. It’s not my fault. BECAUSE I CAN’T READ!!!!!!

86. RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow
This was a movie. With a good soundtrack. I think it’s about how when women are around each other, their cycles get all in sync and they get all grumpy at once. Or something. I’ve not seen the movie nor heard the soundtrack, but I’m pretty sure that’s what it’s about.

87. THE OLD WIVES’ TALE by Arnold Bennett
I find it ironic that the Old Wive’s Tale is written by a man, non? I find it even more ironic that an illiterate knows what the word ‘ironic’ means. The world is both a strange and beautiful place.

88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
Hey! Read this in 5th grade. And saw the movie.

89. LOVING by Henry Green
Wakka Chicka Wakka Chicka’. Ok, I haven’t read this one but I’m TOTALLY going to! Who knew that Random House would put PORN on the list. Too bad it wasn’t number 69.

90. MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie
Um’ he was in Bridget Jones’s Diary! And he had a price put on his head by the’ um’ some group of angry people in the Middle East’ or something. Don’t hate me because I’m stupid.

91. TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell
Just say no to cigarettes.

92. IRONWEED by William Kennedy
And dope. And Kennedys.

93. THE MAGUS by John Fowles
I think this is the touching tale of a short bald man who cannot see and continues to get into humorous and yet dangerous situations because of his handicap.

94. WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
Is Jean a girl or a boy do you think?

95. UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch
I know this was written by the lady they made the movie Iris about. But that’s it.

96. SOPHIE’S CHOICE by William Styron
Ooh, I know this was a movie. With Meryl Streep. And I’ve read Styron’s non-fiction book on writing fiction. That counts, right?

97. THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
Think this is what Camilla Parker Bowles husband is doing, now that his cash cow has left him?

98. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain
I think this had Jack Nicholson in it. Maybe.

99. THE GINGER MAN by J.P. Donleavy
Do you know the Muffin Man? The muffin man? The muffin man! HEEEE! Sorry’ we ignorants find our amusement when we can.

100. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Booth Tarkington
Must not be that magnificent because I’ve totally never heard of them. It is truly magnificient that this list is done.

There was a list put together by readers too. I checked out the first 10 on the list and apparently the readers were all either Scientologists or relatives of Ayn Rand. I originally intended to put together my own list of novels that I really like, but now I’m worried that it will consist of a lot of ‘Get Fuzzy’ compilations and maybe online diaries. Gah. I’ve got to paper things more. My head feels all empty now.

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The duck does not have other props.

Wednesday, September 25, 2002

From Suein Hwang’s Wall Street Journal column:

Aflac has issued guidelines for every use of its spokesduck. The word “duck” for instance, is barred from sales agents’ e-mail addresses, as is any mention in company publications not generated by the Columbus, Ga., headquarters. Duck costumes are verboten, as are duck Christmas ornaments (requested by some employees). An edict bars the duck from holding or wearing anything.

The duck “walks around to different places and tries to get people’s attention by shouting ‘Aflac!,'” explains (an Aflac) company spokeswoman. “The duck does not have other props.”

Does that crack (or quack) anyone else up? “The duck does not have other props.” What a beautiful sentence. Right there. It is perhaps the most beautiful sentence I’ve encountered in… well, at least eight hours.

From the same article: “If the duck became all things to all people it would dilute his distinctiveness,” she explains. “It wouldn’t be the best thing in the long run for the integrity of the symbol.”

I think I want that job… public relations for a duck.

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A rare glimpse at my day job.

