Fred Wemyss

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The Passive-Aggressive Blow It Off
I've been trying to come up with funny variations on the title of Flannery O'Connor's short story, "The Violent Bear It Away."
Here's what I've come up with:
The Violent Blow It Away
The Passive-Aggressive Blow It Off
The Passive Bear a Grudge Against It
or
The Violent Bear.

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I have been dieting. True to the spirit of all blogs, I'm unembarrassed to tell you this very personal thing: I have deliberately lost twenty-five pounds in the last month!
I'm not drinking any milk. I occasionally have a little cheese on the salad I get at my local Panera. I eat chicken, peppers, fish, small slices of roast beef, small quantities of raisins, little handfuls of potato chips, lots of tomatoes, multiple celery stalks and many-a sliced pickle.

High Concept
[Here's my recent IMDB review of the 1940 classic, MY LITTLE CHICKADEE. I gave the movie 7 stars out of 10 -- Fred]

"High Concept"

I believe that, some time in the 1970's, more than thirty years after MY LITTLE CHICKADEE was made, the term "high concept" was coined. So, starting in the seventies, a lot of movies with sure-fire ideas became the trend. ("What?", someone, circa 1990 might say, "Arnold Schwarzenegger is being teamed with Danny DeVito? Why, that must be hilarious!") So, clearly, somebody thought the idea of W.C. Fields and Mae West sharing the silver screen would work, and MY LITTLE CHICKADEE remains the ultimate example of both the pitfalls and the merits of High Concept movie-making. Fields and West, both iconic figures, were actually so similar that the audience's loyalties are torn. We watch a West picture to observe Mae West turn the tables on men and we watch a Fields picture to watch Fields flout authority. When Fields and West meet and appear to like each other (he wanting sex and she wanting money) we love them both. Fields gets off one of his most memorable lines as he holds her fingers up to his lips and says, "What symmetrical digits.") She, in turn, throws her false submission at him, letting us know between the lines that she's a woman of steel. So far, so good. Their romance is viewed suspiciously by a character actress who is the perfect foil for both of them: Margaret Hamilton, who, of course, played the Wicked Witch of the West the year before in THE WIZARD OF OZ. Fields and West are married aboard the train by West's con-man friend -- hence, they are not really being married -- and this actor is also the sort of figure who belongs in a movie with either Fields or West. But let's cut to the chase. Both Fields and West have separate moments for the rest of the movie and each of these moments is somewhat minimal. West's scene teaching a classroom of overgrown adolescents seems to be a whitewashing of a bawdy routine from her stage days. It almost makes it. Fields's various encounters with gamblers and a female drunk (who HAS to be Celeste Holm, uncredited, as someone else on this board has noted) are promising, but somehow never really engaging. Thinking about this movie, nevertheless, brings a smile to the face. There are so many little things which, popping into the memory, are funny, that it has to be acknowledged that MY LITTLE CHICKADEE achieved its goal: driving into our minds the idea of the harmony of two comics who'd made audiences howl with laughter in live performance twenty years earlier. It should also be said that the ideal audience for MY LITTLE CHICKADEE is an audience in a darkened movie theatre. Ideally, the year should be the year it was made and the audience should be made up of people who've been anticipating this pairing and would be more than willing to hoot throughout. Has anybody got a time machine?

Loose Carpet
by Frederick Wemyss

Sidney was descending the stairs. He wasn't doing it the way he would have when he was sixteen or seventeen, skipping two steps at a time and finally bounding to the floor in a leap from the third last step, but, even taking one step at a time, he was going fast. On the second last step, one he would have been soaring over at sixteen, he slipped on the carpet, which had a loose nail, and fell backwards.

