I Get Feedback

Here are some of the things I have been told since I posted the e-mail address and requested feedback:

Scarlet Rose of Bealton, Virginia calls my request for feedback an "I want praise" post. She goes on to say that, as someone who keeps an online journal, she is not egocentric and she never posts poetry online.

As if to prove Ms. Rose's point, I received a couple of compliments, both of which made me feel very good about myself. One from Kathy Blanchard said that what I wrote was smart and funny, but that she didn't care for the sex scene. I got a lot of remarks on the sex scene, most of them from people who were disgusted by it. I have no plans to post another sex scene, but I won't make any promises.

Concerning the question of why Sprite is only marketed to young black men, my sister Sarah wrote to tell me that she had heard from several people that black people like fruity drinks. I called her a racist.

With regards to the recent post about my pretentious book club, Nick Bognar of Los Angeles, California wanted to remind me of how when he and I were in college we played a game where we tried to think of titles for porno films based on the works of William Faulkner. Yes, Nick, I do remember that. I remember that your favorite was "The Mound and the Furry," while I preferred, "As I Lay Diane." Other names, such as "Go Down On Me, Moses," and "'Ho's for Ms. Emily," were less successful.

If you want to send me e-mail you may send it to quiltenthusiast@hotmail.com. I'm not certain that I will post future e-mails here though, as it makes me feel like a fucking loser with too much time on his hands.

The Most Pretentious Story Ever Told

After I post an entry in my journal, I typically re-read it a few times and make changes. Nobody probably notices, but in the week after it is first posted typos are fixed, jokes added, sentences rephrased. Just now I was re-reading an entry from several days ago, and added a joke about The Sound and the Fury. That's a pretentious joke to make, and it reminded me of the following story.

(This story does not show me in a flattering light. It will likely disgust and repel many of you, and I am fully aware that many who read this may never look on me sympathetically again. So let me try to balance the story with this statement- I haven't finished a novel in the last six months. Every time I pick a book up, I read three chapters and then get distracted by something else. Like Playstation 2 or the Daily Show.)

The summer after my freshman year of college I got together with two friends, Jocelyn and Brendan are their names, and decided to form a book club. This was not a book club in the usual sense, where a group of people all read the same book and get together to discuss it afterwards. Rather, this was a club that turned the reading of literature into a kind of sport. We would gather every so often at someone's house, frequently Jocelyn's, and then brag to each other about what each of us had finished since the last meeting, in an attempt to make the other members feel stupid. The person who most often came out on top was Brendan.

That year between early June and mid-August, my friend Brendan read thirty books of literary merit, if you include the Harry Potter books, which he did and we didn't. Brendan reads amazingly fast, and every time our club met he had finished not just one new book, but several. If I had finished One Hundred Years of Solitude, he had read The Crying of Lot 49 and The Tin Drum. If I came prepared to talk about Slaughterhouse 5, he had The Maltese Falcon, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and As I Lay Dying (which he apparently read in one night).

Sometime around July 4th, Jocelyn and I began to grow bitter, and by the middle of that month we had devised a plot against him. We decided to both read Anna Karenina, without him. We would then discuss it at one of our meetings, thereby humbling him.
Reading the book took a long time, and once it was read we were anxious to unveil our plot to the now nearly unbearable Brendan, who in the month that it took us to read Anna Karenina had finished In Cold Blood, Henderson the Rain King, A Widow for One Year, and The Dubliners, to name a few I can remember. When we did finally slam our books down on the table and laugh triumphantly in his face, it was only to have our victory spoiled by our own guilt. Watching a solitary tear roll down Brendan's cheek, I knew that I had betrayed a friend, and in the most ridiculous way possible.

I Can't Get Hitler Out of My Mind

Today at work I was preoccupied with picking a new staff recommendation. My last one was Chocolate Flava, the anthology of black erotica where I found that sex scene that I pirated several weeks back. When you recommend a book you write out a comment to be displayed on the shelf with the book. My comment for Chocolate Flava was, "Makes a great gift!"
I had a hard time choosing a new recommendation. Whenever I recommend one that I actually like, nobody ever buys it and my feelings are hurt. So I usually try to think of something funny to recommend, but today the ideas weren't coming.
Part of the problem is that I thought of a joke I liked but couldn't use. Every other book I thought of paled in comparison.
That book was Mein Kampf. Hypothetically, my comment would have been-
"Hitler was one of the great suspense writers of the 1920's, and this classic thriller will have you riveted from the first sentence. You won't be able to put it down!"
This of course would be wildly inappropriate. So I went with Flannery O'Connor and had done with it. In three weeks when I walk by the display and see the eight copies of A Good Man is Hard to Find still sitting on the shelf collecting dust, I'll be sorry.

