Two points today, one is sort of somber and the other is the usual frivolous tomfoolery that I have convinced the internet to indulge me in. I should probably be devoting a greater part of this post to somber concerns since I spent the better chunk of the weekend at a memorial service, but that would smack of chronological relevance and I certain can’t have that.
One comment about memorial services though, before I forget and move along to equally irrelevant discussions. On the drive home my main squeeze and I stopped for dinner at a brew house and discussed our respective funerals. We both decided that people would be hard-pressed to think of nice things to say about us and that we didn’t want to put anyone to the trouble of fiction; ergo, we probably shouldn’t have funerals.
Admitting the attractiveness of not having a funeral is a funny thing when you take into account how popular the funeral fantasy is among teenaged girls. I know it seems crazy at first-glance, but it isn’t actually that morbid. I did this, and while I don’t paint myself as the model of mental health, most of my friends did this also. You merely imagine the reaction to your great tragedy and enjoy the professions of affection that are heaped on your coffin/hospital bed. If you can manage it, feel free to throw in a plot twist that means your death secures your revenge on that chick from second period.
Honestly, I’m not making this up. Most teenaged girls think more about what would happen at their funeral (or better yet, if they were hospitalized in some serious but attractive way) than they do about Twilight, and that’s saying something.
I am going to move along to discuss what I intended to discuss today, first the somber thing and then the cheerful thing so that everyone leaves on a high note. The somber discussion is a another reflection on the class that I’m taking. Yesterday we all had to rewrite a boring story and then read it aloud to the class so that we could understand how personal voice/detail make an essay. I liked this exercise in theory, but I hate reading aloud with a fiery passion, so the whole process made me glum.
For the first few minutes of the read-along I couldn’t listen because I was too busy being nervous and later I was distracted by my profound relief, but I eventually started listening to people reading their stories. I’m glad that I did because listening to other people read their work always reminds me that putting words into sentences isn’t a particularly difficult task – not nearly as difficult as I make it out to be. I putter and struggle with words and sentences and (above all) having the motivation to sit still and focus without succumbing to the many temptations of the internet. (Today I am doing fairly well. Or I was. I am running out of self control.)
Anyway, it is always humbling and motivating to know that putting ideas together is an easy thing.
So here is the joyful thing that I promised to bring this whole situation to a cheerful close. My question for people who make popsicles for a living: Why do you bother to put jokes on the sticks with the answer embedded in the frozen juice? Do you think that kids need more motivation for eating popsicles? You are just throwing away incentives on kids who love nothing more than a drippy dessert. Save your jokes for something that people hate, like the bottom of a box of Chicken in a Biskit.
Same goes for you, Mr. Cracker Jack.
As a point of interest I might be changing my blog quota to 3 X a week, throwing Sunday in the mix. I hate doing actual work on Sundays but I always find writing on Mondays so shocking that I figure that I shouldn't late my brain completely atrophy over the weekend anymore. I know what you are thinking and yes, I do think that this blog helps rather than accelerates the degradation of my brain. If not the writing then trying to remember how to keep this sucker for being double spaced and ragged-right....all ragged-right alignment is a blight on humanity.
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