Beauty is Imperfection

(Originally posted April 1, 2008 )

1. What she said: “I hate people and their drama. I wish they would just get over it.”

What she meant: “I actually like drama quite a bit, otherwise I wouldn’t post this message on numerous bulletin boards so that everybody could ask me questions about what I’m referring to, which is actually something about a minor altercation at a bar that is of absolutely no interest to anyone.”

2. What he said: “I love you and I would never do anything to hurt you.
What he meant: “I cheated with your best friend.”

3. What he said: “I lack discipline and a real sense of mission and purpose in my life.”
What he meant: “I joined the Army, dad.”

4. What she said: “Jim Carrey is a comic force that elevates the material he’s given.”
What she meant: “Jim Carrey hasn’t made a good movie since ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.'”

5. What he said: “I have always thought that the best shot in the arm to the American economy is letting Americans keep more of their money in their own pockets and using it the way they want to, which fosters growth.”

What he meant: “I’m bailing out the biggest banks with a shitload of money, just like Herbert Hoover did.”

6. What she said: “People have a right to wait until June to make the final decision about who their candidate for president is.”

What she meant: “I am sorely lacking in delegates, and my appeal to superdelegates might at this point seem like I’m trying to steal the election and nullify the popular vote, so I ask you all to ride out the clock so we can wait until the big electoral prize of Pennsylvania comes into play, a state which, to many people’s surprise, is chock full of backwater crackers.”

7. What he said: “Michigan voters are divided, and a recount there would not add much to this very heated election.”

What he meant: “I wouldn’t mind disenfranchising voters in Michigan and Florida to keep my lead, even though it’s kind of sleazy that so many people’s votes are going to be tossed out like so much leaching plastic into a landfill.”

8. What she said: “President Bush has acted swiftly to counteract the crises in the financial markets, creating stimulus packages and brokering deals that would keep large financial institutions from melting down.”

What she meant: “We’re rewarding the worst investment banks for their part in the predatory mortgage crisis by bailing out Bear Stearns to the advantage of large rival JPMorgan, who will be able to buy it at a fire-sale price. In effect, we’re rewarding people for bad behavior because that’s what capitalism is all about.”

9. What he said: “A person suffers when he’s too wrapped up in himself and his sorry daily life, and he needs to have a greater goal, an existential purpose, one that forces him to realize what he’s on Earth for.”
What he meant: “I’m going to commit a criminal act and get into the paper to impress Jessica Alba.” *

10. What she said: “I’m just so happy to be on ‘American Idol’ after chasing my dream for so long.”
What she meant: “I’ve already had a $2 million record deal that went nowhere and caused MCA Records to take a bath.”

11. What he said: “I am Osama Bin Laden and I am going to attack within the United States.”
What he meant: “I am Osama Bin Laden and I am going to attack within the United States.”

*Editor’s note:  No. 9 originally used different language and suggested a comical reference to the film “Taxi Driver,” particularly the speaker’s interest in harming a political figure, and of course John Hinckley’s attempted political assassination of Ronald Reagan to impress a celebrity. I am not a conspiracy theorist, but I noticed after I originally posted this article on MySpace in April 2008, I started to encounter technical difficulties and couldn’t post new blog entries for a couple of weeks.  Later, this entire post you are reading now was removed from my Myspace blog, not by me. My assumption is that becuase I used a first-person speaker threatening a political assassination in a fictional context and because a reference to Osama Bin Laden appears later, it alerted concerned parties who removed it. I have decided to rephrase No. 9 just because I wouldn’t want to think that this silly little joke had somehow put me on an alert list with the NSA.