Vanity Overcomes Me

When I first started my weblog I posted a disclaimer, saying briefly that it wouldn't be any good and that I didn't care if anyone read it. I wrote that I was writing for myself alone and that you could read it if you wanted but that you were unimportant to me.
That was all a bunch of horseshit. The fact that it is horseshit has become clear in a number of ways, and I will discuss them here now.
First, there are my two friends who refused to read it. Let's call them "Cara," and "Courtney." Both of them said that
1. Online journals are boring and
2. written by really egocentric people who think everyone cares about what they have to say even though they
3. don't write very well.
Each stated that they never read online journals as a rule, and that mine would be no exception. This made me crazy, and I kept talking about my online journal until "Courtney" gave in and read it ("Cara" is still holding firm).

Second, "Courtney," and some other people, have had some nice things to say about my weblog. What this has done to my self-esteem is extreme to the point of being weird.

Third, I have begun taking steps to allow feedback. First I tried to set up comments. This failed, and in the end I was glad that it did. Comments are all very well and good until you get some joker who starts writing about the most recent episode of CSI or George Carlin or something and I have no way to delete it.
So I went with a free site meter (You can see the logo for it displayed to the right), which allows me see how many people read what I write (currently about 10 people a day).
And most recently I have decided to put up an e-mail address so that anyone who wants to can e-mail me and tell me what they think. This way I can post the ones I like, and throw away the ones I don't.
So if you have something to say to me you can type it out and mail it to quiltenthusiast@hotmail.com. In fact I encourage you to. All e-mails will be responded to promptly, if not courteously.

More from That's Bullroar

As I promised here is the second story that I published on That's Bullroar.
For those who are interested, the site is still active, and you can check out all of the stories and essays there, many of which are hilarious.

The Parable of the Old Woman and the Carpenter

Jesus was in his carpentry shop one day, making a table, when an old woman from the village stormed into his shop. She huffed and puffed, her brow furrowed and her teeth bared. In her arms was a broken stool. She complained to him that his poor workmanship had been responsible for her husband's injury.
"You shellacked the thing too much, and when my Zechariah stood on it to hang a picture he slipped right off and broke his ass!"
But Jesus denied that the fault was his, saying, "Lady you're nuts. The problem is with your husband. You can't blame me for his clumsiness."
This enraged the old woman, who shrieked epithets and wondered aloud if the carpenter's work might improve if he focused on carpentry and stopped daydreaming about bizarre cults and religious rituals.
"Oh no you didn't, bitch!" said an equally enraged and decidedly sassy Jesus, snapping his fingers. "Get out of my store right now, before I do you like I did those money-changers."
And the woman stormed out saying, "I won't be coming back to this shithole, you can believe me."
And Jesus said unto her, "Good! You're going to burn in hell, you fucking douchebag!"


Jesus left his shop late that night. He had closed early, staying to meditate and pray. He prayed that God would give him strength to accomplish what he was set on Earth to do, that he would love his fellow man as fully as he was able, and not give into petty and vulgar displays as he had earlier with the old woman. He knew that he had behaved badly, that however rude the woman might have been he had no right to call her a fucking douchebag. He repented his sin, and experienced doubt about his own divine perfection.
He also spent some time thinking about a hot girl who he kept seeing at the local well.
Returning home, he ate a simple meal of lentil soup and bread, leftovers from his parents' dinner. He played gin with his Dad for a while before turning in. His sleep was uneasy, for he knew he had displeased his heavenly father. As he tossed and turned, Jesus vowed to make things right.

In the morning when Jesus got to his shop he was met by an angry mob, one of whom threw a rotten egg at him, missing by a wide margin and hitting the window of a restaurant across the street.
And Jesus spoke to the mob, saying "My brothers and sisters, what is the problem?"
The old woman surged to the front of the crowd. "You are a cheat! Your faulty stool injured my husband. You denied your responsibility and called me obscene names, and now you wonder what the problem is?"
Angry murmurs and cheers of approval came from the crowd.
But Jesus spoke to her calmly and soothingly: "I was wrong to say those things to you sister, but I do believe my stool was not at fault. Let us come to some arrangement.'
"Shove your arrangement, and a curse on your pigs, may they grow antlers and develop dyberticulitis," said the woman.
And the mob rose up around her, yelling and holding signs that read "Jesus = Worst Carpenter Ever" and, "Make better stools, not love!" They moved towards Jesus, pushing him away from his shop and preparing to stone him. But at that moment the clouds parted and a voice came from heaven:

"This is my son. He is an excellent carpenter and his prices are very reasonable."

