For Those Whose Irony Circuitry is Similarly Fried

I was moved by this. Especially the Lincoln Bible.

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ouh, i love this

The Collected Works of Billy The Kid reminds me to be simple, to have patience, and to mind my space on the page.
I find I tend to crunch my poetry together, with strict attention to detail, to every word, and to efficiency. I can spend six hours on a ten line poem. But when writing [...]

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ondaatje & me.

While I may not see myself emanating all aspects of Ondaatje’s style, there is a certain straightforwardness to his descriptions that is interesting and unusual. I would like to follow his direct style in some ways, because it gives the reader some sense of assuredness, even if they’re not sure what is happening all [...]

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Boy, do I wish it was hate day again…

This week, I learned that I should write more simply, that I should streamline.  I will from now on aim to transmit information in everything I write, and I vow to let words, characters, and stories speak for themselves.
Now, I could have written the above declaration in C++ and justified it at the very bottom [...]

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fyu-shun

Now we know, having read this, that the lines really are blurred – people tell us of this concept all the time, that this is a fusion of poetry and dance, or a fusion of French and Thai, but it’s not always so evident. This book, on the other hand, is clearly poetry and even [...]

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Billy the Surreal

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid is a strange animal. Half the time I had no idea what was going on, yet I always knew how to feel about it. With disjointed formatting, the bleak photography and the macabre throwaway details, Ondaatje has managed to create a surreal, mystical figure out of Billy [...]

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Use your words

I would use mine, but it’s 4:08 and my eyes burn and the yo-yo ma isn’t relaxing as much as it’s white noise that keeps me company.
Ondaatje, however, is using his words. I don’t have anyone to compare him to or anything to compare it with but what I know is apathy was setting in, [...]

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“You Know, Schizophrenia Often Manifests During College Years…”

Her diagnosis of me my his erratic behavior.
Wakes, fucks, breaks–makes haste. Wasted
So many lives. and yet I still can’t find Billy the Kid
Interesting. Maybe his collected works, but not.
Him. Not really. How can you do that? No feeling.
Charged with it. Charged with your feeling and not feeling.
And I see and don’t see Exactly. what you [...]

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How Many Billy The Kids Does It Take To Screw In A Lightbulb?

Sense does not equal Sensibility, Billy has taught me. His flood of images, without a plot in sight, can mean nothing to me for pages and pages. I start to skim over to new paragraphs when a certain image resonates, a phrase ignites, an adjective-noun pairing catches in my throat and I feel it fall [...]

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I’d never be in a cult that’d have me for a member

I’ve always had a little bit of a thing for the A&E documentary version of Charles Manson. As seen through a screen, Manson’s not just a murderer: he’s a sanguine, gritty icon, hollowed and hallowed by cable news dramatizations.  In these programs, this version of Manson is less kill, more thrill — an empty, [...]

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Something about writing…

Time has become the determining factor in most of the things in my life. Or, more specifically, the lack there of. It decides whether I do well in class; whether I join a club and meet new people; whether I stop worrying and start enjoying that cup of Skol and soda; and whether I bother [...]

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An experiment in transcendence

That sounds like a whole lot of nothing, but I feel like it’s the closest I’ll get to describing the form of The Collected Works of Billy The Kid.  The style draws upon so much from great 20th century modern literary experimentation; the stream of consciousness in the poetry brings to mind Gertrude Stein’s jarring, [...]

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I don’t get Ondaatje and I like that.

“The Collected Works of Billy the Kids,” presented as a work of nonfiction, has pushed my perception of the genre’s boundaries. In this course, I’m starting to realize that nonfiction writing is a less restrictive genre than I’d previously assumed. The variety of styles used by Ondaatje — poetry, prose, interviews, photography, etc. — are fascinating and [...]

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Mooch, and face my wrath.

I was going to expound on my hatred for lateness. But seeing as this blog is seriously late, that would be somewhat hypocritical. So I’m a hypocrite, kind of. The truth is I hate when I’m made late because of others’ chronological laxity. My clock already runs perpetually 5 minutes behind, [...]

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The Bachelors of Noodles & Co.

I eat alone quite a bit.  I’ll timidly whisper to a host or hostess “table for one” and you can see it in the flare of their eyes that they’re unprepared for such solitude.  I get seated fast.  Unless, it’s the hostess behind Chili’s who is fully ready to accomodate the lone wolf that I [...]

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The Narrow Path

Walking into town the other week from my house on Sherman, during an exhausting period of papers and exams, I was inspired to write about hatred. For certain stretches along my way, the path carved into the snow on the sidewalk would narrow considerably. Apparently, for some home-owners, one pass with the shovel is enough. [...]

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Extraordinary Man

Hello 208.  This has nothing to do with hate, or maybe it does.
I somehow got myself signed up to run a marathon in the fall of 2009, so for the past few weeks I’ve been dragging myself to SPAC and climbing up on a treadmill, and setting it to the pathetic speed of 5.5 and [...]

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Two Theories

Hatred is misplaced love
(see: 10 Things I Hate About You, people who dislike puppies, every relationship I’ve ever had)
or
Hatred is the unwillful recognition of personal inadequacy
(see: supermodels, organic chemistry, my inability to think of a poignant third example)

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hate hating, or: disappointment->frustration->HATE

I have been really hateful lately. And I hate it. I really hate it. But I hate the things that make me hate them! Because once I start hating I hate myself for being hateful! It’s a cranky, cyclic mess. 
Lately I’ve been really disappointed with courses and teachers. It frustrates me that certain programs don’t [...]

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Love of Hating

Why do we love to hate certain things? What is it about a car accident that we cannot pull our gaze away, or that poor celebrity whose life has crashed down in a pile of DUIs and bad checks? What pleasure do we find in mocking these unfortunate happenings? Where is our pity? Human malice [...]

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I’m the psycho ex

Oh, we’ve all had that lovelorn creeper in our lives. The boy with cystic acne from sixth grade algebra who asked you to the senior prom. The girl who, after being dumped, changed her AIM profile to display a black background and, using gothic red font, wrote little poems comparing her soul to a blood-filled [...]

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Age discrimination

(sorry this wasn’t working earlier…)
It’s as old as Methuselah, and probably started with him too. But why is it exactly that we love to hate people who are younger than us?
The easy answer is that it makes us feel older, wiser, better about ourselves.  it gives us authority and an illusory sense of power [...]

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Jovial hatred

Hate is a funny thing. And what fun! It makes you feel good, which although perhaps tragic, is something to admire. In hating something, you place yourself above it; it’s an ego boost. Often, that’s the only reason you do it. I hate Apple and all its products, especially the ipod. I don’t know why, [...]

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Inevitable Encounters

I hate the inevitable encounter with someone walking the opposite direction on a sidewalk. At these times, I must make a quick judgment. Do I know this person enough to smile at her, or do I take out my cell phone and pretend to be engrossed in a text? Do I feign a sudden and [...]

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rehash

I – no, don’t wanna start this post out with “I.” Sick of it.
There are a lot of things which other people can’t stand that don’t really faze me (which is not to say I’m a calm cool & collected person; the terms “high-strung” and “incredible bitch when slightly intoxicated and boyfriend is being clingy” [...]

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All you need is hate

I spent most of my time in High School with some unrepentantly snarky dudes. Together we spent the better part of four years coming up with witty barbs and hating on just about anything and anyone, ourselves included. It was a good time, and mostly harmless seeing as you don’t have to be all that [...]

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