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(Originally posted Wednesday, April 09, 2008 )

Duh!: A List of Things in Today’s Headlines That Any Joe-Schmo Could Have Told You Already

–*Princess Diana Killed by Paparazzi, Reckless Driving, Say Authorities

–*The Bible is America’s Most Popular Book

–*Scientists Discover that Stonehenge May Have a Spiritual Meaning

–*Scientists Say Smoking Is Harmful For Pregnant Women

–*Scientists Find That Men May Be Hardwired To Seek Sex With Multiple Women

–*Scientists Find That Gay Men May Be Hardwired To Seek Sex With Multiple Gay Men

–*Sociologists Find That People with More Income Are Better Educated

–*Old water pipes are breaking, say hydrologists

–*Old bridges and levees are falling down and killing people, say engineers

–*The French Like Cheese, Say Anthropologists

–*The Spanish Like Ham, Say Butchers

–* President Says That America’s Blacks May Have Longstanding Resentment Over History of Racial Inequality

–*Nobody Reads The Warning Labels on Beer, Say Researchers

–*… or cigarettes

–* … or rap music

–* People Are Turned Off By Britney Spears’ Erratic Behavior, Says TMZ

–* People Turned Off By TMZ, Reports Sites Other Than TMZ

–* New Study Finds That Richard Nixon Engaged In Criminal Activity

–* … as did Henry Kissinger

–* … as did George W. Bush.

–* Generals Determine That Iraq Has Become a Quagmire

–*Scientists Determine That Eating McDonald’s Food Every Day For A Year Will Make You Fat

–*…and that TV will make you dumb.

–* … and that crime is linked to poverty

–* … and orgasms to pornography

–* … and your head to your neck

–*Scientists say black holes and female orgasms exist, though they are still not sure why

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(Originally posted Friday, April 8, 2008 )

Top 10 Reasons My Regular MySpace Blog Would Not Publish This Week

–*I wrote the funniest blog ever, so funny that it crashed the computer

–*Notorious Myspace moderator Tom went to use the bathroom, leaving the site unattended to blink and stutter like a bunch of balls randomly bouncing around in a TV tennis game

–*It’s a new idiosyncrasy of HTML code that it will fail to publish whenever the text includes the words: “To keep her ankles warm.”

–*Obviously, it’s my fault and I was wrong to blame MySpace. If I were just a better person and had been nicer to children and the homeless, this blog would have easily posted by now. I’m such a fuck up. I want to commit suicide.

–*Technological backlash has long been a topic for great writers and thinkers. For how many steps forward do we take whenever technology plays a greater role in our lives? And how many steps back? What have we done? What … have … we done?

–*It was a “porn-out.” Kind of like a blackout, except it happens when the servers are too jammed with pictures of people doing the reverse cowgirl

–*They were doing “routine maintenance” and other things required by the Patriot Act

–*They were improving their spam blockers so that you would not want to buy my patented, totally reliable and guaranteed “Eric’s Penis Enhancing Cream,” the only penis enhancing cream that comes with a book of ancient Persian ghazal poetry

–*MySpace has to fix its blog counter lest some of us read them and get a big head about how popular or likable we are, like the one guy on here who writes about how much pussy he gets

–*Scientists have made a crucial link between global warming and narcissism, and thus MySpace has joined the global effort called “Other People Exist Day” in which all the blogs go dark and you are forced to live without your preening, navel-gazing masturbation machine

–*I didn’t hit “submit.”

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(Originally posted Wednesday, April 02, 2008 )

I have reposted the song “The Names” at ER Salo Deguierre’s page. The lyrics are included there, if you are interested. I thought I’d mention it because people who don’t like my music sometimes like this one. It’s a bit more somber and less, um, crackly.

I should mention that, like everything else I produce, this song sounds better in headphones, maybe because that’s where I master it. I know that this is a bit of a cop-out, but it will probably be this way with most of the music unless I were to pay for a professional producer and engineer.

Here’s a list of other things that sound better in headphones:

–*Sonic Youth

–*The Firebird by Stravinsky

–*Montagues and Capulets from Suite II of Romeo and Juliet by Prokofiev

–*The private conversations of Martin Luther King as recorded by the FBI

–*Any surreptitious surveillance of two cheating lovers in the park

–*”Stairway to Heaven”

–*”May This Be Love” by Jimi Hendrix (so that you can hear the cool drum and bass audio panning back and forth from left to right)

–*”Such Great Heights” by The Postal Service (so you can hear the panning beeps at the beginning)

–*The instructions from Karl Rove

–*Any Kid Rock song, only the song itself should be coming from outside while the headphones nicely protect you from hearing any of it

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(Originally posted Tuesday, April 01, 2008 )

What April Fools’ Day Pranks Are We Pulling?

