A Moment of Butt, Butt Complete; or, Gotta love gtranslate

So, I am taking a creative writing class... in Hebrew. Really, I want to just be taking a Hebrew class in Hebrew, but the only level that was even vaguely appropriate for me that fit into my schedule this semester was creative writing, so here I am. It's too hard for me, but only juuuuust... so I'm hanging on by my much-bitten fingernails. Anyway, this morning I wrote my homework assignment without benefit of dictionaries and things, so I did my best offline and sat down just now to correct and fix all the errors I made, now that I can look up the correct spellings and words for things I didn't get quite right. I started by dumping the whole thing into Google translate. Here's the result, without any corrections or adjustments at all. Far more amusing than the story I intended...

It all started with a shovel, as things start. First, just me my home, walking on the street, think my thoughts, listen to my music. I was happy with the weather passed, that knows that winter was coming, but has not yet arrived. When the car stopped by, I barely glanced over my shoulder, but something caught my eye. How old is this child, who was driving the car? Ten? Twenty ending? When looked at him, I found out there were looking at me. Then the truck came. The driver of the truck was leaning on his horn, but the child can not go because now there were three other cars at the intersection.

It got noisy when the bus came, because it was called just as the policeman came to the horse from the other direction. All Hteirim Nissho got off time, with your cameras. The guide contains a cliff them to stay on the bus but they did not Hcshibo. He was totally Afktibi. The policeman blew his whistle but tourists continued to approach the horse, taking pictures all the time with their phones and cameras. Finally, the officer had enough. He dismounted and walked into the plug. He blew his whistle again and yelled, very loudly, everyone freeze! There was a moment of butt, butt complete, then the horse whinnied and galloped rebellion road. People were screaming and crying infant will contain. I turned just in time to see two men get out of their cars, cursing each other, and prepare for battle. Something's cellphone rang, and a woman called Stop! Everybody stop! My daughter, my daughter! "

All the confusion, no one noticed the little girl that migrated into the movement, a few steps behind the little yellow ball of fluff. She was totally concentrated Duckling probably get separated from the others at the park in the corner. Leet approached the girl, and she raised her hands gently platypus. She smiled the biggest smile in the world. Everyone returned to their cars, the girl took the duck safely on a new face and her mother raised her. Traffic flow back to normal and I continued my trip.

I'm sick in bed, and on my fifth "just one more" episode of Californication. Thanks, JJD.

OG: What's your latest obsession?

Hank: Just the fact that people seem to be getting dumber and dumber. You know, I mean we have all this amazing technology and yet computers have turned into basically four figure wank machines. The internet was supposed to set us free, democratize us, but all it's really given us is Howard Dean's aborted candidacy and 24 hour a day access to kiddie porn. People... they don't write anymore, they blog. Instead of talking, they text, no punctuation, no grammar: LOL this and LMFAO that. You know, it just seems to me it's just a bunch of stupid people pseudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people at a proto- language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King's English.

OG: Yet you're part of the problem, I mean you're out there blogging with the best of them.

Hank: Hence my self-loathing.

Ok, well, it's TIED with egg salad. For now.

Yup. My most-commented-on posting to date was something I wholesale copied from another website, without adding any commentary at all. I fixed some typos (of course) and made a slightly self-deprecating title (of course), and y'all commented more on that than on ANYTHING ELSE I'VE WRITTEN.

love you too.
xoxo
rdb

On Not Writing

What English-language poet has not at times rebelled against a language in which the suffix -s makes a noun plural and a verb singular? ---W H Auden

So, as I've mentioned before, people around me seem to think I'm meant to be a Writer. I myself haven't really believed this since around about the 6th grade, but at least a few of my friends are convinced I will someday write novels and lots of other people are always asking, "Do you write?" with an unmistakable tone of "You idiot, why aren't you Writing?"

Also as I've mentioned before, I recently went to see Ann Patchett, author of the fantastic memoir Truth & Beauty and the lovely novel Bel Canto, read from her new book Run. The reading part was great, but the Q&A that followed was even better, and one of the best bits was the story about this extremely humbling conversation she had with her stepson on the day she had completed both writing her latest novel and reading one by Henry James. "Oh, you finished the new book, that's cool," the son remarked. Then, "Wow!! You finished the James? That's great! Congratulations! What did you think?!" and on in this breathless excitement.

Why did the former accomplishment garner such lukewarm praise, such a muted response in comparison to the latter? "Consider how many people have read all of Wings of the Dove compared to how many have written a book," he told her. She had to admit he was right; in a way, it was a larger accomplishment to have been the consumer than the producer. In this instance, the consumers, the readers, were a far more elite group.

