Tuesday, August 13, 2013

On Wanting to Be a Writer, and Why it Might Not Work

I want to be a writer, because all writers are miserable. It would be better if my misery came as part of a territory.

But really, that's why. I want an excuse to be miserable. That's not morbid of me, because everyone is miserable in their own way. Writers can own it though, trademark misery as their own. Who wouldn't want that?

I think writers can own misery because they attempt something inherently impossible for a career. They attempt to convey the human experience in text. This can't be done, precisely because it is experience, and experience is only gathered by our senses. Reading, of course, is not a sense. A good writer may be able to trigger a reader's senses, but it remains secondhand. The goal of writing is an impossible thing, and writers bear the burden of trying it anyway, because they are desperate to be the owners misery.

Why the writer feels the need to convey their human experience (impossible) is a question whose answer far exceeds the faculties of my attempted logic. I only know that it is enjoyable, and impossible. Hence the misery.

Even right now, I am sitting here at 2:13 in the morning (reason enough for misery), and I am thinking how poorly I am currently conveying my "experience" as a "writer." And it holds no matter that I just said doing such a thing is impossible. It's a bit of paradoxical warfare, where my desire to be a writer is deeply embattled against my own writing. Hence the misery.

If all this is true, if the goal of writing is an intrinsic impossibility, it is quite obvious why, almost mathematically, the best writers are also the most miserable people. A really good writer gets very close to the impossibility of relaying human experience. Getting so close with so much effort, all the while realizing the futility of said effort, has got to be invariably miserable. Edgar Allen Poe, Virginia Woolfe, Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Jack London: all incredible writers. All incredibly miserable people. I want that.

Most of the writers above also had miserable upbringings. I will have to overcome this in order to become a great, miserable writer. I have had virtually no hardship, and I blame my parents for this. Thanks a lot mom and dad, for making my childhood so cozy and nice that I have no misery-fuel to use in my writing.

Of course, all this poses quite a challenge for the aspiring writer. I, for one, could not even figure out which words to capitalize in the title of this, not to mention account for the existential unfeasibility that underlines writing philosophy.

Also, there really are not any great writers named Jeremy. Don't immediately assign insignificance to this. It is a real trepidation. I fear that if my writing ever does approach prominence, it will rebound against a barrier that blocks all those with common, uninteresting names. Just consider the list of authors above. All such writers names. Is this why some writers use pen names? Was Edgar Allen Poe's real name Joe Smith? And would not his writing have been degrees more insignificant if it was? No one cares about a guy named Joe. Edgar, though, now that's a name.

This is what I feel about writers, and why I might not be able to be one.


Monday, August 12, 2013

Ducks Nationwide Furious at Teenage Girls










Ducks in lakes, streams, and public fountains far and wide are expressing disgust at the way they are being portrayed by teenage girls across the country. 

According to members of the duck community, most human females between the ages of 12 and 21 have at some point blatantly disrespected the entire waterfowl family by mushing their lips together and flattening their mouths in a way that hideously resembles the perpetual state of a duck bill.

"It's flat out rude," said a duck floating in a pond outside Omaha. "We can't help the way our bills are shaped. Would they make fun of a penguin's waddle? A baboon's butt?"

Ducks are unsure of the origin of "duck face," but have seen enough evidence to deduce that it runs rampant in groups of teenage girls, who apparently find the need to disfigure themselves in duck-like fashion in the company of other females, in "selfie" photographs, or while flaunting an askew peace sign.

"It's embarrassing," added one duck while covering its bill with its wing. "Is that what we look like?"

Some ducks are in fact becoming so self-conscious and ashamed that they are refusing to leave the water where they can hide their mockery of a mouth part under the surface. "Blurghle glughle glugh, blugh glurghle," stated one insecure drake.

Ducks are baffled that they are being ridiculed by earth's dominant species. "They already control our water sources, chase us off their lawns, and eat us," said a duck while munching on some grass, "and now they are making fun of the way we look? What did we ever do to them?"

"They draw us in with food then they mock us with revolting facial expressions," said a mother duck, watching in disgust as a group of adolescent humans fed her ducklings bread while continuously tormenting them with duck face.

Teenage girls are responding to allegations of what's being called "duckscrimination," maintaining that they only make a face that "kinda looks like a duck's face" because it "makes us look cute," and that they "don't really care what ducks think" because "YOLO."

"How do you respond to that?" inquired an incredulous mallard before flying off into the sunset.

Unconfirmed reports indicate a group of rogue ducks are attempting to retaliate against duck face by employing something called "bitchy resting face," an imitation of the expression of the average teenage human female. However, retaliation of the sort seems inevitable to fail, as ducks are allegedly way too cute to pull off such a look.