My Secret Identity

So I have failed to blog regularly due to the fact that I am actually a super hero and have actual responsibilities saving the world and all… but until the next time,

Go check out this comic: http://www.bunny-comic.com/1436.html

A Strange Feeling

I really do not have much to say other than:

1) I am too old for this no sleep, social calendar thing that I seem to be partaking in lately.

2) It’s not like I haven’t been doing this school thing for the past 16 years of my life, and yet this first day of school feels so foreign.  I almost feel like I have been out in the real world for years, and I am returning to this college thing as a veteran adult, looking at the younglings like I don’t quite fit in.  Or perhaps it’s just because I am sitting in the business school where I very obviously don’t fit in. Maybe the universe will realign itself when I am visiting the usual buildings that I have frequented in the past.

Hello.

Hello vast internet and its readers. Forgive me, for we have not spoken for awhile; nevertheless, my pen still meets with paper.  Today I begin a personal social experiment, a self-diagnostic.  At the very least, it will be many hours of answers to questions asked during therapy sessions all compacted neatly into one little notebook.

Meanwhile, I recommend reading the following for male and female, young and old readers alike:

Manic about Manic D Press

I do not think my poetry is for everyone. I do not think that my poetry belongs in most, and especially not traditional, publishing houses. But I certainly do with every fragment of my soul believe that my poetry + Manic D Press = just right. Save for the fact that the small press does not necessarily inform authors that their works have been trashed.  Perhaps I am too demanding, but I find this a bit rude and inconsiderate:

Please do not call or email regarding your submission. We’ll be in touch if we’re going to publish your work.

Yeah, mail is lost quite rarely, but it does happen.

If I close my eyes, stick my head in the ground ostrich-style, and pretend the above quote never happened, I feel at home among the Manic D Press Books.  I like the authors. I like their works. I like the cover art. The fonts. EVERYTHING seems right and equivalent to how I would like to see my works enter the print world.

Just for kicks, here is my submission letter, lovingly formed and apparently not appreciated:

To Jennifer Joseph and Manic D Press,

I cannot tolerate suck-ups.  So it bothers me slightly that the following letter of submission might be misconstrued as a shiny red apple.   Let me assure you, it is not.  If anything, consider this an olive.  Bold, flavorful, and quite literally an hors d’oeuvre, this letter’s purpose serves to market my poetry for publishing; nevertheless, in doing so, I must first tell you that when reading about and digging around Manic D Press, I have never felt more at home in a literary sense.

In regard to the Manic D Press publication that I chose to address in this letter (Matt Cook’s The Unreasonable Slug), I must reply that, in addition to specific thoughts on the author’s work, my most striking observation is the book itself.  More than half of my hand-written comments were made before I even read a single line of poetry.  I oohed and aahed over the simplicity and sophistic integrity of the overall piece.  From the subtlety of the colors and the aesthetically pleasing cover art to the understated fonts and layout, the overall book rested in my hand an individual work of accomplished art.  All of this (I swear) I noted before even reading your (Joseph’s) quote:

“It’s not just the writing itself but it’s the whole: it’s the cover, it’s the way the book feels in your hand. It’s a whole experience…a book is the proper place for words to live.”

As for Matt Cook and his poetry in general, I appreciate his phrasing, diction, and voice as in the line “probably suffered from poor packaging” on page fifteen.  His poetry offers idiosyncratic and bizarre observations of ordinary topics that would otherwise fall beneath average examination, or would at least be addressed with detached language and phrasing.  Yet he revisits the menial parts of life with comically dry and cynical interest, caring masked by “not” caring.  Rhythmically Cook’s collective work seamlessly flows from one poem to the next, creating harmony among his words.

Nevertheless, I see similarities between his works and mine.  The vague, sometimes misleading, yet intriguing titles.  His free-form style rather than following traditional rhyme schemes and parameters.  His use of repetition as a literary device.

