We are Family

[curt]

We don't need another / a new discussion to prove it.

It is as it is.

Let this "fred" (discussion thread) live under the theme .......

long live this family

brothers, sisters, brethern, dogs, cats and birds, ants and flees, water and air and gas and Clare and Jim and him and the window Simm (??) and you and me and he and she and we and them and us and puss (???) and fish and the dish (it's on) and paper and pen.

Yip.

[pan]

At one of my previous Unis the guy who chaired my search had "Dr. (His name)" on his mailbox - his PhD was in Dance (not that I am putting down my discipline but....really).  One time he insisted that we carpool with him to the city to see a dance company.  When we got there (very early) all he wanted to do was drink with the chair of his dissertation committee and ask her "am I as good as you now?"

 

He invited her to be guest artist - she gave thoroughly embarrassing lecture-demonstration where she claimed that, because baroque music had embellishments and improvisation and Jazz has embellishments and improvisation the French, clearly, invented Jazz.  Unfortunately there were no Brothers of Islam in the audience and I was trying to get tenure so all that happened was quite a few raised eyebrows and whispered asides.

 

During the week residency she and my Dr. colleague got into a thing of saying "Have I told you today what a brilliant artist you are?"  Again....hard to not react in revulsion.

 

Dr. Dance saw how well the students responded to me and Ms. Medusa and - since it must be because we didn't require the titular and asked the students to refer to us by our first names.  So he tried to get them to refer to him as Dr. Firstname - didn't happen.

 

Anyway....on the way back from the Dance Concert he was repeating again and again how he couldn't get over the fact that my incoming pay scale with "only" an MA and MFA and 20 years of professional experience was higher than his was with an ABD.  Ms. Medusa - tired of this crap and more than a little defensive of some idiot attempting to put me down - said, "All that PhD means is that you had a bigger jar of Vaseline than we did".

 

That kind of sealed the deal at that Uni.......and we wonder why we have trouble.

[hannah j]

no wonder i dropped out.  i could see the future and i was poisoned by an academic.

[waldopaper]

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate "sports?" 

I really hate fucking "sports."  And the jock-itch-annoying "Mr. Fish" has managed to describe my life almost exactly: 

And there’s Stephen King in an Alfa Romeo, speeding along the Gulf of Mexico and, miraculously, not sitting alone and unshaven in a dilapidated trailer in Fort Wayne, Ind., spreading marshmallow fluff on a Pop Tart and wishing that he knowed how to work a hammer or sumthin’.

Well, I got a "theory" for YOU Mr. rolly-polly dickhead, and here it is:  "sports" is the same commodified spread-fluff as yer chocolate-charley glitter-wank spetter-load-on-the-keys.  We used to PLAY "sports."  We had local leagues and nobody really gave a shit if anybody forgot the fucking bat or not.  It was the lovin' of the GAME.  And it's just a fucking GAME.  PLAY.  game.  fun.  see?  Same deal with "art," and if ya kin handle it-- "philosophy" and "religion" too. 

If y'all wanna be one of the banjo-lipped genetic mutants wearing korporat-logo klown kloze chasing a ball around on some giant flat plasma-screen teevee while the working-girls bring the slobbering masses their beerz... and they slurp the calf-drool and bawl at the flat-screen without even thinking about the cosmic oral swirl between a puffy and a pokey waking up with one-in-yer-eye..well... fucking GO for it.  The solid-gold truth is: nobody gives a corn in gramma's turd if you have read Nietzsche or Camus or any of them highfalutin Greeks...or not. 

The real deal is dribblin behind the garage while nobody's around and swishin a 30-footer that nobody will ever see.  For some reason, the super-hero wannabes can't wrap their fucking brains around that.  Hey- I know Fish- that YOU prolly know- writing an anti-rejection letter is the ULTIMATE jerk-off.  You know that, right?  Thing is... we ALL do it... but ya wouldn't want yer wife or onea yer kids to walk in on ya while yer at it.  "If ya can't sell it-what good is it" is worse than the scrum around a floater that radiates like rainbow-grease in the flush-bowl.  WHO wants to even THINK about that SHIT? 