A Story For Throwing Away
by Frederick Wemyss

A cat, skinny but purrfect, if you will, proceeded on its pillowy pads down the dusty cement walk. A young man in a flat hat smirked

My Review of LANGUAGE, TRUTH AND POETRY
by Frederick Wemyss

This book, written by Graham Dunstan Martin, was assigned to my Semiotics class in my junior year of college. There were five of us in the class, not counting our professor, an eloquent man in his eighties. The professor's name was Rodolfe Louis Hebert, the college was Roger Williams College (which since has become a University, thanks to its magnificent Architecture department) and we didn't understand the book. It's the only book I've ever highlighted. I did this at the strong suggestion of Dr. Hebert, who felt we should mark the passages we felt needed explanation. I marked half the book in green magic marker. I didn't read the rest.
I relate all this because Dr. Hebert had had to drive to New York City, a good four hours away from our Bristol, Rhode Island greensward, to obtain our books. He'd ordered them from our college bookstore and the delays were a source of anxiety for the octogenarian. He'd had a tough year before. Some Quislings from his Introduction to Philosophy course had reported to the dean that he'd given a pop quiz. This quiz, which had no affect on the grades he was going to give the urchins at semester's end (which, as every semester, were uniformly high) was the cause of an instance of reprimand from the administration. Roger Williams College had lured Rodolfe Hebert from a far more prestigious institution and this was his punishment for being the don they'd desired. I took a Latin course from him as well, which had the same five students as the Semiotics course. None of us had been among the revolutionary band who'd exposed him as a giver of quizzes. My memories of LANGUAGE, TRUTH AND POETRY have to do not with the semiotics which it discussed and which I didn't and still don't understand, but with Rodolfe Louis Hebert, the snow-haired, portly man in the final season of his life, driving through a New England winter to obtain a book for five misfit students who worshipped him but couldn't compete with his intellect.

P. G. Wodehouse's LAUGHING GAS; Fred's April 3rd Diet
I'm rather fond of a review I just wrote tonight and posted on Goodreads. I've often tried to describe what it is I find so funny about Wodehouse. I think, perhaps, I've cracked it:

Frederick Wemyss's review of LAUGHING GAS, by P. G. Wodehouse

This is Wodehouse at his peak, which means it was written in the mid-1930's. (1936, to be precise.) In that decade, he wrote the two funniest Bertie Wooster novels (RIGHT-HO, JEEVES and THE CODE OF THE WOOSTERS), and also UNCLE FRED IN THE SPRINGTIME. Some of the Emsworth novels were penned in the thirties (or typed. Wodehouse was a typer. He'd type a few pages one day, pin them to the wall and the next morning, make corrections, then type a few more pages and put those on the wall.) He was in his fifties. He'd been a published writer since 1906, writing, roughly speaking, a novel a year. After about twenty years of being a professional writer (with a serious involvement in the development musical comedy) this workmanlike author began to write with incredible polish. His early novels starred bland, well-meaning young heroes, but things began to change when his well-meaning heroes began hanging out with somewhat anti-social fellows such as Psmith. Psmith was a caricature of a Socialist, and, inasmuch as Wodehouse was, in no way, political, Psmith fell away and, by the 1930's, had turned into the aristocratic, middle-aged fun-maker, Uncle Fred. Uncle Fred's persona is not that far from that of Fred Astaire: He was dashing, a tad mischievous and something of a matchmaker. But Wodehouse's genius came out in the novels (as opposed to the stories) narrated by Bertie Wooster. Bertie Wooster trumps any other character in Wodehouse, because he complains. The Bertie Wooster books are hilarious because the slapstick is narrated by a lazy young heir who has no idea that he's smarter than anybody else. No criticism I've ever read of Wodehouse champions Bertie's powers of observation. He feels put-upon and is perpetually wriggling out of wedding engagements he hasn't instigated. By the three-quarter mark of any Bertie novel, he is in a total panic over his situation and, by the end, his almost supernatural butler, Jeeves, manipulates Bertie's environment in a beneficial way. In these novels, bland heroes play only a tertiary role. (One of Bertie's friends always gets to marry the girl of his choice in the last few pages, and Bertie gets to have a nice breakfast on a veranda with a newspaper brought by Jeeves. Jeeves always wins a concession from Bertie after the major story is over. I think in one book, Jeeves manages to toss out Bertie's loud socks without Bertie, who treasures the socks, risking an objection.)
Anyway, LAUGHING GAS is almost as good as a Bertie Wooster book. It's from Wodehouse's great phase.