However, despite these similarities, my poetry and prose contrast his observational style by speaking with a more confrontational, poignant voice.  My words are personal and strong.  I often describe my poetic execution as the mating of Nicole Blackman’s voice with the tone of a Kafka-Poe hybrid, perhaps with a few contemporary references in reminiscence of T. S. Elliot.  Like Blackman, I command the audience’s attention by speaking directly to the reader, placing the reader in the position of one of my characters.  Sometimes I assault the reader; in other instances I toy with the audience by offering multiple innuendoes and hinting toward the darker side of words’ connotations.  My poetry is not one-sided.  I write to challenge the audience, to evoke a response so that the written word becomes a dialogue rather than a monologue.   

After trying my poetry for publication within several literary journals and magazines—to no avail—I have realized that I would rather my poetry exist as a whole, its own publication standing on a shelf in its own right.  It has become my dream to work with a small, quirky press dedicated to progress and quality, so that the aesthetics and feel of the overall final product may embrace my poetic content and truly represent me as an author and a person.  A book, I feel, is the proper place for my words to live, and I also believe that Manic D Press is the rightful place for my book to come to life.

Thus, I present to you a sampling of seven poems representative of my proposed book, Sunnyside Up, written under the pseudonym Mersedes Bach, which I have also used to construct my blog, Scant.

Sincerely,

 

And here lies the tentative cover art that will not be born from Manic D Press:

en lieu of: 25 things you thought you wanted to know about me (but don’t).

So apparently the Facebook spam “ 25 things you thought you wanted to know about me (but don’t)” has inevitably arrived at my proverbial doorstep–twice actually.  And while I am sure that I consist of far more than 25 idiosyncrasies, the stubborn smart-ass within requires me to not participate in this little chain.  Nevertheless, I will publish the most current list of my 10 life goals, i.e. things that I will accomplish sometime in the hopefully not-so-distant future.

1. Live at The Lofts @ Hollywood and Vine
2. Live in Baden Baden, Germany
3. Stay for an extended time in one of the private bungalows at the Bellagio
4. Own a rear-engine car, i.e. a Ferrari or the new Audi
5. Novel(s) published
6. Poems published
7. Work as an editor of a magazine, i.e. Flaunt or something similar
8. Learn German
9. Own at least one Alexander McQueen dress
10. *

Screwed

The angel on my left says true friends do not treat each other like shit while the daemon on my right thinks that they are the most fun I will ever know.

I am an addict, and you are my greatest poison.

Rule #1

 

Rule #1:  Do not take a maximum-strength decongestant prior to an attempt at sleep.

I Bite My Thumb at Thee*

One of my many faults (gasp! I am not perfect, oh no!) is that I clutch onto grudges with my sticky, pissy little fingers until my dying day, and I mull over these grudges and their circumstances continuously until they are imprinted into my mind the same as should be the alphabet.  Lately, I have been thinking about the time I was rebuked for my sarcastic attitude.  Nay, not sarcastic attitude, but more like a sarcastic sense of humor with a spicy touch of sardonicism.

When asked to characterize the perfect significant other or good friend, I am pretty sure that no one would prefer for the person to LACK a sense of humor.  Perhaps not always the first quality listed, it usually makes the cut…eventually following rich, handsome, boobs, hot, or dependable, nice, and fun.  However, not all humorous sixth senses register as equal on the laugh-o-meter, and the preferred type of funny remains a subjective matter.  Not everyone prefers puns to sarcasm or corny jokes to references, but does that mean that a quantitative population of people could entirely dislike a specific type of humor, i.e. sarcasm and sardonicism?   

Apparently so since Thomas Carlyle, a nineteenth Scottish historian, claimed, “Sarcasm is the language of the devil, for which reason I have long since so good as denounced it.”  Ouch.  Not strongly opinionated at all.

