archives for April 2008
david foster wallace’s personal collection of ugly english [diatribe warning]
Monday 7 April 2008 | 6 cookies in the jar
From the opening to his 2001 essay for Harper’s, “Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage.” Are these eggcorns, or, as the Brujo would mutter, just plain wrong? I’m an English teacher, you know what I think.
“Save up to 50%—(and More)!” Between you and I. On accident. Somewhat of a. Kustom Kar Kare […]
read ‘david foster wallace’s personal collection of ugly english [diatribe warning]’
so *why* am I teaching english again?
Monday 7 April 2008 | I like a cookie
Still, how could anything be better than $665 every two weeks and a lineup of a dozen querulous students today and another twenty tomorrow? People, you can’t beat that with a big red stick! As it were.
read ‘so *why* am I teaching english again?’
sadly without blue mallow flowers
Monday 7 April 2008 | I like a cookie
read ‘sadly without blue mallow flowers’
a condensed romantic history
Monday 7 April 2008 | someone left a cookie
With a Dionysus partner (e.g., a cult leader), a Persephone woman gets madness [my father]. With an Ares partner, she gets physical abuse [the Monk]. With a Poseidon partner, she gets emotional abuse [op. cit.]. With Zeus, she gets cheated on [well…the Parisienne was really Aphrodite]. Hermes [the Footie Lout] and Apollo [the Republican and […]
read ‘a condensed romantic history’
spinculum obnoxium
Monday 7 April 2008 | I like a cookie
Sunday flew past with papers ungraded and manuscripts unedited, long sunslanted hours spent seeking out with pricked fingers and uprooting the branching vines of this little number, a naturalized (and I would venture to say, invasive) ground-hugging burr from the Mediterranean. True, it provides forage and crop cover in Southern Australia and Texas; but when […]
infamy is ours (and lots of links)
Sunday 6 April 2008 | 5 cookies in the jar
Supposedly taking part in the Great Interview Experiment (by interviewing Jen on the Edge, which we haven’t yet—bad Un, no infamy) means we also got interviewed ourselves, by the redoubtable Chris O’Rourke of cdcstudios.com; and you can read it…here. (Be sure you check out some of his brainy posts too, like the 5 Must-Have Wordpress […]
read ‘infamy is ours (and lots of links)’
why we love mandarin
Saturday 5 April 2008 | 4 cookies in the jar
Eustace told me that people tended to romanticize his lifestyle. Because when people first ask him what he does for a living, he invariably replies, “I live in the woods.” Then people get all dreamy and say, “Ah! The woods! The woods! I love the woods!” as if Eustace spends his days sipping the dew […]
friday refrains · jill mcdonough encore
Friday 4 April 2008 | I like a cookie
BREASTS LIKE MARTINIS
The bartender at Caesar’s tells jokes we’ve heard a hundred times.
A shoelace walks into a bar, for example. I whisper
Sarah Evers told me that joke in sixth grade and Josey says
My brother Steve, 1982. A whore, a midget, a Chinaman,
nothing we haven’t heard. Then a customer asks
Why are breasts like martinis? and they […]
read ‘friday refrains · jill mcdonough encore’
I’m worth a million in prizes
Thursday 3 April 2008 | 6 cookies in the jar
I came to work today, and I taught the surly bored class, on two hours’ sleep.
Mostly I was able to perform this miracle because the Brujo gave me a ride to school and even managed to crack me up, first by unexpectedly, meditatively singing the chorus of ”Springtime for Hitler” and then by doing an impression of Gene Wilder moaning, “No way […]
read ‘I’m worth a million in prizes’
her voice woke me at 2 a.m. (segment of long project for whitman’s workshop)
Thursday 3 April 2008 | I like a cookie
I had not known that death would work in me
its tide pulling
as deeply as life had done
wanting food, wanting
mouths at my breast
that it would have a surging lust
as for a lover
after my girls were grown
sometimes in the bathroom with nightgown
pulled up around my neck
I could still press thick buttery droplets
from my nipples
the desires of life […]
read ‘her voice woke me at 2 a.m. (segment of long project for whitman’s workshop)’
