War Is Language : 101 Short Works (9781937316044) Page 8
56 — Glory-Seeking Adulator
Dear Fake Advice Columnist,
Why should anyone listen to you?
Dear Glory-seeking Adulator,
What memories you inspire! Once at night, during a passionate summer romance when my lover held his wet, naked body against my own in an earthen furrow among endless rows of grapevines on an Italian hillside, he asked me the same question.
58 — Hatemonger
Dear Fake Advice Columnist,
Sometimes I hate everything for no reason.
Dear Hatemonger,
Fear more the undoing night. Allow your mind to succumb to foot-stamping must-have-to-shoulds. Demand your every-which-way and now. Do not think about rocks in a river. Rage at them even if they’re just meditative. Do not begin to accept that if you were traveling downstream by boat, the rocks would be a constant threat to your vessel. But please—please—don’t dare consider the other view that if instead you were crossing that river on foot, there might be a way to use those exact same rocks to help traverse what could drown you.
15 — The Dumbass Solidarity Project: A Facebook Forum
Currently, the public school media political church system in America breeds a bunch of dumbasses who have virtually no ability to assimilate facts into opinion. Our critical thinking and reasoning skills have become dulled by self-indulgent modes of subjective punditry. It is my belief that anxiety can be diminished not so much by constant gratification alone but also the more an individual understands available facts in a context of informed opinion.
The dichotomies in our cultural conversation make it difficult for us to communicate as Americans. Leaders prey upon our collective inability to process information.
This forum is going to be a place where experts and dumbasses can intermingle safely in a respectful online forum so we can further the American conversations related to matters of public policy, religion, philosophy, finance, and ethics. Developing skills related to discussion, debate, and articulate delivery of information can help an individual gain a comfort level with his or her opinions and their assertion. We need to ask and answer questions of each other. We need to speak to those with whom we’d never interact.
It really means a lot that I'm not the only dumbass with an interest in the best use of logical fallacy, a malaise of generalized dismissal, and the condescending tone of sardonically saturated sarcasm for the purposes of winning at all costs in pretty much any earthly form of one-on-one rhetorical debate.
If you don't know whether you are a dumbass or an expert, don't worry about it. Everyone is welcome.
A FOLLOW-UP STATEMENT ISSUED TO THE DUMBASS SOLIDARITY PROJECT — REGARDING ITS IMMINENT DEMISE:
I just want to take a moment to say how vapid and meaningless the past few months have been for me.
90 — Cycle of Victimization
Dear Fake Advice Columnist,
I get victimized a lot. It’s okay, not that I like it, but I’m used to it. I grew up with it, married into it, divorced myself and got more of it, and can’t imagine any other way of approaching my life. It works really well. Right when I start to think maybe there’s a problem with the situation and muster the nerve to discuss it, the man I am with just tells me I’m crazy. I know he’s right.
So those liberated years went by: Rape. Domestic intimidation. Abuse. Control. Manipulation. Guilt. Shame. Screaming. No help except some pills. They’re supposed to fix what’s so obviously wrong with me. He doesn’t take pills. There’s nothing wrong with him.
I don't call the cops. My husband and my mother wouldn’t approve. But I’m sitting here on the floor in the kitchen, my forehead bleeding from where he beat me with the cordless.
I don’t really have a question because I don’t actually want to ask. I don’t have the courage anyway. But. I guess I’m just wondering if I should go to the hospital, or do you think maybe it’s better if I just take care of this head wound myself? I may even have some gauze and medical tape in the upstairs bathroom.
Dear Cycle of Victimization,
I wish I were a man so I could give you some better, more authoritative advice.
Still, good for you for not involving the authorities. Your socioeconomic status really doesn’t allow it. No one would understand. Cops are for poor people. Patrol cars shouldn’t come to your kind of neighborhood.
You don’t need my help or the cops’ help anyway. You know the drill. Totally cut yourself off from all honest human contact in an effort to save face. Do whatever you have to do to keep up that good front. Do something meaningless, disconnected, alienated, alone. Decorate baskets. Isolate if you can. Deny abject humiliation. Stop breathing so much all the time.
And, really, whatever the form, no matter how private you think this connection is, it’s safer for you to put this text away. Your current husband’s going to be so pissed off if he sees you reading the paper, or the book, or the e-reader, or the smart phone, or the computer screen, or the PDF print-out, or the HTML 5, the unsupported EPUB 3 or wherever it is that we can find a way to interact. Come on. Aren’t you scared? Even I’m terrorized. So don’t drag me all into the situation. I don’t want to be involved in this with you. The minute he walks in, he’s gonna know it’s about him.
59 — Detritus
Dear Fake Advice Columnist,
I love taking responsible action. The problem is I don’t really do anything and don’t really care. If you get this letter, someone took the wadded-up paper with one stupid hopeful sentence on it and mailed it to you for no good reason.
I can’t imagine any of my friends getting anything out of my trash unless I’m getting some kind of recycling lecture. So probably my question to you will just molder away in a landfill, expedited by a layer of decaying guacamole.