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On Thursday, April 3rd, 2008, I had two hard-boiled eggs without the yokes, four grapes and a cup of tea, with nothing in it, for breakfast. For lunch, I had tea with nothing in it, a chicken taco with cilantro but no cheese and a bag of potato chips smaller than the palm of my hand. I had a banana for dessert. After work I had another tea with nothing added, two stalks of broccoli and a can of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup. I'm on my third cup of plain tea since this last meal.

My New Diet, Day Three
...Today (by which I mean April 2nd, even though I'm typing this in the wee hours of April's third day), I went to the diner across from my workplace and had Caesar salad with chicken strips and croutons. A thin veneer of mayonnaise seemed to be on the leaves of lettuce, which was fine with me. There were no anchovies that I could perceive and I am grateful for that. I didn't ask that they NOT be included, but I've often encountered anchovies in Caesar salad and been put off. I think Caesar salad isn't actually Caesar salad if it lacks anchovies, but I feel the absence of anchovies automatically improves any Caesar salad.
...(If you're wondering about the fact that ellipses are in front of my paragraphs, it's because I've decided to MAKE Livejournal give my my paragraphs at least SOMETHING of the look of being indented. I may abandon the practice if the ellipses cause an inordinate amount of nervousness.) I had tea as an accompinment to the Caesar salad. I drained my glass of water before exiting the diner. At work I had two cups of tea and a Fiji Water.
...When I got home I had two thin slices of roast beef, a foot long hot dog and several stalks of broccoli. I'm on my third cup of tea since coming home.
...I tried to determine how many calories I've had today by doing a Google search on "Calories." I found a chart and concluded I've had about a thousand calories. I checked out a nutritionist's webpage after that and saw that the nutritionist says that someone my weight will start losing weight if he or she takes in about 1,750 calories a day. She warns that if dieters have only a thousand calories a day the body will react as if being starved.
...I'm not sure I want to keep using ellipses at the start of my paragraphs.

Lactose Impermeable!
On March 31st I did something drastic: I ingested no milk-based products.
On April 1st I fooled myself by going a second day in a row without milk in anything I ate.
I had, in that minus-milk time, none of my usual staples: Chocolate; coffee, light (which is coffee with a lot of milk); and mocha cake.
Yesterday I had chicken strips with peppers and rice and some lentil soup. If lentil soup has milk in it, it doesn't matter because the number of calories listed on the can indicated to me that, if the soup and the rice, peppers and chicken were everything I ate that day, I'd be getting less than a thousand calories. Just to be careful, I had no rice today. I had some slices of roast beef, some chicken and broccoli with cauliflower. I also had escarole leek soup. Both days I had lots of tea with nothing in it. Tonight I actually had bottled water.
My plan isn't to lose weight. It's to finally not have to roll the cuffs of my pants to keep them from scuffing the floor. So I need a stomach which doesn't cause my pants to slide down.

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Here is a link which is currently appearing on Google's homepage. It's Virgin/Atlantic's questionnaire for people who wish to populate Mars. It's the cleverest ad I've seen in a long time, especially because it is not technically an ad. The fact that the link appears just below the "Google" logo is quite unusual:

http://www.google.com/virgle/index.html

The Weakling's Sacrifice
They had him by the arms and legs. One man held the right wrist, another the left, a third the right ankle and a fourth man held the left. They swung him back and forth. "One, two, three."

He did not say anything. He simply hoped he'd land past the fire.

"Four," the onlookers shouted.

