What You Talking About, Poe?

So I’m researching epitaphs. Why? Because it beats the hell out of writing. Some of course are amusing:

Here lies the body of our Anna
Done to death by a banana
It wasn't the fruit that laid her low
But the skin of the thing that made her go.

Heather tells me, by the way, that NPR told her that the bananas we eat will disappear in 30 years due to Panama disease. I miss them already. She further tells me that bananas are sterile and so are essentially clones of one another. We are all eating one banana. I have to quit talking bananas with Heather because she is blowing my mind.

But getting to the famous epitaphs I find Poe’s: “Quoth the Raven, Nevermore.” Why does that make me so sad? Am I the only one who had a morbid teacher who made us play the come up with your obiturary? I can swear the same teacher made us draw a tombstone and write our own epitaph, but you know the betrayer memory…tricky bastard. I was both frightened out of my mind my these exercises in mortality and offended that I could (at some insanely young age) sum up my life in a sentence.

And that’s Poe’s: Quoth the Raven, Nevermore. It’s perfect, some would say. Fitting. But my problem is that it’s cliché. I know you can’t judge that time then from the standards of now. But I can only react now and that’s like Gary Coleman’s epitaph being “What you talking about, God?” Wait, is that his epitaph? No, that’s right, he didn’t die recently…he got married—totally different. Unless you were in a Poe story where death and marriage might be something akin.

For Mel

My friend Melody Clayton sent me this evocative picture. She's been a great friend since the grad school days. The couch daze. And her husband Alex--encyclopedia of all things cool. They introduced and continue to introduce me to all the good stuff in life.

She's working also on a novel which will be much better than THE NOVEL I've been pecking at. But you should know she's already an atmospheric master short story writer as witnessed here.

A Kevin Keck Reading

Went to Kevin Keck's reading where he read from his new memoir Are You There God? It's Me, Kevin tonight at Park Road Books. An enjoyable time. He was in high form, singing a couple songs that are referenced in the book. The excerpt he read tonight was about his visit to the Goth/S&M Charlotte event Purgatory with a self-described "vampire." Hilarious. Sadly it put Heather off Purgatory all together. Baby with bathwater, I say.

Condiments Kill

I have food issues. One really: I don't eat condiments. This simple principle simply pisses people off for no apparent reason to me. And they demand to know why. My reply, "Why would you?" These so-called people clearly didn't grow up on the PSA below.

Found: One Bright Side

Ever get down—down as in blue, not funky. Not because of any one event or because of the people close to you, but because of the minor players in your life who you sense are tired of you, which makes you angry, which then only serves to annoy them more? Then, you say, “Stop looking at me,” and it gets taken out of context.

At those times, I look for pick-me-ups. A person I used to date gave me 14,000 Things to Be Happy About. Unfortunately most of the 14,000 things just depress me: “dress shirts,” “amateur psychoanalysis,” “’Made in Japan’ labels,” “the empty stretches of bun on either end of a hot dog.” Really? These are the best things to be happy about?

So naturally I turn to the next logical text: Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy. And found this bit where Voltaire’s father, on finding out about Voltaire’s career path said, “Literature is the profession of the man who wishes to be useless to society and a burden to his relatives, and to die of hunger.”

Now that’s the stuff!

A Lucky Man Review

So I finished reading Lucky Man by Ben Tanzer, proprietor of This Blog Will Change Your Life. I was expecting the same whimsy and optimistic humor from his debut novel that I enjoy from his blog. But I was gently and pleasantly disabused of this notion as the book went on. It is funny, but also sad and strange and surprising and many other engaging ‘S’ words. I was especially impressed by his range of emotion and for his clever plotting. As the novel went from coming-of-age to On the Road-like road trip, I was happy to bum along, expecting it to end in the requisite literary epiphany, but I was excited by the deft turn in the book’s conclusion. Lucky Man makes me eager for more from Tanzer.

We're you weary of the 10th of February?

More great Anonymous v. Scientology. Okay, maybe not great, but better than reality TV.


Scenes from the London protest:


And finally a parody: