Sometimes...

Greetings before valedictions, y’all. Your resident flaneur here, quill inked, prepared to melt your precious time into alloyed slag.

For my next trick, I’ll best Hemingway’s saddest ever six-word story.

To do:

FedLoan

Divorce papers

Rogaine?

And now, introducing my newest segment:

Sometimes…

Sometimes, when alone, I hold my pee, just so I have something to hold.

Some people hate-watch certain shows. Sometimes, I’ll hate-watch, despite warnings not to look into the mirror on acid.

Sometimes, when in public, rocking my Latrell Sprewell jersey, I feel like a lenticular woman in a sundress; i.e. every heteronormative male and their mom be tryna holla at me. #endstreetharassment

Sometimes, I try to go to sleep at a decent family hour, but my roommate laces with coffee beans the bread he bakes, so instead I stay up writing this blog, excavating my gums of Colombian chunks, gnawing at phantom molars, ululating my sleeplessness deep into the Harlem night. To retaliate, I plan on packing peanut butter crackers with his next lunch. Who’s laughing now? That’s right, both of us.

Things That Are Bullshit:

Google Maps’ lack of effort in Harlem. Observe for yourself the fruits of a Foot Locker search:

Notice the picture of an AT&T store. Listed as a McDonald's. Shame on you, Google, for your classist bullshit. 

Derivative market speculation is another thing that's bullshit. I’d generously call it capitalistic high-stakes gambling, except big losses always get bailed out – so more like not risking money with a rewind button. Derivative speculation: bullshit.

For that matter, the American publication market’s bowdlerization of creative writing: bullshit. Over the past twenty years, since the dawn of the internet, there’s been a shrinkage of linguistic and structural range within big-market fiction and creative nonfiction, in fear of alienating readers who would never buy such books anyway, and therefore aren’t part of this, yes, big market, or else why would half my OKCupid perusals list anything between Anne Carson and Middlesex as a favorite? This literary paring down to a commercial core comes at a time when dictionaries are as accessible as ever – as in, click here, enter word, stop stopwatch at 4.23 seconds. It also comes at a time when the same publishing house that printed Infinite Jest – in small fraction a parable of limitless entertainment’s dangers (e.g. the internet) – wouldn’t touch such a tome with a two-penny red pen. Alas, the vast majority of the most existentially striated, sometimes experimental, yet always nuanced and risk-taking books are being marginalized to indie presses because big publishers have turned into literary fascists (see: bowdlerization…dude just click here (insert), enter word, deduce my meaning). This however makes sense, is to be expected of the moneygrubbers, the suits, and isn’t all bad considering those of the literati still have a place to turn for their fiction needs. And in some ways you see improvements: like Chad Harbach’s ten-year project, The Art of Fielding, which began as a postmodern project a la the mode of Infinite Jest, but over time consolidated into a beautiful traditional narrative. But, mainly, it’s a sad culling of quality fiction, the main problems being: a) many non-literati members also read nuanced or risky books (and more would if they were still marketed), and b) when our generation’s top-selling literary novelist has become the bigwig market’s most effective shill, then you go from Franzen’s The Corrections to his Purity – a bit of a fascisty regression, no? For further incredibly depressing evidence of the inhabitable literary climate for nuanced/risky books, read about what it took to publish Sergio De La Pava's masterpiece, A Naked Singularity (that’s right, no link, because it’s not even on Wikipedia, and I need to go to sleep so find it yourself). Post-Corrections Jonathan Franzen: bullshit. Commoditized bowdlerization of the human condition: bullshit.

SHOUTS OUT TO MY REGRETS:

SHOUTS OUT to Ray Lyman, easily this generation’s greatest revolutionary.

SHOUTS OUT to George...George? I know you’re in here, George. You too, Len Allergy.

SHOUTS OUT to Katie Rainey, victim to this other late-night chuckler, who arrogated what should rightfully have been her Twitter handle, cleaned of middling initials. Fuck him and that fawning mule he pets.  See, George? I'm not defaming you. Just others.