They let him go. He felt himself drifting lopsidedly. He knew he'd land away from the fire but he remembered a clam rake sticking up. He landed on a bush and got up carefully, expecting to be stabbed by a broken branch. He stood still. He was in bare feet.

"Fascinating," said the sociologist, who was peering through the fence. "Survival of the Fittest doesn't apply here. The victim is walking away."

The sociologist's assistant stopped massaging the sociologist's shoulders. "He's walking away because you paid them."

"I didn't pay them enough to cause them to cease their playing. They have decided this isn't fair play."

The victim stepped into the shadows, walked past the side of the house and made it to the street.

About the Transfer
Hiss from the source (source-hiss) is detectable if one listens for what comes from the source (the audience that night) but if one isn't paying an inordinate amount of attention, it slips past the ears. The original acetates were put through a film projector, twice forwards and twice backwards, to the accompaniment of "The Stripper." A missing sprocket caused drop-out in the right-hand conduit every three-hundred-and-seventy units. To compensate, milliseconds of Jerry Lewis screaming "La-a-ady" were substituted.
A delay on the Northeastern Corridor caused updrop in the left-hand component, inflicting pain.
Fly-paper was put in the waffle-iron, but before Mom came back, it was handed to the Federal Reserve Bank, which punted it to Bear Stearns. Real maple syrup is a dollar fifty extra.
Additional meddling was committed at the Record Plant.
All songs produced by the producers except the hit, which was produced by the genius.

An Entry In a Notebook
I wrote this in a notebook yesterday:

I bought the least pretentious notebook I could find. I'm writing in it now. It's too small, but it was cheap. It has undyed, cardboard covers. There's an elastic band designed to keep it closed. What wind would blow it open where I go?