–*Shaving our pubes for our spouses

–*Telling our spouses we are leaving them for their siblings

–*Devaluing the dollar by lowering interest rates to scare people into thinking they can’t afford anything

–*Making my Second Coming to the faithful flock and calling them back with me to heaven where I will sit at the right hand of God, my father, in a kingdom of the righteous, whence I will then say to my followers: “Gotcha! Fished in!”

–*Declaring jihad

–*Finally admitting that the 2000 election was a hoax, whereupon Al Gore will laughingly take his seat in the Oval Office a mere nine months before he is to leave

–*No. Wait. Sorry. That would not be a hoax at all.

–*Tying together the shoe laces of Officer Krumpsky and watching him fall on his pig face

–*Putting a sock over the cat’s head, even though the poor thing does not know what April Fools’ Day is and would not appreciate it in the least and would run into the wall several times meowing in sheer animal horror

–*Saying “I love you” to somebody who would find it suspect, like your long-suffering wife

–*The old “I’ve got herpes” joke never fails to drive your boyfriend into hysterics

–*Promising Bear Stearns that we will bail it out of bankruptcy to avoid an investment bank meltdown, but only offering them $2 per share, which would wreck the lives of their employees forever. Ha ha! Egg on your face, Bear Stearns!

–*Telling “The New York Times” that you are a 21-year-old good-looking female virgin at Yale, which automatically gets you a profile in their magazine as some sort of bizarre anthropological study

–*Telling your kids that sexual abstinence before marriage is best

–*Saying you’ll pull out

–* … of Iraq

–*Turning in your “Beauty is Imperfection” blog a day late.

Happy April Fools’ Day everybody!

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(Originally posted Sunday, March 30, 2008 )

My good friend and colleague Carol Clouse recently joined MySpace, after I pestered her for months to sign up. I’ve tried to convince her that this spot is one of the best places you can promote your own work, especially if you are unfortunate enough to have literary aspirations, in this world where print is often left for dead.

Carol has written a memoir about time spent being a bad girl in Europe and she is currently showing it to agents. You can get a glance at the first chapter here.

Enjoy! And feel free to leave your comments or add her as a friend if you like scandalous memoirs. I am not getting any commissions off this recommendation, but if you all go to her site and befriend her, then maybe she will buy me coffee.

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(Originally posted Saturday, March 29, 2008 )

Many of us want to be remembered for something. Richard Nixon wanted to be remembered for mending relations with China. Susan Sontag wanted to be remembered as a novelist. Of course, neither one got his way.

How would you like to be remembered?

–*As the first woman on the moon

–*As the most obese president

–*As the man who broke the bank at the Monte Carlo

–*As the man who flung the watermelon the farthest it has ever been flung in Delaware and made Delaware a better place for it

–*As the white man who expanded the borders of the United States by declaring himself president of Nicaragua and then letting it be annexed by the U.S. government. You know. Like Texas.

–*As the woman who gave birth to such a hunk of man as George Clooney

–*As the person who taught Dick Cheney how to love

–*Actually, what I meant was, the person to have given him a successful heart transplant

–*As the man who won the fastest land-speed record in a Wal-Mart shopping cart in North America

–*As the first person to bring iambic pentameter to gay porn

–*As the man who cleansed the church of heresy by killing all the Protestants in the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre and thus ending the conflict once and for all

–*As the man who cleansed the Anglian Church of superstitious Catholic ritual by leaving England and founding a nation that would forever be a beacon of Christ’s light

–*As the first Lesbian lacrosse player to become U.S. president and invade Venezuela

–*As the man who ate the most Bubba Gump shrimp before puking in Times Square

–*As the last boy ever castrated in Europe to preserve his mezzo-soprano opera voice and sing Elton John and Tim Rice’s “Aida”

–*As the first denizen of Soapstone, Arkansas to mate with an alien and father a whole new race of people with big heads, 13-inch penises and no belly buttons

–*As the man who subdued the Indians in New England, who had no legal right to the land

–*As the first woman born of asexual parthenogenesis to found her own rock ‘n’ roll religion in South Korea

–*As the comeliest and fairest of the sultan’s harem, the one who convinced him to invade Cyprus

–*As the only person to have killed President Kennedy

–*As the man who taught the world how to fish and so fed them for a lifetime

–*As the man who who taught them how to fish and then charged them compound interest for it, so that they owed him 50% of all their caught fish for the rest of their lifetime. You know. Like the way colleges do it.