And the crowd was ashamed, and they put down their signs and knelt before Jesus. And he said, "No brothers and sisters, do not kneel. Rather, come in side and look at my merchandise. Like God says, it is well-crafted and reasonably priced."
And so they did, and with all the money he made that day, Jesus was able to shut down his father's carpentry shop and wander through Judea looking for followers and preaching the word. And so it was that through the intervention of an influential parent Jesus was not only able to avoid being stoned, but find fulfillment doing a job he liked. And he and his disciples lived happily ever after.

A Few Words About Race

This weblog is not only concerned with frivolous things like quilts and graphic sex scenes with important members of the government, it is also concerned with the important issues of our day. Today's post will be a frank and earnest discussion of race relations in America, and I will focus this discussion around two important questions.

1.) As far as the whole "portraying black people in a positive light" thing goes, didn't the Cosby Show sometimes get a little silly?
I'm not saying they shouldn't have portrayed black people positively, but I think they could have sometimes done a better job making their positive portrayals of black people fit in with the story. For example, the other day I watched an entire episode about how Denise wouldn't lend Vanessa a sweater, and then for some reason in the last two minutes of the show the whole family gathered around the television to watch the "I have a dream" speech. What did that have to do with the sweater? Or Vanessa's problem with studying? Or Cliff's winning a tub of popcorn from Claire in a bet, only to have her eat it when he fell asleep in the movie theater? I'd have liked it if they could have integrated the last two minutes more with the other twenty-three. Perhaps Denise and Vanessa could have argued over the value of non-violent protest instead of a sweater? Or perhaps Cliff could have fallen asleep watching the "I have a dream" speech, and Claire could have eaten his popcorn then. It's called craftsmanship, and I don't think it's too much to ask. (Thinking about it, I realize that The Cosby Show did that a lot, tacking on two minute scenes at the end that had little or nothing to do with the rest of the episode. Those scenes were normally about Cliff and Claire getting it on, or dancing to jazz music, or engaging in some other married behavior, so I guess superfluous Martin Luther King is better than superfluous old people sex.)

2.) Why is Sprite marketed to young black men almost exclusively?
Consider Sprite's current ad campaign, featuring a puppet with an afro (This is not the first such commercial. I distinctly remember another commercial, this one for sneakers, that was targeted at young black men and involved a puppet. Do young black men like puppetry? How do they feel about the Muppets?). This puppet is shown interacting primarily with young black men, who are usually asking the puppet questions about why it likes Sprite so much. The puppet explains why, and usually throws in some joke about also enjoying girls with large bottoms. This kind of ad seems to be clearly targeted at young black men. Why? Is lemon-lime soda popular with young black men? I have known a few in my day, and I don't remember them drinking it much. Why isn't Coke marketed to young black men? Or for that matter Toyota Corollas?
I wish more products were marketed exclusively to black people. Hopefully someday we will live to see commercials where little black puppets with afros will be used to sell cars and prescription drugs, as well as lemon-lime soft drinks and sneakers.

The Demise of That's Bullroar.com

Until recently my friend Nick had a website called ThatsBullroar.com, where he would post humorous essays and stories written by his friends. Several weeks ago, after a less enthusiastic response than he had hoped for, he decided that he no longer wished to continue. I for one am sad to see it go, partly for selfish reasons. On the one hand, I hate to see my friend give up on something that he has put a lot of time and effort into, something that he once held high hopes for. On the other, more selfish hand, I submitted several stories to That's Bullroar, a couple of which he published, and both of which are now unpublished in any form.
Not wishing to see my work entirely gone from the internet, I have decided to put both stories that I wrote for him here in my online journal. I'll reprint the first today, and the second will follow later in the week.

Beauty and Kevin

After Beauty kissed the Beast, and he stopped being a Beast completely, she was faced with the problem of what to call him. She had grown used to calling him Beast, and would have been happy to go on calling him that forever had he agreed to it. But Beast did not agree to it. He hated any reminder of his hairier days, and at the mention of his old name he would blush and go all quiet. One night in the heat of passion she had called out his old name and he had stormed out of the room. For both their sakes, she decided to call him Kevin.