I have had run-ins with quite a few people who find my comments disrespectful and offensive.  Unfortunately I cannot remember the exact wording of the harsh words spoken to me in my tender junior high years, but I do remember the meanie was a high school boy quite unimpressed by my repartee.  We were at a pool party, and I believe I might have said something to the effect of “Ha! That was an amazing hit” in reference to his attempted serve over a volleyball net.  He said something similar to “You should really stop it with the sarcasm.  People don’t like it, and it’s rude.”

This really hurt.  He did not allude to one person’s opinion of my humor, but people’s opinions.  He generalized.  I was mature, smart, and confident enough to recognize the generalization, but I could not completely fend off the broken feelings that usually accompany being told that a large fraction of one’s personality is undesirable.  Sarcasm and sardonicism are not lousy tricks I pull from my back pocket in a desperate moment; they define me, a part of me that I strongly embrace, and are heavily interwoven into my literary voice.

Furthermore, my automatically generated commentary spews from my brain to mouth for the sole purpose of intellectual humor, not to degrade or belittle by any means.  After all, had I wanted to be condescending, I could have just recounted the truth: “That serve sucked.”  But this judgmental boy brings to question the general public’s perception of sarcasm.  Ignoring sardonicism for ease of discussion and narrowing our lens to that of sarcasm, is it considered offensive and disrespectful outside of the snotty collegiate student realm?

Perhaps the perspective changes between generations or regions, same as addressing one’s elders as “sir” and “ma’am”.  Truly in my opinion, calling a woman “ma’am” should be considered the cruelest of all insults, considering the person could not bother to take the time to pronounce the full “madam”.  I obviously respond only to “mademoiselle”.  This demonstrates (loosely) that the rhetoric of respect or lack thereof exists in the eye of the beholder.  Language remains a flexible vehicle of communication, traveling extensively across endless terrain and acquiring a plethora of idioms along the way.  As the vernacular changes, so does the expression of humor.  Nevertheless, in this new generation to which I belong, I still seem to find resistance to my form of wit.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky defined sarcasm as the “last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded”.  I do not disagree that some may resort to sarcastic remarks for this purpose, but I honestly cannot recall an instance that I used sarcasm in this manner.  As natural as sarcasm comes to me, I use it flippantly not defensively.  But I cannot speak for the whole of the planet on the common use of sarcasm.  Perhaps majority of the people fall onto sarcasm in desperation for a red herring or to belittle another.  Perhaps the general motive is to be acerbic rather than cunning.  In fact the Sarcasm Society boldly describes their namesake as such:

never [...] gentle or endearing, but rather as caustic and bitter, describing situations, persons, or things in a derogatory way in order to be funny. Appropriately, the derivations for this brutal form of wit come from the Latin ’sarcasmus,” which stems from the Greek “sarkasmos” and “sarkazein” which means literally “to bite the lips in rage.” [...] Throughout much of history sarcasm was considered a “lower form” of wit because it was considered so unabashedly disrespectful to the person or object being described.

 

 

Nevertheless, assuming the existence of proper context clues, should the phrasing of intentions be judged if the intentions themselves are pure?  I cannot answer this question, and I have no right to attempt as much.  I can promise, though, that the insanely loud sarcastic and sardonic demon controlling the neural communication wires of my brain will never surrender to an alternate form of humor.  Or perhaps I should move to Britain, where people celebrate an extensive history of sarcasm.  

*Not that I consider Shakespeare to be “urban” but this phrase is actually in the Urban Dictionary.  And you thought I failed to include UD in this post. Ha! And yes, I know that is not the actual line.  

Mad Hatter

It has now become official: Urbandictionary.com has killed my dreams, betrayed me, and permanently crippled my preferred vocabulary.  I can no longer flippantly and obsessively rely on the term “mad hatter” at my convenience for describing any trippy, psychedelic, or curious observations.  Truly I have relied on the phrase far too extensively; however, I do not appreciate now having to go cold turkey off the term.
  

