Boring stories of the E-town

I had a Borgesian dream a few weeks back that involved me trying to "write" the first book of a well-known poet blogger without referring to the book itself. The task would be very difficult because the world has changed substantially in the two years since the book was published.

Satan* and I were at Powell’s a while ago, and we passed this book back and forth and mocked it like the arrogant poets we are. Most of the poems seemed to us pretty samey, pretty “easy”—the method seemed obvious, the materials stock. Read a couple of these poems and write your own. The poems weren't "bad" per se, but didn't seem that interesting either. Not to knock the poet, but it dawned on me that I should go home and write a “poem by Poet X,” a poem that would be either better than an actual Poet X poem or unbearably bad. Either poem, I reasoned, would be more interesting than reading Poet X’s book. I am not always a reasonable man. Instead of writing the poem, though, I dreamed the scenario described above.

*not the Dark Lord, but my pal & fellow NSist, AM.


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Is it embarrassing to like The Lemonheads? (The band and/or the candy.)

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So last night I attended a function. I usually avoid functions. By function, I mean departmental. I mean a party in someone’s backyard attended mostly by my “colleagues.” The last one of these I attended was two or three summers ago. K, I’ll call him (because it’s his first initial), remarked that seeing me there was a rare occurrence.

It was a rare occurrence (well not seeing me there, as I am very visible, but being there), made doubly rare by the fact that I hadn’t planned on attending this thing at all. The deal about functions (LH—“Here’s the deal…”) is that one always encounters people one does not want to see there. I had some specific candidates in mind this time. Turns out, one was there, but he left very soon after I arrived, but not before pulling me aside and discussing his mental health with me. That’s okay, though, he’s not a bad guy—I just feel a little weird when he talks to me. You know? Permanently awkward.

A couple hours before the function, I drank a bottle of wine to calm my nerves. Yes. A bottle. The whole thing.

Well, the wine, coupled with my anxiety about seeing someone I didn’t want to see, gave me heartburn. So I bought some Rolaids and a six pack of beer and headed to the party. So I’m walking around eating Rolaids at this party, and I’m getting strange looks. So I had to explain to X (who was looking at me strangely) why I was munching Rolaids at a public function. Then I offered her one. It seemed very funny to me at the time. Now it just seems stupid.