–*As the youngest teen-ager to give birth in Kansas

–*As the mother with the most children in the Quiverfull movement

–*As the guy who bedded 4800 women, because my earlier goal of being a great artist gets sillier and siller every time I hear “I Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll All Nite.”

–*As a crazy gay serial killer cannibal … but not as a vindictive, angry or mean-spirited gay serial killer cannibal

–*As the guy who got you off

–*As the woman who turned you gay

–*As a pious, self-righteous person suffering in silent solitutde for her personal moral principles. Which means I pretty much won’t be remembered at all.

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(Originally posted Thursday, March 27, 2008 )

What are the top 10 reasons we can’t say ‘I love you’?

–*Because I’ve been in love before … and I couldn’t stand the p-a-a-a-in

–*It wouldn’t sound genuine when you have a knife at my throat

–*Because saying I love you is too easy. Showing you I love you through years of commitment is the harder part and. … OK, just kidding. Actually, my mouth is full.

–*Because you’re the tenth person I’ve said it to this week and it’s starting to sound a little trite

–*Because you supported the invasion of Iraq

–*Because you ordered the invasion of Iraq

–*Because saying it reveals me. It makes me vulnerable. Because it could give you too much strength to have that much power over my emotions.

–*Another way of saying that is that I enjoy the power it gives me not to say it. And if that sounds passive aggressive, well FU.

–*It seemed the wrong time since we were doing anal

–*Because I’m only in love with Chelsea Clinton. I’ll wait a thousand years for her if I have to.

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(Originally posted Thursday, March 27, 2008 )

Do you ever find yourself flummoxed by loaded and unfair rhetorical questions, like “Why do liberals hate America?” Do you find yourself miffed and frustrated by people throwing silly hypothetical imperatives at you, ones that defy both logic and intuition? Well here’s a handy kit that will allow you to undermine casuistry and fallacies of relevance. It’s the “Beauty is Imperfection” Bullshit Question Resistor. It will help you answer ridiculous questions often asked by Internet Web sites, con men, jackbooted Nazi thugs and Bill O’Reilly.

Q: Which band is better, Fallout Boy or Good Charlotte?
A: I don’t know. I’ve haven’t eaten either one.

Q: Is Hillary finished?
A: No, just polished.

Q: Why do liberals hate America?
A: We don’t have enough commemorative plates.

Q: Do you want to say sorry to President Bush?
A: Yes, he is a sorry sack of shit.

Q: Wouldn’t you torture a prisoner if it could save a baby’s life?
A: I’d prefer a better point spread and might torture half a prisoner to save two and a half babies’ lives.

Q: Don’t you support the troops?
A: Yes, I would certainly hold anything for them, like their guns, belts or boots while they changed clothes.

Q: Do you care about your child’s education?
A: Yes, especially the fact that the more he learns, the more depressing it’s all going to get.

Q: Do you like or hate George Bush?
A: That question is completely irrelevant to the fact that he should be in jail. But I guess if I visited him there he would seem personable enough.

Q: Is Matt Damon really the sexiest man alive?
A: This is a question I would hesitate to answer without knowing his sperm count and motility.

Q: Do you think Barack Obama is the new Bobby Kennedy?
A: Either he’s the new Bobby Kennedy or the new Bette Midler, I can’t decide.

Q: Do you think this year’s American Idols are the most talented group ever?
A: No, really, George Bush should be in jail.

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(Originally posted Wednesday, March 26, 2008 )

Microsoft Office Paper Clip Help Wizard Wants To Help You

–*I see that you are writing a form letter. Can office wizard help you with the formatting of the letter or create a template for you?