Tuesday, September 17, 2002

Client: I don’t understand this question about the snack nuts.
Wendy: Well, nuts are classified four ways. Nuts in cans, nuts in jars, nuts in bags and unshelled.
Client: What does ‘unshelled’ mean? Out of the shell?
Wendy: Um…. no, actually in the shell. Like pistachios.
Client: Well, if it’s a nut, you’d eat it as a snack, right?
Wendy: That’s the question. It would almost seem as though nuts in a bag would be baking ingredients…. like raw walnuts.
Client: In the shell?
Wendy: No, out of the shell.
Client: Then what’s the difference between that and unshelled?
Wendy: These are shelled.
Client: So they’re in the shell.
Wendy: No, they’re out of the shell. Unshelled means that they’re in the shell.
Client: That’s… um… yeah.
Wendy: It’s kind of reverse psychology. Like ‘unfrozen’.
Client: So I would think that snack nuts would be everything but the shelled stuff.
Wendy: Even the raw nuts?
Client: Well…er…no. So just canned and unshelled.
Wendy: Wait… unshelled is a snack now?
Client: No… just….whatever you said.
Wendy: Canned and jars then?
Client: Is that what you think it should be?
Wendy: Cans and jars. That’s snacky.
Client: I’m getting hungry now… for anything but nuts.
Wendy: You’re unhungry?
Client: Why don’t they just call it \”In the Shell\”
Wendy: Because the English language is a funny thing.
Client: Isn’t \”in the shell\” English?
Wendy: I think nuts are classified by the people who write the IRS code.
Client: That makes perfect sense, actually.
Wendy: I try.

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Kushi Kutah

Wednesday, September 4, 2002

I felt it. That cold sort of warm breeze that harkens the beginning of autumn. I don’t know if it’s because all the kids started school on Tuesday or if they’ve just naturally timed it that well, but it’s as though with the first appearance of a yellow school bus, all the trees drop their leaves, the ice starts to form on the puddles and the craft shows multiply like used condoms in the park behind a Catholic high school.

My neighborhood isn’t quiet anymore. During the summer, it has the appearance of a ghost town of sorts. It reminds me in a way of how it must have been in the 1940’s, with all the young men gone to war, only it’s not just the young men but also the young women. When I walk, it’s just me, the retirees, and the crazy bell guy who rides around on his bike, ringing his bell the entire time.

I haven’t been walking this week. I sprained my ankle screwing around in the pool. I cannonballed when I should have possibly stepped lightly down the stairs. Thus I haven’t had to fight the throngs of back packs walking to the high school two blocks away. They make me feel old anyway.

And it’s not just the back-to-school circulars and the nip in the weather. Football is starting this week. That’s the bridge that takes us into January, when the car will take fifteen minutes to heat up and I fully appreciate my spouse’s natural body fur and his unbelievable propensity to generate body heat.

I flipped my pretty black and white 1940’s New York photo calendar in my office to September yesterday. It’s now so heavy that it pulls the thumbtack out of the wall. I just can’t get it to stick up there. It’s enough to make me cry.

But at the same time, I’m not sad. I do enjoy fall. It’s actually my very favorite season. I love the smell of leaves, of cider apples, of the furnace turning on for the first time. I like the feel of heavy shoes, shoes that can withstand ice and sleet and never let you slip. I like the way that your breath turns white and the sky gets impossibly clear at night. I even love sitting on the sofa with my big Man Socks pulled up past my knees, listening to the wind while we watch some favorite movie on the television. I love the way the air smells when the Wood Chopping Neighbor burns his sexual frustration and I can smell it from my front porch as I fumble for the correct key to open the door. I love that.

But it also speaks of projects forgotten, of plans never laid. It makes you want to gather your rosebuds while you may and other metaphors capable of being embroidered upon a cross-stitch sampler. It makes me want to start knitting again, even though it’s so trendy right now that it makes me want to purl. I mean, hurl.

I like my shoes though. My Doc Martens are magical shoes. They still look incredible, even though they are five years old and I wear them every winter. I should buy another pair but half of me is being stubborn that I only want to buy them in the store in Covent Garden, where I have to do size conversions and worry about VAT issues. They make me feel very stable, as though I could walk through broken glass or perhaps an oil fire. Aside from a small scratch along the left toe, they are still nearly perfect. Also I could totally kick someone’s ass with these things. They weigh a pound apiece. They made my suitcase fall to one side, forcing me to carry one throughout Gatwick Airport and then through Detroit’s hellhole, but it was a labor of love. I earned these magical shoes.

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