Or perhaps I should blame the urban public and its constant alterations of contextual meanings.   So many common words in the English language have acquired so many different vernacular meanings, all entirely unrelated to their proper denotations, that even natively speaking English-folk can no longer properly and efficiently communicate.  Notice the subtle difference between “the shit” and “is shit”.  Since when does “deface” pertain to an online action rather than a physical show of disrespect, i.e. destroying with intention?  No, no.  “Deface” means to defriend someone on Facebook.
 

Wait.  Did I just use a previously non-existent word (defriend) and misuse the word friend?  You see, the term friend at one time applied to a person known extremely well and considered loyal, fun, and dependable.  However, with the dawn of Facebook, the term has been devalued to mere “acquaintance” or “person convenient to make me look popular like I have, like a ton of friends”.
 

But I digress.  This pertains to “mad hatter”.  Once such an inspiring character, full of endless literary opportunities, the term now flatly refers to a hand job.  Actually, a bad hand job.  Not even a good one.  In fact the hand job in question, of course called a mad hatter, goes something like this according to Urban Dictionary: “A poorly performed handjob. Usually by a girl who says she is experienced. Yet, in actuality, she jerks you off like a crazed sea dragon.”  I myself, as a chick, have never received a “hand job” nonetheless a bad one; however, I can see where the crazed sea dragon would be somewhat of a turn off.
 

If this were not a horrid enough redefining of my precious, ALAS! Urban Dictionary has provided yet another defacement of the term:

“In this situation, a man would be in the process of getting head from his Partner, while he is standing and she is on her knees. Right before ejaculation the man would pull out, cum in her eyes, sit on top of her head and drop a deuce.

Last night I picked up this ho at the club and when she was giving me head I pulled off a mad hatter.”

See this is the maddening part of it all, the term “mad hatter” is not even necessary for this situation.  This event already has a name-”Blumpkins”.  Also, a beauty of the English language: numerous and never-ending supplies of words, all to describe the same phenomenon.
 

Yes, I realize Urban Dictionary does not fully deserve the blame.  The convergence of all languages helped form the English language, thus providing multiple words with the same meaning.  This I know.  I also know that pop culture leads to references that lend to the rewriting of pages and pages within our dictionary bible.  Did you like my aforementioned “my precious” reference?  Lord of the Rings has officially contributed to our language, our vernacular; however, I must note that the definitions provided on Urban Dictionary for this term are shoddy at best.
 

Nevertheless, for one cause or for all, the term “mad hatter” has become stricken from my vocabulary archives for fear of a misinterpretation.  Contextual clues do not always save the day, especially when the phrase is employed in a vague manner, as I usually intend.  Nor does the typical accompanying of sarcasm. 
 

Let it be known that I refer not to a blumpkin when I say that Urban Dictionary and our modern tailoring of the English language have some mad hatter connotations.

 

 

 

 

From the Desk of an Invalid

I have come to realize that I very much take for granted the small things.  Like the ability to chew without thinking about chewing.  Or eating whatever I prefer.  Or the choice to toss and turn and sleep on my stomach with my face buried into the pillow if my subconscious so chooses.  As a newly rendered invalid due to the removal of four impacted wisdom teeth, I am feeling somewhat less wise, grossly unsettled, and agitated as hell.  Thus, if I was not fighting a borderline precarious state already, I am now blatantly and hopelessly stuck in the middle of a horrible funk.  Everything is too much effort, and life tastes as foul as the blood in my mouth.

I have been here before; no doubt this is anything but uncharted territory, but the external and environmental stressors certainly do not help when coupled with the pre-existing internal tumult.  I am up.  I am down.  Every moment is a struggle between a good day and a bad.  The only constant factor remains my lack of belief in myself.  I even view this blog as a failure.  As demonstrated by the calendar, much time has passed since my last post.  Each time I attempt to write, as my pen meets with paper, my words fall flat, and I am forced with the realization that they are unimportant, insignificant.  No one cares.  And if no one cares, why bother to record the monologue?