I Write Like Who?

Someone suggested that I should write some bad poetry, and guess what! I already have! (You can read it here.) Then I found this nifty little website that will analyze your writing and tell you who you write like... so I had my poetry analyzed... This is what it said:

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Stephen King?? Yowsers! I don't even know what to think!! I wonder who I write like when I'm talking about having a not cool not fun life... hmmm... let me see... it's analysing... analysing...

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Oh hey! It says, David Foster Wallace.. whoever the heck that is... probably some not cool not fun guy. Alright, so, when I'm on a rant, (like maybe this one here) who do I write like?

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

James Joyce? Ok, I can dig it. That's kind of cool! Oops! Am I doing something cool??? I wonder who I write like when I think I'm actually writing fiction, for example, this story here...

I write like
Ursula K. Le Guin

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

OH WOW, Ursula LeGuin? Maybe I am pretty cool after all!

Ok... that was so much fun that I'm going to have to go sit in my dirty bathtub with all 5 of my cats, 2 of which are in heat, and I'm going to drink a half a warm beer, and think about how much fun it will be to get up in the morning after having had like... I dunno... 4 hours of sleep... and go to a funeral in a vehicle with no air conditioning on a day when it's going to be 95 degrees with 80% humidity. That'll put a surefire stop to all this fun coolness, don't you think?

Oh and by they way: If you've stumbled onto this post like, days or weeks or even months after I wrote it, you might want to read my rules for living a not cool not fun life so you'll know what I'm talking about. It's very... um... David Foster Wallace-ish!

Cheers!

Oh, and here's a picture illustrating how to celebrate failure just in case you happen to be a successful failure and aren't quite sure how to enjoy it:

How To Fail

Ok, so I stole the picture for my last post from an actual book called The Ten Rules of Highly Unsuccessful People. In all fairness, I thought I should post his rules. They are as follows:

1. Learning Anything New
   
2. Don't Share What you Know with Others
3. Be a Jerk!
4. Always Look Out for Number One
5. It's All About the Money
6. Promise Things you Have No Intention of Doing
7. It's Always Someone Else's Fault
8. Truth is in the Eye of the Beholder
9. Do the Least That's Necessary for Success
10. The Customer is Someone you Have to Put Up With

Ten Rules For A Not Fun Not Cool Life

A while back I was talking about something, what was it... oh yeah... it was the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition, and it occurred to me that since I really hate to "follow the rules" and have a deep seated belief that rules were made to be broken, maybe I should post rules for a not fun not cool life. I could then go out of my way to break those rules, and maybe my not fun not cool life could begin to be both fun and cool.

Later on, I decided to just write the rules and forget about breaking them... what's interesting, and also sad, is that these rules are a combination of my life and the lives of my two best friends... together, we three have perfectly awful lives in which there is no fun and we are not cool. At the same time - because we are so not fun and not cool, and because we do have each other - we become almost cool and sometimes we have fun! We can't even succeed at being uncool and not fun!! We're failing at being failures! How stupid is that?


Anyway, here are the rules. Abide by them if you choose -

1. Personal hygiene has to go. Remember that old saying, "Save water, shower with a friend" ? Not cool if you want to pursue a not fun not cool life. If you smell good, you might actually feel good and then people might actually want to be around you. So, take a shower every couple of weeks - you don't want to get so dirty it begins to be kind of cool. You just want to be dirty enough to smell creepy. And don't forget about your mouth! Dental hygiene is an absolute no-no! Bad breath and rotten teeth are not fun, not cool, and a great enhancement to a not fun not cool life. So, throw away that toothbrush right now.


2. Pets - have annoying ones. Pets can be cool and they can be fun, so in order to be sure that the pets you have are not fun and not cool here are some guidelines. If you have birds, be sure to have large unhappy birds that scream at the top of their lungs most of the time. It's also helpful if they are destructive and love to bite strangers and small children. If you have cats, either have intact male cats that piss on everything you own, or females that are constantly in heat and yowling. If you are unfortunate enough to have cats that are spayed and neutered, then have 5 or 6... maybe even 7 or 8... and don't let them go outside, and don't keep their litter boxes clean. As for dogs... hey... for an uncool not fun pet, nothing beats a dog that is constantly barking, biting, and pissing. It's even better if they are smelly, have long tangled dirty hair and allergies that make their eyes run constantly. Oh... and fleas... very not cool and definitely not fun.


3. Have a low paying, soul sucking, menial job that you hate. This is very important. It insures that every day you will have something distasteful to look forward to. It also ensures that you have just enough money to survive on, but not enough to have fun with. Plus, on your days off, you'll be too tired to do anything productive. Which brings me to the next rule:


4. If you're going to do something - don't do it right. Do not engage in productive activity. Spin your wheels all the time. This is the best way to ensure that your life is never fun. Be sure to have plenty of things to do, just don't do them well enough to get them done properly. This way, nothing will ever be accomplished, and your "to do" list will grow exponentially, as will the futility of any action you do rouse yourself to engage in.


5. In order to live a not fun not cool life, it's important to have friends. Friends who call you at all hours of the night to pour out their troubles, rant over the injustices in their lives, (it's even better if they are falling down drunk when they call). And, very important, friends who never - I repeat - never what to hear anything you have to say. Friends who hang out with each other, but never want to hang with you. Friends who come over only when they want something. And especially friends who borrow. I'm talking here about the kind of friends who borrow money and don't pay it back, borrow books and never return them, who borrow tools and immediately lose or break them... you know... if you're reading this, you probably already have some friends like this. So, hey, go out and get a few more!


