Category — Writing

Things that I’ve been doing lately instead of maintaining the blog:

Hand-crafting metallic flowers with my lobster claw

Reading stuff

Writing stuff, old-school, with my new writin’ pen–have exhausted 1.5 ink cartridges and 1 full notebook’s worth of material

Listening to stuff

Watching stuff–couldn’t turn away while watching this last night. Oliver Stone’s version is so embarrassing now that you look back on it, isn’t it?

Avoiding stuff

Attempting to fix stuff (and failing, I might add–anyone know basic html stuff?)

Sipping stuff

And there’s probably more, but you get the idea…

1. Hash Taggsworth (I’d been trying, for the 800th time, to read Pynchon)
2. Gil Martin
3. Bill Garten (not from same story as Gil Martin)
4. Tolbert Ullrichson (this was going to be a neo-Scandinavian saga)
5. Larry “Fog” Masters
6. Bill Jenkins… It was at this point that I realized I’d hit creative rock bottom. Bill Jenkins, on name alone, is completely uninteresting. But not even in an ironically uninteresting/everyman kind of way. If a character’s name is any kind of window into the author that created him, then you would know that my well was dry. If any of you out there can write an interesting story starring Bill Jenkins, please do so. If it makes it into the New Yorker, I expect to be invited to the party celebrating your literary stardom. Bill. Jenkins…

So I saw that Roy E. Disney died today, which reminded me of the Roy E. Disney creative writing fellowship at Pomona College–it’s like a million-dollar job teaching creative writing and other stuff to rich, smart kids. David Foster Wallace was the first Roy E. Disney fellow at Pomona College (R.E.D.’s alma mater). Since David Foster Wallace killed himself a couple of years ago, I was curious who the R.E.D. person was now, only to find that the position is vacant. In the job description, I found that among the qualifications they’re seeking for the fellowship position is:

Strong secondary field(s) desirable, including (but not limited to) considerations of race, sexuality, performance, geo-humoralism, and political theology.

Geo-humoralism? Political theology? I looked up “geo-humoralism,” and learned that it has nothing to do with humor, morals, or late-80s GM cars. Turns out “geo-humoralism” is:

a racialist concept propounded in Renaissance Europe. Briefly, it “held that variations in topography and climate produced variations in national characteristics”

I stopped there, and decided not even Google “political theology.” So here are my own made-up disciplines:

• Farkleomatic Theory: A gaming concept of frustrating proportions related to the tossing of dice and the scoring of said dice in such a way as to avoid a “farkle;” originated in Facebook
• Toplet0filmic-topography: The in-depth examination of Russ Meyer films, especially those cast members who may appear topless throughout
• Capncrunchological Studies: The intake of sugared cereals while on the couch watching cartoons, usually done in various states of near-nudity