Yeah. That’s what’ll happen. My friends don’t take much initiative in real life. That’s where I live: real life. It’s got different rules than where you live. Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t even know if you’re going to be able to give me any helpful advice, because I mean, real people operate pretty differently than you do. They almost never do stuff like rescue important thoughts on paper. Either they aren’t around, or they don’t realize someone even had a personal moment of inspiration and then—embarrassed—threw away the evidence.
61 — Infantile
Dear Fake Advice Columnist,
Sometimes I hate authority. Especially that venture type with otherworldly hourglass figures and unbounded futures chalice aloft. I just cannot abide how they come right in wearing mirror sunglasses over unfulfilled hopes. Yes, sometimes I really want someone to just tell me what to do. But then when someone does, I always hate it. How can I resolve my overly-entitled American sense of infantilism?
Dear Infantile,
Never fear and listen up: I’m going to tell you what to do! I am in charge! And I’m really not willing to listen to anything you have to say, unless I get to thwart you and punish you and control you and become a dominant overbearing force in your life. I will shoot you down for no good reason and—if you know what’s good for you—you’ll thank me for it. Alternatively, like in the case that you make a point? I’ll dismiss you from my life summarily. All this talk of equality only goes so far. You’re of no use to me unless I can rely upon your servitude. So there is no reason to resolve anything between us diplomatically. Dependence is requisite if we’re to remain in contact.
35 — Breast Meat
Breast meat at about 138 degrees pulled from the bird and then mango chutney. Salt necessarily. And ice water—after the ice has melted completely. If I must be pursued, then with that kind of predatory playing-house romance eat steamed sweet carrots or pearl onions and garlic roasted with celebrity status. And if even further supplementation (wellness comes from vitamins) is necessary, fine, then I suppose sweet potato pie topped with pecans. All knees bent for writhing unconscious. If you are still not satisfied, and Lord, it seems you never are, then get up, go to the fridg
e, get the fries out, and eat them in their cold ketchup Styrofoam hangover corner. And then in the morning, if you happened to stay, bring the paring knife and the fruit rot back to the bed. Talk some on a flat-backed morning and pull the knife through; cut me off some sustaining pear petals. The skin chew-slips. And the fruit chew-slips. And you know that moment when four feet resist the floor? Linger there. Un-till fields, these horizons of childhood, these memories of the plains.
62 — Patriotic Anomaly
Dear Fake Advice Columnist,
I could not give a fuck about my country.
Dear Patriotic Anomaly,
But I think my worst offense was just being part of it all. I remember all this gungho bullshit. What I’ve done is learn how to balance myself on the tightrope. All this rah-rah sensationalism and hyperbole that was supposed to convince me and rile me up and scare me and make me stop thinking for myself.
And I remember thinking, "This is ridiculous." Because there I was in a foxhole in the rain. Not a real foxhole in a real war. But a pretend foxhole in a controlled environment. My glasses were fogged up. My Kevlar helmet kept tipping forward, which pushed my glasses down, and that pulled my hair since there was an elastic strap that kept my glasses on my face. I stood on two cinder blocks, trying to balance one on the other end to end, so that I would be tall enough to maintain my position in the foxhole (which was really a section of sewer conduit on its end driven six feet into the ground with gravel in the bottom), and my position consisted of balancing my chin on a plastic gun made by Mattel, leaning my hands on sandbags turned to concrete in the rain then sun then rain then cold solidification of what can no longer be molded, not falling asleep in the rain behind foggy lenses, and most importantly on exuding the general impression of seeming to give a shit.
63 — Wannabe
Dear Fake Advice Columnist,
Sometimes I pretend I’m stupid, because it’s cooler.
Dear Wannabe,
You’re stupid.
54 — Hammered
Dear Fake Advice Columnist,
Sometimes I get hammered and pick fights with people who are hammered too.
Dear Hammered,
In general, it's a good idea not to antagonize drunken strangers. (Especially not that guy.) Displacement can be misconstrued. When you find yourself commiserating with a mutually-petty drunken friend about the inability of the waitress to provide a replenished bowl of salty stale popcorn just within earshot of the thuggish bruiser who has long had a crush on the poor girl and won’t let her get past him without his insisting upon her opinion about his latest TROUTMASTER blog entry, try not to say something off-topic like, “Hey, Dickweed, move your fat ass."
