I want a bucket of ducats,
I want to be rolling in cheese.
I ought to learn about stocks and bonds
and investing in Equities.
But that’s not how I’ll do it,
it’s not my realm of expertise.
I’ll write my ode,
cast off that load,
and live life with Bon Esprit!
(Clap Clap)
-SZ 6.10.2010
I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree.
But that’s okay—trees make me itchy,
their pollen burns, it makes me bitchy.
Though I enjoy the Earth’s creation,
I’m much more fond of simulation.
So love your trees, your rocks, your sky.
Don’t call them art, or I’ll reply:
God’s grandeur is not trifling,
but Nature can be stifling.
I’m glad for what’s outside my home,
inspiring me to write my poem.
But…
For every tree that’s on the scene,
I need an anti-histamine.
(SZ 4.19.2010)
Sobriety Sobriety,
you’re making such a wretch of me,
I’m walking straight, I’m thinking clear,
I HATE this sober time of year.
_______________________________
No taste of wine, nor sip of beer
My conduct prim, my thoughts austere.
For one who’s nursed by impropriety,
‘tis great misfortune, this sobriety!
(SZ 4.14.2010)
May those who love us love us,
and those who don’t, roll on.
And those who love to hate us,
suck a donkey dick and be gone.
(SZ 3.21.2010)
Dear PC Generation,
Do you remember…
Well, do you? Does it make your head spin to think how silly these technologies seem, when they came and went during our relatively short lifetimes? The Singularity is near, my friends. The Singularity is near.
I thank God daily for the good looks he gave me,
they’re just enough to get by on.
And I thank him as well for not trying to save me,
they’re never enough to rely on.
(3.11.2009)
The answer is quite simple, really. Don’t play a game you know you can’t win. Forfeiture is one of the greatest psychological weapons we possess. To deny your opponent the satisfaction of beating you can, at times, be more rewarding than winning itself. And refusing to play leaves you, at worst, slightly beneath neutral in terms of dignity. Whereas losing, at worst, can leave you emotionally scarred for life.
Just ask Salieri.
I have been online for fifteen years.
I can vividly recall my most formative early experience with the Internet, if not my first one. I was 9 years old, playing at my friend Zara’s house, and her family had just installed AOL 3.0. This was a big to-do: my dad used a clunky local ISP called Raex mainly for work, which I was expressly forbidden to touch. Now, with the über-sleek new AOL 3.0 at our disposal, the world was our dial-up oyster.
As soon as we got past the screeching initiation and the obligatory cry of “You’ve got mail,” we made our way to the first chat room we came across. Once we had stopped giggling at the conversation of a typical AOL chatroom, we initiated our first “private chat.” I cannot recall the exchange exactly (that would be freakish), but I do remember telling this gentleman we were in our thirties and lived in Australia, where we pooped in holes and kept skunks as pets. A lifelong love affair of lying to strangers was born.
You may be asking, “What does this have to do with blogging?” Well my friends, this little anecdote is probably familiar to most people my age, members of the PC generation. We’ve had the internet since our earliest days of creative expression. And the joy I felt making up my Australian hole-pooping alter ego is the same joy I get from blogging. With the internet, you can show and say absolutely anything, and anyone in the entire world could find it (if they chose to do so).
I started blogging when I was 13. My first blog was on a service called Diaryland, which eerily enough not only still exists, but seemingly hasn’t changed its site design in ten years. I can’t really say what the gist of it was, but I’ll wager a safe bet it was the inane ramblings of an oft-persecuted pubescent poetess. In other words, utter crap.
And you see, herein lies the problem. I continued to blog for years, starting a new one every time I got sick of the caviling sound of my own prose. Then, four years ago, I had a revelation that I wanted to write professionally, and I ceased blogging altogether. Though I had established my own small band of devoted followers, it suddenly seemed like I was undermining my career choices by letting every unedited thought eek out into the ether for all to see.
I was right then, four years ago, to put an end to the tawdry exhibitionism of my intimate bloggery. If my diaries are to be read, let it be posthumously when I no longer have an interest in maintaining my air of cool mystery (not that I have an air of cool mystery, just that I care about maintaining one).
However, I’ve come to realize that something integral to my nature as a writer died with the demise of my blogging. I am what I like to call a gibbier (this is a word I’ve made up, more on that later). I have to get my thoughts out, to express them and make them manifest, at all times. It’s something of a compulsion. And when I stopped keeping a written public record of them, they inevitably ended up going somewhere else. Hopefully a fair amount make their way into my dramatic work, but a good portion go into either conversation, or I’m sad to say, the swampy mire of social media.
Don’t get me wrong…I am a girl who loves her twitter and facebook. I call them a swampy mire mostly to be cheeky, but it is admittedly true. Whenever I have a hilarious thought, I try to compress it into 140 characters to send it out for consumption. We are living in the era of the public statement, and I am huge proponent of that. Whether you’re Oprah or Borpoh the paranoid schizophrenic who lives in a dumpster and interviews rats, there is an equal space for you on social media to make your voice heard.
All I’m saying is that from a personal standpoint, I’m ready to get those thoughts out there in more than 140 character increments. I have decided, as I’m sure you’ve realized, to make my triumphant return to blogging. Only this time, I’m doing it right. Yes, I have every intention of still being distressingly divulgent and peculiarly personal. I like to think that’s what drew people to my writing in the first place: My lack of shame. But years of formal writing education have taught me that form is a necessary foundation on which to build content.
That’s right, folks. This here blog is gonna have a format.
For one thing, I like to think each entry is going to be written as creative non-fiction. I’m thinking less Bridget Jones’ Diary, more David Sedaris. It’s a bit of a hazy distinction, since I’m inevitably going to be using my own life and stories as frames of reference, but this blog is going to be topical rather than journalistic. Anyone who’s ever had the pleasure/misfortune to meet me knows I’m full of half-cooked theories and pet philosophies. I’m hoping this will be a forum for popping those ideas in the oven, and taking those philosophies for a walk.
So there we have it. This was topic numero uno: On blogging. Suffice it to say, in the amount of time it took me to write this I could have written ten pages of my thesis (If you’re wondering what the deal is with that, I suggest you look at the “About” section). But that’s just a secondary use for this blog: a means of procrastination. I figure it’s better for me to waste time with masturbatory manuscription than endless stumble-upon and twitter guzzling. At least this will keep the wheels oiled instead of rusting them into immovable clogs of LOLcatz and FAILs.
I can’t say for sure yet what the frequency of this little endeavor will be. I suppose it will be dictated by a complex ratio of real work to be done : resistance to do real work : level of sobriety : ability to be interesting. But I think, in an effort to maintain/expand my readership, I will end each entry with a taste of what’s to come (that’s what she said).