Smiling ruefully over this anecdote later that night is when I first happened on the snarky and wonderful 101 Reasons To Stop Writing. Messages from the universe, gentle reader?

Well, but then I post a nothing post about *not* posting in response to someone messaging me "why don't you write in your blog anymore" and I immediately get five comments urging me to keep writing. Mixed messages from the universe, then, my five gentle readers.

Close to home, so to speak.

Sitting in my cafe (admit it it's a bagel place) (but I don't eat bagels) (it's called "NY Bagel & Cafe". It's a cafe! They serve coffee!) (but I don't drink coffee) on Van Nuys Blvd, reading A Year in Van Nuys by Sandra Tsing Loh. I can't get my bluetooth keyboard (hand-me-down) to connect to my fancy Treo (hand-me-down), so I take out my notebook to write in, as usual. I read the following line (p198):

"I am not even packing a (crutch of the literati/crack cocaine of the chronically self-involved) Writing Journal."

Wow. Ouch. Wow.
And this:

"How about your friend Jolene?" Ben shoots back. "The Blocked Novelist/actress/lyricist/playwright/whatever. Maybe she should move to New York."
"Actually," I say, "Jolene originally came from New York--or perhaps the word is fled."
"And now she lives in Santa Monica. Practically rent-free."
"Exactly. A musical based on Los Angeles bohemian life would be called not Rent but Rent Control."

Wait a minute. I originally came from New York. My apartment is under rent control. Wow. Ouch.

Oh God, now this. Page 215. I actually clasp my hand over my mouth when I read this, here in the cafe bagel place on Van Nuys. She rants on and on about the life of a writer and how it is drudgery and not romantic and absolutely soul-sucking and ends with:

"Do you guys hear me? I've had purer 'highs' off paying my bills with Quicken!"
"'Quicken!' they murmur. Apparently they like Quicken too."

WOW. OUCH. RDB, this is your life. A quick look at statistics from the past six months or so of my journal, in which I write nightly (see "chronically self-involved", above) -

Number of instances of the word sex: 2

Number of instances of the word Quicken: 19

i might have written a poem yesterday.

There was a time before you.
There was a time before me.
There once was a time before cars and microwaves and iPods.
There was, hard as it is to believe, a time before Diet Coke.
There was a time before smog, a time before cities, a time before Big Oil.
There was a time before you.
There was a time before me.
There was, and I remember it, a time before honey-mustard dressing.
There was a time before.
There was a time.
There was.

fiction?

So, a friend of mine is convinced, or claims to be, that I’ll write a couple of novels some day, within in the next ten years or something. Supposedly I’ve just been gathering material so far and I’ll be ready to start soon, at which point some other things in my life will come together as well. I always tell him that I write every day, which is true; I write every night before bed, in my journal, at least a little bit about the day that’s just ended and often a little about what I expect or hope for in the following one. But that’s writing for myself, he says. I need to start writing for other people. Aren’t successful artists of all stripes always saying that you need to practice the art for yourself alone?

About what would I possibly write, if not the trivialities (vagaries?) about my day? I have no idea. I’m not about to write non-biographical non-fiction, that’s clear. Am I to write about my own life in a thinly disguised sort of way? Am I to write essays, memoirs? Is that really different from what I already do? And did I just sneeze all over my monitor? I think I’m getting a cold.

I admit that I’ve had an interesting life. Probably not interesting on the Grand Scale of Interesting; I’ve never been molested or lived in exotic places or shot a man or overcome great and unique obstacles. It’s more the combination of things I’ve done in my life that seems interesting to me: sure, plenty of people went to work for start-up companies during the internet boom of the 90s and traveled to Europe to lecture to heads of multinational and multimillion dollar companies… and plenty of people teach kids to dance. It’s just unusual that one person has made her living doing both of these things by age 28, like I have.

I’ve lived in four states: New York, Florida, Massachusetts, and California.

I’ve been to 14 (16?) countries outside the US: Mexico, Canada, Venezuela, Poland, Israel, France, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Germany, Russia, Norway, Turkey, Belize, Honduras (Roatán, not mainland), and maybe the Netherlands if you count a few hours on St Maarten, and maybe the Bahamas if you count a day on Princess Cay. (Hell, I was once in the Austrian airport, but that *definitely* doesn't count.)

I’ve studied two languages besides English: Spanish and Hebrew, and I’m fluent in neither of those.

I’ve been in a four-year relationship, a five-year one, and a few months-long ones, including an eight-month one. Only one was truly bad.

I read a lot, I dance a lot, and I spend a lot of time alone. I’m not very good at making phone calls, or returning them.

I am beginning to think that I do an inordinate amount of physical exercise, possibly to compensate for the truly inordinate amount of food I eat.