Pink
More certain than ever, now, that before I die I shall leave no mark of creativity, I find I must turn to the relating of memories. This, then, is the first installment of a series of little descriptions of things I have experienced.
I think I was about four when this happened. If I was four, this was in 1964, or perhaps, early in 1965. I might have been slightly younger. I might even have been five. But I was not six, because this happened in New York, and we moved to Long Island more than six months before my sixth birthday. This memory involves Paneen, a woman who babysat me. I can still hear her singing the fade-out to a song on "The Singing Nun" LP. It was an LP often played in our apartment at 425 Riverside Drive, or, if my memory is wrong about that, in the apartment of our close friends, a family which mirrored ours, several floors up. Paneen babysat there, too. She sometimes babysat the children of both families at the same time. I seem to remember her wearing a white uniform. Sometimes other babysitters in white uniforms came around, but Paneen seemed to care about me. I first started talking around her, and spoke with her Haitian accent.
Paneen took me to the grocery store where we always went. Most of the times I was there it was my mother who'd taken me. My brother Bob would be there. I was the youngest of three. The eldest was Frank. On days when my mother took me to the grocery store, Bob and I would say hello to Harry, the vegetable man. He'd be standing in the sawdust in his apron. He was bald. What hair he had was on the sides of his head. He looked like Larry from THE THREE STOOGES. Because he was bald I was always confused by the fact that he was called "Harry." We pronounced it "Hairy." I literally thought he was called Harry because whoever'd started calling him that was pointing out that he was hairy. But he was bald, except for the little bit at the sides of his head. He always had a pencil behind his ear.
Paneen took me to the grocery that day. It was about two and a half blocks away. It was up a hill. When I went with my mother and my brother or with my mother and both my brothers I always lagged behind. They'd say "Hurry up" and I'd have to run. I could never catch up, because they went very fast. But Paneen had me by the hand as we walked. When we got inside, she said I should stay by her side and not go anywhere. I saw Harry and waved.
"How come you're called Hairy?" I said. "You're not Hairy." Paneen took me by the hand again. I wanted Animal Crackers. Every time I saw Animal Crackers I pointed to the box and said, "I want Animal Crackers." Paneen usually didn't yield to this. Once she got Pepsi from a machine for me, but as I was carrying the bottle I let it drop and it broke. I cried. Paneen wouldn't get another. Paneen let go of my hand finally, after I'd stopped saying "I want Animal Crackers." I began to walk away.
"Don't go where I can't see you," said Paneen.
I said "Hello, Hairy," to Harry again, but he ignored me. I walked around. Paneen was looking at something. I slid my feet in the sawdust. I slid my feet through more sawdust until I was at the front door. It was open, because it was sunny outside. I went outside. I stood in front of the store looking at the cars and the people. I walked to the edge of the sidewalk. I stood between a parked car and a metal pole. The sun was bright but the wind was cold. An old lady in a thick, black coat was walking along. She was mumbling. She saw me and came toward me. She came closer. I saw a big, black button on her big black coat. She was going to walk right into me. I put my arms in front of me.
There she was on the ground, her bag spilling on the sidewalk. A woman gasped. Harry ran out of the grocery store and put his arms under the lady's arms, to help her up. The woman who'd gasped pointed at me. Another woman pointed at me.
Harry said something to me.
Paneen came out. Harry pointed at me. Paneen took me by the hand and held it very tight as we went down the hill toward Riverside Drive.
We went in the door of the apartment building.She held my hand tight as we went up the elevator to the fourth floor. She still held my hand as she got the keys from her purse and unlocked the door to 4-G.
When the door closed behind us she walked me to the edge of the hall where it met the living room. She let go of my hand. I was about to walk into the living room, but she said, "Stand here." She put her hands on my shoulders and put my back against the wall. She looked at me. She slapped me once across the face. She continued looking at me. "Go to your room," she said.
I went to my room and sat on the bed. Paneen continued the project she'd been working on before we'd left for the grocery store. I heard her draining the sink.
I stayed in the room a long time. When she called to me I went to the kitchen. "What's your mamma going to say?" she said. She took a pair of white socks from the basket. "They have big pink spots," said Paneen. She held up some underwear. "I always make them pink," she said. Her smile was as big as the living room as she took the items she'd been washing and held them up, one by one. "Pink, pink, pink," she said.
When my mother came home Paneen showed her the pink laundry. Inasmuch as Paneen was a babsitter, my mother couldn't object that the laundry she'd asked her to do was ruined. Paneen never mentioned the little old lady. I never mentioned the slap.

Three A. M. Phone Call
Mrs. Clinton: Hello?
Mr. Obama: Hello?
Ralph Nader: It's Three A. M. Do you know where your voters are?

The Littlest Reactionary
The Last Epistle of Fred The Reactionary To His Cousin Boland
by Frederick Wemyss

Here is a letter I wrote to a relative of mine who was sixty-eight years old at the time. I was fourteen.

Friday, November 15th, 1974

Dear Cousin Boland,

I'm terribly sorry I didn't write to you sooner. It's been about three months since I last took my typewriter in hand to write you. So sorry.

But you see, I was busy contemplating constant sense of boredom and sleepiness in my classes. The teachers at my great Junior High School (actually I'm a freshman in high school in the same old building) seem to think all of us ninth graders are lost. They are continuously struggling to make us speak our minds. They give us little tippers, too, like "Are you having problems with your parents, kids?" They seem to like that. "How many of you are having experiences with alcohol?" is a favorite. Just about every teacher is trying to turn our brains on their "stomachs."

The following are two lists. One is a list of classes where we don't have to "Communicate." The other is one of communication classes.

Where we don't:

Spanish
Math
Science
Gym

Where we do:

English
Health
Communication Arts
Social Studies

Well, this shows at least half my teachers are doing this to us.

My English teacher says, "English isn't just books and spelling, it's communication"

My Health teacher says, "Health isn't just learning about diseases from books and the teacher; it's expressing and knowing yourself."