One spring morning as Beauty and Kevin were walking in one of the many gardens surrounding their castle and came upon an elderly beggar woman. She was very sick, and though Kevin wanted to let the servants take care of her, Beauty insisted on nursing the woman herself. They took her in, and Beauty bathed the woman, afterwards bandaging her many sores. They were large sores, oozing with a strange blue pus, but Beauty would not allow her altruism to be overcome by mere pus, which is, after all, merely the body’s way of fighting infection. Pus or no pus, she bandaged on.
She took sole charge of the woman’s health, allowing none of the servants to even set foot inside of the sick room. Everyday she bathed the woman and changed her bandages. Everyday she fed her hot tomato soup and read to her from one of the many books in Kevin’s library. One day as she came to the end of Daphnis and Chloe, the old lady at last succumbed to her strange illness.
Beauty was much upset by her failure as a nurse, and particularly disappointed that the woman had never achieved sufficient consciousness to explain herself, who she was and how she had contracted her dreadful disease. Unable to unlock the mystery of the old woman’s origin or save her from her illness, Beauty set about preparing the funeral. The woman was interred in the garden where Beauty had first discovered her, with Beauty, Kevin, and ten of their servants in attendance, the others remaining in the castle to prepare the reception. Beauty herself gave the eulogy, which was brief but heartfelt, and they sang Amazing Grace, which always made Beauty cry. At the reception there were watercress sandwiches and punch. Beauty felt a sense of peace, knowing that she had done all that was within her power to help another of God’s creatures.

**********

Soon afterwards, Beauty noticed spots of coarse dark hair growing on the backs of her hands. At first she waxed these hairs, but as time passed and they grew thicker, covered more of her skin, wax became too painful. A day after she stopped the wax treatment Kevin, who always liked nice smooth skin, realized that something was afoot.
“Baby, what is going on with your back? And damn, your legs too. You stop shaving?”
Beauty confessed everything to him, about the thick hair and the wax treatment that had grown too painful to continue. She told him of the burden her beauty placed on her, a burden already difficult to shoulder with smooth skin, and nearly impossible with a hairy back.
“What if I can’t make it go away? If I have to go through life as a freakish hairy woman I’ll just die, I know it!” she told him.
Kevin vowed to do everything in his power to help her, as she had helped first him and then the old beggar woman. Not out of a sense of obligation, but out of deep love and concern he sent word the next day to every doctor in the land, asking for any news of blue pus, or instances of sudden and unexpected hairiness.
Every doctor in the land was bewildered.
“Blue pus, eh? That’s very odd. Let’s try bleeding her. Sherry, get my leeches, stat.”
“Covered in hair, huh? Have you tried waxing? It really is thick, isn’t it. Gross.”
“Have you given any thought to a veterinarian?”
Meanwhile, Beauty began to notice more changes. Her muscles began developing at an astonishing rate, the sinews bulging from beneath her skin. Almost overnight she acquired tremendous strength, and once while playfully scampering in the orchard with Kevin knocked him unconscious with a thrown apple. Her senses grew sharper. High-pitched noises sent her into fits from which the servants would all flee for fear of their mistress’s new claws, and she began greeting people with a sniff of their crotch. She developed a taste for raw meat, and sometimes when eating it would make unlady-like guttural noises in the back of her throat. By August she had doubled in size, and was eating an entire cow every day, half for lunch and the leftovers for dinner.
One early September day, after every doctor in the land had failed to improve or even diagnose Beauty’s affliction, Kevin, after first finishing his lunch in the dining room, went out to the stables to have a talk with Beauty, who was just sitting down to her midday meal.
“Baby, I am sorry, but this is not working.” Beauty, unable to hear him over the noises of her own feeding, continued her assault on the cow.
“Beauty, sweetie, I can’t take this,” Kevin shouted, “We’re gonna have to split up.”
Beauty looked up from the carcass bewildered, a length of entrail still hanging from her furry mouth. “Come again?” she grunted.
“I’m sorry, baby. I mean, I love you and everything, but I can’t stay married to someone who is not human. I’m young and good-looking. And I need to think of my line, you know? I can still find a nice human girl and have human kids. Our kids would be all furry and shit.”
“But I’m still the same person,” bellowed Beauty, “I fell in love with you when you were a monster, because I knew that beauty was only skin deep and that inside you were a special person!”
“Right. And since I am special, don’t I deserve a wife without ticks? Who I can eat dinner with and not feel nauseous? Who isn’t going to bare me little werewolf babies? Be practical. You know I like a petite woman with a slender waist and wide hips. Do you want me to stay with a big, muscley she-bear? Do you want me to be unhappy? Let’s be fair, baby.”
So, broken-hearted, she left the castle to live in the nearby woods. At first it was a lonesome existence, but as the days wore on she began to forget Kevin. Alone in the forest she slowly grew to be content, preying on deer, rabbits, and the occasional lost child, she found true happiness. She took pleasure in simple things- baying at the moon, the looks of terror on the faces of travelers as she jumped upon them, lying on a rock and basking in the sun after lunch. One day she met a bear and mated with him. She bore four cubs, all mostly bear, and proved to be a good mother. Several years later when, her cubs grown, she was killed by a group of hunters and mounted on a tavern wall, she had no regrets. She had lived a good life.