6. Never ever clean your kitchen or your bathroom. There is nothing as not cool and not fun as rotting dishes in the sink and moldering garbage sitting around in bags and sacks, and a filthy tub (not that you're using it) and toilet. You can follow rule #4 (If you're going to do something, don't do it right) when it comes to cleaning the rest of the house. Want a clean house, but always do a piss poor job of actually cleaning it. You can then constantly badger yourself about how you need to get off your ass and do more cleaning. This will ensure that watching mindless television won't be nearly as much fun as it would be if you flat out didn't care what kind of a mess your house is in.


7. Don't do enough drugs, or drink enough alcohol, to actually feel good. If you are going to drink, drink just enough to puke all over the couch, but not enough to actually have fun or feel good. As for drugs, you can't afford the good drugs that will anesthetize you right out of uncoolness and right into a fake nirvana - so save your money for stuff like... I dunno... Twinkies and donuts.


8. If you have a car - have a crappy one. Nothing is more not cool and not fun than driving around in 103 degree weather in a car with no air conditioning, it's especially helpful if none of the windows will roll down. Alternatively, you could have a car with windows that won't roll up - this is especially not fun when it's raining, snowing, or really really cold. The car does need to work - most of the time - this way, when it does break down, it can be unexpected and annoyingly inconvenient.


9. Families can contribute quite a lot. Your family can be very helpful when it comes to living an uncool unfun life. Nobody can eat you alive in quite the same way as your parents, siblings, and children ... You can count on needs that remain unfulfilled, expectations that will never be met, disappointments, and small cruelties. It's especially helpful if other members of your family are determined to make sure you know that they are more successful, more cool, more fun, more productive, more civilized, more creative, have more money, more stuff, or are simply meaner, smarter, or are just flat out better than you. This will greatly enhance your feelings of personal failure.


10. Never do anything that's cool or fun. This is probably the most important rule of all. So important, it might even be useful to make a list of all the things you think might be cool and/or fun, and post it somewhere so that you can be sure to NEVER EVER do them. And if you are doing something, and it starts to feel cool or seem fun - stop immediately! Call your parents, loan money to a friend, hang out in your bathroom, go to work, sit in your piece of shit really hot (or cold car), or plunk yourself down in front of the TV and watch reruns of your least favorite show.

Parenting Fail?

I found this today on Yahoo, and I thought it was interesting... and also annoying! Here is a man, a person with billions of dollars, a "success" in life, maybe he's even a good person... I don't know... But here he is giving the best advice he's ever received and it's totally useless to me in terms of money and success.

"The power of unconditional love. I mean, there is no power on earth like unconditional love. And I think that if you offered that to your child, I mean you’re 90 percent of the way home. There may be days when you don’t feel like it, it’s not uncritical love, that’s a different animal, but to know you can always come back, that is huge in life. That takes you a long, long way. And I would say that every parent out there that can extend that to their child at an early age, it’s going to make for a better human being." ~Warren Buffett

One of the things I can for sure say about my parents - despite all the shit they put me through, despite all the shit I put them through, I always knew they loved me. I always knew I could "come home" and be welcomed with open arms. Even if that meant there'd be a fair amount of "preaching" and "sermonizing" and criticism, even if it meant they'd never really "get" me... it was always there... their love for me.

And yet - I'm not rich. As a matter of fact, not only am I not rich, I'm not comfortable, well off, or even just OK. I'm scrambling all the time to make ends meet. Nor am I successful on any level from which I would measure success. I'm not at all happy or satisfied with my life, not at all. As a matter of fact, just yesterday I was contemplating how pleasurable it would be to just walk right out of it.

So how useful is it, really, to have received unconditional love from your parents? I don't know... it sounds good, it feels good, but how has it helped me? Am I a better human being? Better than what? Better than who? Of course on the other hand, without it, maybe I'd be living in a box under a bridge nursing my heroin habit - or maybe I'd be in prison - or long dead... But maybe not, maybe I would have pulled myself up by my own bootstraps and made a better "go" at it!

Just yesterday, my friend Michelle was telling me this story about a woman who was on, of all things, the Tyra Banks Show. As I remember it, the story goes as follows:

Her mother died when she was 10, her abusive stepfather put her in foster care where she was raped and abused, she ended up on the street, a prostitude at the age of 11, got hooked on drugs, a pretty terrible life. Worse than mine, that's for sure. And then one day, when she was in her 40's, something happened, I don't remember what, and she got her act together went school, studied law, and became a lawyer. Now, she's a "success" and I bet she has money! So... there you have it... I doubt if she ever had unconditional parental love, even once. And yet, if you measure her life against mine - she'd win hands down.

On the other hand, what if... and this is the other thing I was thinking about after I watched the video... what if... I made a conscious decision to meet everyone, every single person I see, with that attitude of unconditional love. What would happen to my life then? What if, despite the fact that I really really really dislike my neighbors - what if, I met them with an attitude of no barriers, and unconditional love. And what if I went to my job, that I don't enjoy at all, and instead of being all closed into my fatigue, resentment, boredom, and intense desire to run away screaming... what if instead of all that, I simply met each experience with an attitude of unconditional love. What if there was an openess and an acceptance of ... whoa nelly! I can't believe I'm going to actually say this... an unconditional loving of me - screwed up mess that I am...

Now that just might be pretty powerful! Question is, can I do it? Bigger question, will I even attempt it?

Ok, so now that I've talked it to death, here's the video:

Howling At The Moon

We listened for a voice crying in the wilderness.
And we heard the jubilation of wolves!

— Durwood L. Allen

PS. Thank you Camille. I played this and my dog was howling, my birds - singing as loud as I've ever heard them, and my cats - crazier than they already are, and wow... that incredible primal energy of wolves. It speaks to my DNA.

Did I ever tell you guys about the hybrid wolf I trained? If not, I'll have to dig up some pictures of him - I've got him on tape, maybe I can figure out how to make a YouTube video out of it. What an amazing being he was.