My Social Studies teacher says, "Social Studies isn't just knowing what happened before you were born, it's getting to know your classmates and yourself."

My Communication Arts teacher says, "Shut up! Let's communicate! Shut Up."

I have had this all year so far. I came to school in the beginning, eager to discuss the issues in my classrooms (one of the reasons I signed up for Communication Arts) and have since found that my teachers are a bunch of people who forgot to rebel in the sixties. They believe they have sailed the boat, but they misunderstand. They're clinging to life- preservers (from the Titanic!)

Besides all this they seem to be anti-book. Because when they were taught the teachers were so strict and textbooky, they have done the reverse. They keep hounding us with, "This class is what YOU make it," and "You should learn from each other." This sounds decent and wise, but that is ALL of what we've been getting. Throughout, my teachers have sat back and said, "Class, do your stuff."

They want us to tell all to them. But they have forgotten peer pressure. Do you remember the embarrassment of having to read an excerpt from a textbook in front of the class? Well, we have to ad lib, which is worse. We have no books. Textbooks ARE lousy, they're part of the reason the school system has changed so much. But there are hundreds of books by good, knowledgeable authors, who like to write. My old textbooks were written by fellows who were approached by congregations of principals to write books. They sighed heavily and wrote books in two weeks. I have read some of the most condescending writing ever to be published. In fifth grade, while I was reading WINNIE-THE-POOH, I had to read an excerpt of a "Stories To Enjoy" book out loud. I was bored by it, and didn't pay attention to what I read. It was so poorly written. So I stuttered. The teacher put me in the lower reading group, and had me do exercises from BE A BETTER READER for the rest of the year. On my own, I read DOCTOR DOLITTLE, WINNIE-THE-POOH, and some Mythology. I still got constant seventies on my BE A BETTER READER questions. But before we need to be Better Readers, we need Better Writers. I have a feeling our textbooks were chosen by Upper-Middle-Class H&R Block men. (Are there H&R Block branches in Chicaga? You've had gangsters, you might as well have taxmen.)

I just wish I could show my fifth grade teacher all my Dickens and Orwell books. (She'll probably die before I take over "The New Yorker.")

I have sidetracked greatly. Let's see. In Communication Arts, we spend the time planning what to do the rest of the year. We also talk about what we don't like about school.

All these teachers are trying to give us counseling. They have been driving into our brains the knowledge of the self. Once I really liked myself. Then in the beginning of this year, I was just plain used to myself. And now, I hate myself. All because of my teachers' psychology.

See what Freud did?

Orwell could have done strings of essays and books on it.

Angrily,

Your cousin

Fred

(The Youngest.)
________________________________________________________________________________________

MARCH 3RD, 2008:

Some quick notes about the letter above. After my signature I put the words "The Youngest" in parentheses. I did that in every letter I sent to Cousin Boland. When I was ten or eleven he sent my brothers and me each a Ben Franklin fifty-cent piece. That was the first time I'd ever heard of Cousin Boland. I sent a thank you note. He replied that, henceforth, he would be my pen-pal. He sent me illegible letters, and I sent typewritten replies, each one signed "Your cousin Fred (The Youngest)." Each letter he sent contained a rare coin or two. The envelopes were tan and sealed in gray masking tape. He died shortly after I sent this letter. (I killed P.G. Wodehouse, too, by sending him a fan letter. I got a reply and an autographed picture. I wrote a thank you note saying, "Sorry to take time away from your writing." Wodehouse died the next week.)
Cousin Boland was my grandmother's nephew. He was the Chicago Parks Commissioner at some point. (If this is a family myth, may I never have been born in Manhattan.) Notice that, in the letter, I spelled "Chicago" with an "a" at the end. It was stuff like that that alienated me from lots of people my own age. I hope Cousin Boland, at sixty-eight, dismissed it as a misspelling. But I was trying to be chummy.
There was one letter of his which I was able to decipher. At the time I couldn't, but last year I got the stack of letters down and had a look through them. The letter I was able to read straight through was a reply to my complaint about the kids who yelled at me in gym class. Boland related that, in the sandlot in Chicago, the pitcher was mocking him. "Frederick," wrote Cousin Boland, "I spat tobacco juice in the eye of that wise-blood!"
I hope he saved a last coin to give to Charon for his passage across the Styx. I'm sure he went higher up, though.