64 — Meaningless Existence
Dear Fake Advice Columnist,
I’m one of them. I mean, I’m deathly afraid my friends won’t like me in a still shot of a place I don’t recognize. I’m in silver and plaid, sweating through harmonica music notes in a stadium crowded with wild abandon and 50,000 assigned seats. I’m a rebel. But I never do anything really too wrong. I would never wear paisley or jockey silks. I wouldn’t play any instrument with a reed after eighth grade. Maybe drums. Maybe the bass. I’m afraid of messing up my future, implicating my family, and drawing the friendly fire of morally relativist judgment. I don’t want the microphone. I don’t want to dust off home plate. I won’t wear a beret or eat oranges in public. I don’t mind talking about speedballs pitched for old trophies while someone else carries a tray balanced by beer bottles. Those aren’t Wiffle ball bats mounted on the wall, you know. Not any red rose in the snow, or computer-generated heart with starbursts next to a kitten angel mewing under its halo in the candlelight of a baby sucking an adult finger where a naked lady stares with longing eyes through two curled fingers toward the animated passion of bunnies, butterflies, and lovers beached in a valley where bashful hats bend down obscuring bow ties in a seizure of robotic choreography revelatory of no organic nature.
Dear Meaningless Existence,
You know I don’t have to be there for you if I don’t want to.
66 — Son
Dear Fake Advice Columnist,
I don’t know how to honor my father. He died, and so now I’m fucked because I can’t ask him. Do you have any ideas that will help me? I was hoping you could steer me towards a bunch of objective correlatives or something: maybe otherworldly hourglass figures with unbounded futures but unfulfilled hopes, green macaws, birthday cake and creamy fishnet venture chase clubs, spades, hearts with hated palm trees in a heated lawn in some little city in a big resurgent desert. What I’m looking for here is some way where I can honor him without having to do all the things he always told me to do. I need a way to make myself feel really good about everything without having to invest actual tradition in my life.
Dear Son,
Hopefully your father left you a really fancy antique car in his will. That’s what you’re going to need here. Yes. I see it. It's hard to say what’s an integral part of who anyone is. Hand me that clapper board. And go again but with more external bravado. In your case, the burnt orange 1974 MGB that may have meant everything to two generations of men, separated forever now by an eroding clock—death, really—with its resonant second hand in the night.
11 — Rubberband Ankles
I asked the advice of a writer. He said, “Take out the function words and work it over again.” So I went to my wardrobe and ripped the legs off my pants and tore the sleeves from a thousand shirts. Practical pockets full of change, of car keys and annoyance, useless slabs of fabric freed from duty, frayed out at the edges, dropped to the floor. Take out the function. Okay. So I’m left naked wearing a bit of embroidered appliqué thinking, “This can’t be right. Maybe he meant something different.”
68 — Doting Daddy
Dear Fake Advice Columnist,
My wife just had her first baby, and it’s obvious that she has no idea what she’s doing. When I’m out on the screened-in porch getting high with my buddies we talk about how she can’t even hold the thing right. I really want her not to fuck my kid up. Can you tell me how to set her straight?
Dear Doting Daddy,
Shut up! Don’t bother me right now! For the love of Christ. Can’t you see I’m busy? I’m staring at anxiety and dependency whipping up out of a chimney. I’m listening to a reconstructable street. There are men under the pavement, adjusting things. So if you ever want your wife to have a chance, cut her off the marketed-magazine-mothering-kryptonite. She does not need to know the effect of soft plastics leeching into liquids and forever damning unborn male genitalia.
There are no dragon kites to fly on the beach at this point. Just keep telling your wife she's doing it right, you’re doing it right, that you trust both her and yourself, and I am telling you, you'll be riding down the freeway waving that child out the sunroof, letting him cut fuses short and shoot bottle rockets at the tires of passing cars in no time!
And you’d better fucking listen to this: Teak furniture under redbud trees in spring does nothing to block out the woman walking with a cane, the garbage truck, the car with its hazard flashers on parked across the sidewalk in the neighbor’s driveway, the stolen stop sign, the sinkhole without an orange cone, the bus with no air-conditioning, the pedantic pedestrian response to a self-preserving cyclist on the sidewalk who doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks, the rapture (an apocryphal joke, you know), the panty lines of strangers, the one tiny scratch that will ruin a good piece of furniture, the steep loose-graveled hill-climbing ends of fire service roads in old-growth forests where lit matches should never get dropped, the bunker no one would actually build in the backyard (not for real), the broken cord on the blinds, the old toilet that uses too much water for any sensible, conscientious, person of sleepless social awareness.
69 — Boys Club Relic
Dear Fake Advice Columnist,
I was hoping to buy a t-shirt that expresses my worldview. But I don’t really have one.
I make minimum wage right now and am living at home. I go over to my friend’s house next door and help him when his truck isn’t running good. Sometimes I give my buddy fifty bucks if he’s out of work or something. But I don’t really know what I think about everything enough to get the right t-shirt.
Dear Boys Club Relic,
My grandmother is recovering from a hip replacement. This summer she needs someone to look after her and help out with getting the mail and groceries.
71 — Calm & Collected
Dear Fake Advice Columnist,
I’m recently divorced and find myself foundering in a wash of traditions that could have meant something if marriage, family, home, love, commitment, and tradition amounted to much in my personal experience. It’s Christmas Eve. We’re supposed to be hanging stockings for children who were never born. Is there some way that I can keep myself from going over to my ex-husband’s apartment and eviscerating him with a butcher knife?