Well... side note... apparently the folk at the UNI who reached their over-saturation of "Sports Management" majors that haven't asked me back thought I talked like a sausage.  So since ya dribble-dripped out yer own Portnoy wank, Mr. Fish. here's mine:  all my life i doodled cartoonz on cocktail napkins in bars.  It was a game.  It was fun.  It was "sporrts,"  and I HATE fucking "sports."  I fully expected thm to end-up in the trash and didn't fucking care.  Now, in one restaraunt, I went to look for a sweet young thing who worked in the kitchen- and LO- my napkins on the bulletin board! 

Know what?  She married me and we reproduced and right now she's on her way to NYC with our daughter to see Book of Morman... so compared to THAT... they can push all their Stoopid-Bowl rings up they fuckin plasma-screen mutant sphincters. Plus- I would wipe me dripping-butt with the "Pulitzer Prize for Literature."  I think I won the heart of a beautiful girl. 

But that's just me own "personal perspective," isn't it? 

And hey- I REALLY fucking HATE "sports." 

 

 

[pan]

Anymore, I'm really happy if I get an actual rejection letter in the mail. Mostly it seems that my applications just go into the vast void.

 

Ms. Medusa and I applied at the same time for a summer institute where you get to work for free and have Robert Wilson steal your ideas for his next big production while landscaping his upstate institute.  She got the email form rejection "don't reply, don't ask, we can't provide specifics because we are just too fucking busy".  I got nothing......three weeks later I wrote and got a personalized rejection that claimed that mine was sent at the same time.

 

Invisible.    We were hiking in Italy and Ms. Medusa blurted out, "Invisible".   "Huh?"  "That's your meme for this year - your invisibility".

 

I am big, loud, opinionated, talented, intelligent and......mostly invisible. 

 

[hannah j]

been invisible since i stopped being luscious.

[littleoldme]

So Waldo....how bout them Yankees?!!!!

 

Sorry, Sweety, couldn't resist.

[Cal]

So pleased to hear someone else actually hates 'sports' ... doing stuff for fun & exercize is great.  But the whole competitive prima donna 'sports' cult thing is an icon of mindlessness to me.  One exception to that ... my TV gets turned on once a year to watch the Comrades Marathon between Durban & Pietermaritzburg.

 

Invisibility crept up on me too after the 'lusciousl bit past.  I rather enjoy it these days.  You get to sneak up on people in their terribly 'real' worlds & surprise the crap out of them when they're least expecting it.  Now that is 'sport'!

[BO]

Writers do tend to be a little self-rightious and aloof. But Mr. Fish's article did have a few funny bits in it. Gotta give him credit forthat.

Waldo, ya have one too many grandma turd metaphors in your rant. The second one was just a bit too descriptive. 

So sweet, sweet, Waldo, are you going to post yer rant as a reply to Mr. Fish's article? You should. I always enjoy the responses from folks who are exposed to the Waldopaper perspective for the very first time.

 

[Cal]

Hah ... so that is what Waldo was ranting about.  I thought it was just about sports and then I got directed to the Mr Fish article by an enormous coincidence by an email from a friend of mine.  I'd never heard of Mr Fish before ... must say I found him quite funny.  I don't think he was getting at guys like you Waldo - you are after all not riding in a sports car through Paris with the warm wind in your hair.  And your stuff got you the worthwhile things in life.  Sounds like it's the verbal diarhhea (need a dictnry to check that spelling!) of the candy floss brigade he's on about.

 

[BO]

Cal, don't forget to duck at about 9:30 a.m. on monday. I wonder if you'll get a view of this...

http://www.space.com/12067-asteroid-2011-md-close-earth-flyby-june-...

The cosmos is throwing rotten apples at us.

[Cal]

Maybe the Mayans were out by sicx months or so & Monday is the day we get to say "So long & thanks for all the fish".  The passing over will be late afternoon here - not likely to be visible.  Pity - once I had the privilege of 'tripping' out in the bush one night in the middle of a meteor shower.  That was breathlessly spectacular.

 

This site is always an education.  Waldo's got me thinking about the clever Mr Fish ... he is probably descended from the literary giants who broke my heart at age nine by banning Enid Blyton from our local library .... before I'd finished reading the entire Magic Faraway Tree series.

 

 

[hannah j]

i have to know why they banned enid blyton!!!