Decoration Day

For Memorial Day today, I shot a gun for the first time.

No, it didn't have a bayonet.

But I did shoot an AK-47.

I feel a lot more disturbed after going home and realizing what an AK-47 really is, thanks to the internet.

I shot a milk carton

with an assault rifle.

I don't think shooting guns is for me.

I'd rather talk about Civil War balls.

Victory, O Lord!

All paintings should be like this:

Crazy eyes

and brambled beards

powerful bodies

under corrugated garments.

Painted by our good buddy John Everett Millais

of the PRB!

But then again,

I also think that we should portray our presidents like gods,

(Washington, Horatio Greenough)

so maybe we can't trust me

after all.

She's a real lady.

I'm not gonna say that I listened to the Spice Girls super loud when I was home alone this evening.

But I'm not gonna say that I didn't.

What I do know is that we assigned each of the roommates 

a Spice Girl,

and I'm Posh.

Yesssss.

A voice crying from the dust.

The other day, I was at Walmart in the school supply aisle.

I pulled a rainbow-and-black striped binder from the shelf and exclaimed in my head,

"Letitia would love this!"

(It was like unto this, but on a binder.)

So the weird thing is

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Letitia isn't a real person.

She's the main character of a story I started 

during seventh grade.

And I haven't worked on it or probably thought of it 

in seven years.

But when I saw that binder, she was the first person 

I thought of.

See, 'cause Letitia loved rainbows,

and her whole room was rainbow colors with black accents.

"No one understood her.

No one even tried.

She was the perfect combination of 

southern belle and city girl,

but no one noticed it at the time."

Letitia was kind of a weirdie, but Joe loved her anyway.

He was going to get confused and start dating her best friend,

but then end up with Letitia in the end.

Pretty enthralling plot, right?

Secret and Strange Angel.

Do you ever feel like

everything would have been

all right if

Christine and the Phantom

had just stayed together?

The Parting of the Ways.

It's become inevitable.

It's time for the parting of the ways.

Emily Dickinson,

we're through.

After being assigned to read all 1,789 poem in Emily's corpus in the last month,

I've got an extreme case of metrical fatigue.

Too much meter.

It pounds relentlessly like mallets in my Grinchy head.

Each poem loses all meaning and becomes nothing more than a tell-tale heart that I wish I could shove under the floorboards.

No offense meant to Emily.

I appreciate her just because my professor admires her so much.

When she dies, I think my professor and Emily will be instantly bosom friends,

sitting in a quaint corner of heaven, recording couplets.

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But Emily and I are not friends.

I was about one bee or butterfly poem away from being put over the edge.

Emily, it's been real.

I'll see you when I compass Paradise - 

Feminism.

Today, I looked down at my sparkly pink toenails and thought,

"I'm really glad to be a girl."

I want you so bad.

I never realized how creepy Uncle Sam is.

Gotta love America.

Epiphany.

I'm not one to go around shouting that I've had epiphanies.

But if an epiphany is, 

as Wikipedia says,

finding the last piece of the puzzle 

and now seeing the whole picture,

I had one this morning.

Don't laugh,

but I have come to appreciate

the 1980s.

I've always been fond of people born in the 80s, 

obviously,

but aside from the first season of Saved by the Bell,

an occasional Molly Ringwald movie,

and a strange fascination with Pee-Wee's Playhouse

I found 80s pop culture rather unpalatable.

Enter "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper,

and the tide begins to turn.

Not only is this a great song

(well-covered by the impregnable Phil Collins as well),

but also

the video is 

awe-inspiringly

strange.

And I realized that I have just the palate 

for awe-inspiringly strange.

Ba-jang.

There it is.

The puzzle is complete.

I love the 80s.

You've got to admire the audacity with which they did things in the 80s.

I do.

Now.

Two.

I still love the number 70,

but there's also something nice about 2.

I think it's because

2 = 1 + 1.

I'm talking to you, and you're talking to me.

But also,

2 = 2 + 0.

Neither one of us is talking to anyone else.

Talking in threes and fours is great,

but I think talking should mostly be done in twos.



The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

Good day.

My name is Miss Cecily Cardew.

And to the end of my recollection, I have always been exceptionally fond the name Ernest.

In all the waking dreams of my girlhood,

I thought to name my firstborn Ernest.

But when I became a young lady, I met the most beautiful young man.

And his name was Ernest.

We passed a year in the sun and I thought to marry,

but he was drawn away by his devotion to the crown.

And I have not seen him since.

More lasting than my affection for him

(The whims of a young lady's first love often dissolve under the weight of plentious grains of sand in an hourglass, you see.)

has been the knowledge that I could never love any man but one named Ernest.

And since then, the most queer thing has transpired.

Nearly every man of importance that has appeared onstage has been named Ernest.

There was first the Ernest whom I wanted nothing to do with.

And the Ernest I wanted everything to do with, but who did not quite wish for the same.

The Ernest who had the most wonderful adventures from India to tell, but who became wearisome for not having anything more to say.

The Ernest whom I took notice of just because he was an Ernest.

What, then is the importance of being Ernest?

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I think I shall rip those pages from my diary and marry Cecil instead.

Conundrum.

Is it possible to be a blogger without being pretentious?

I think the answer is clear.

Little monster.

I always insist that my eyes are green, not hazel.