–*I see that you are adding up a list of numbers. Can the help wizard add these numbers together for you at the end?

–*I see that you are writing a break-up letter to your girlfriend. Can Microsoft Help Wizard come up with any strong sentiments that you would like to share? Perhaps you would like the wizard to tell her that it takes two people to fail in a relationship, and that sometimes it’s best not to cast blame but for both of you to live up to your responsibilities in the termination of the relationship. Perhaps you are mad that she cheated. If so, Microsoft Office Wizard can tell her in no uncertain terms that you would never consider taking her back. From there we could decide whether maturity is in order: One polite response could be that she violated a fundamental trust, a bargain that both of you entered as mature adults into an emotional transaction. Or perhaps stronger language is needed. Perhaps you would like to call her a conniving whore or slut bag, a fiendish twat who hasn’t the self-esteem or wisdom to be faithful to you.

–*Microsoft Office Wizard sees that you are the one who cheated. Perhaps you would like to tell your girlfriend that you are not good enough for her. Or that it was only a one night stand, nothing to get her panties in a twist about. If she just had a little more self-confidence, she’d know that, and so wouldn’t it be a shame if she let her insecurity destroy the relationship all because you made one little mistake. A mistake that you are genetically hard-wired to make by the way, so why can’t she just get over it?

–*Microsoft Office Composition Wizard believes that you are putting too many adjectives in this breakup letter and using too much passive voice. Perhaps you would like the Office Wizard to write the letter for you, using such active phrases as “I’m ending it.” “You don’t deserve me,” or “You fucked that douchebag Hector.”

–*Microsoft Office Composition Wizard thinks that some of your sentiments expressed in the break-up letter are of the whiny, thumb-sucking variety. For instance, instead of saying, “Well, it’s just me now. On my own. I can’t trust anybody,” we suggest that you say “I’m looking forward to this period of separation, as it will allow me to better focus on my own personal needs and rely less on another person for my own inner strength and happiness, a tendency which puts undue stress on the relationship.” If this sentiment is unsatisfactory, Microsoft Office Wizard suggests you supplant it with the phrase, “I don’t need you, I can fuck anyone I want.”

–*Microsoft Office Wizard suggests that you use fewer astrology references, such as, “You’re a water sign and I’m a fire sign, and so we were doomed from the start.” You will inexorably find yourself embarrassed by such sentiments 10 years down the line, and the letter’s recipient will no doubt show the letter to people you both know to belittle you and insult your intelligence. Instead, Microsoft Office suggests that you say “Our relationship was doomed, in many ways, by a lack of shared values and goals.” This will have the right amount of clinical distance to allow you to acquit yourself with dignity intact.

–*Microsoft Office sees that you are threatening to tell all your mutual acquaintances that your girlfriend was on the anti-depressant Wellbutrin. The Paper Clip Wizard strongly recommends against this sort of emotional blackmail if you yourself are vulnerable to any attack for easily exposed flaws such as excessive flatulence, large girth, gambling habits, uncontrollable masturbation five times a day, illegal drug use or any time spent in a local municipal psychiatric ward. Also, check to see that the trade name for Wellbutrin has not changed for patent protection reasons.

–*Microsoft Office sees that you are writing a rebound letter to your old fuck buddy Susan. The Office Wizard strongly recommends that you first do research to see if Susan is not married or has not perhaps found her way back to the church. A little time and distance might have put Susan in a different perspective about a loveless and purely sexual relationship, which she might have come to find demeaning or even detrimental to her fragile self image. It is recommended that you ask Susan what her current hobbies and interests are and let her make the first move, perhaps with such playful signals as “I haven’t had a good lay in ages.”

–*Microsoft Office Wizard sees that you are typing a suicide letter. Though punctuation and proper grammar hardly matter at this point, the Paper Clip Wizard would recommend that you leave the letter with your driver’s license and passport (if applicable) in a clearly visible place on your bed or next to your body so that the police will know immediately how to locate the next of kin or an emergency contact.

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