Scott Heim's New Book
Here's the link to Goodreads.com's page on the new novel by Scott Heim, WE DISAPPEAR:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1286453.We_Disappear_A_Novel

It was just released yesterday, February 26th.

Scott wrote MYSTERIOUS SKIN and IN AWE.

His novels are works of poetry.

I'm going to hear him read at the Barnes and Noble in Chelsea on March 11th.

Check out his seamless webpage:

http://heim.etherweave.com

A Sarcastic Kid
Unearthing my papers, I have found a school assignment from when I was twelve or thirteen. The title, instructions and the five sample sentences were written by the teacher. The answers (which can be found in quotation marks) were mine:

Changing basket words to pointers

Rewrite each of the following sentences, changing most of the words to more descriptive ones. Then add more pointer words of your own to make the reader really SEE what is in your mind. Your sentences should be about two lines long.

1) The bird flew over the building.
"The white dove streamed over the graffitied school-building.

2) The book fell to the floor.
"The children's novel toppled to the waxed floor."

3) She went to the country last summer.
"Gloria drove to the valleys and mountains last summer vacation."

4) The girl ate dinner.
"The fat girl wolfed down her soggy cream of mushroom soup."

5) The boy hit him.
"The skinny boy brutally punched the garbage man."

Livejournal readers will notice I didn't make each sentence two lines long. I still don't know how "The bird flew over the building" could be changed to two sentences. (Note written about twenty minutes after posting this: I've just realized the word "lines" does not mean "sentences." I was supposed to make each sentence two lines long. I still think that's too hard to do.)

A Line I Started Writing Two Days Ago
[Just a minute ago, I tried to post an entry. But, I noticed Livejournal was asking me the following question: "Restore stored draft?" I hadn't remembered shelving a draft of anything. Sometimes my computer crashes, causing the loss of writing I was just about to post. I imagine this happened the last time I tried to post something on Livejournal. I can't remember. I have more important things to panic me, such as the thought that I have to get up early tomorrow to sign for a package from Federal Express my brother is having delivered. But, curiosity got me, so I pressed a key allowing Livejournal to restore the lost draft. So, here's the thing I wrote]:

He stood, brushing his teeth

[That was it! The Subject line was going to be "A Bad Book." Livejournal really did lose that subject line. Subject Lines are trivial to Livejournal. But not to me. Subject Lines are often much more worthwhile than the actual entries.]

Staples To The Left
Every single cover of THE NEW YORKER magazine has had a left-hand border. The upper and lower edges do not have borders, nor does the right-hand edge have a border.
I've never read about this. I sense the idea started because the editors didn't want staples marring the images. If staples had to poke holes through the covers, it might have well have been through solid swatches of color.
Have a look at the next NEW YORKER you see. You'll see the border.

Best Spam Ever
I haven't posted an email subject line in a while, because it's like quoting an idiot all the time. But some of the time, it's pretty funny!
This was the subject line for an email sent by someone called, simply, "yule":

"Bigger copulation organ in 3 weeks"

Widowed Couch and Other Stuff From When I Looked Forward to Breathing
Here are three things I wrote as a teen. I've left the grammar as it was, and haven't changed the spelling errors. I've re-punctuated some things for clarity, but not all things. Comments in brackets have been written in the full flush of adulthood.

[Here is a letter I wrote to my eighth grade English teacher. I was thirteen. I don't know if I sent it to her or not. I do think it was the sort of thing she was trying to get us to write]:

Mrs. _____ 1/25/'74

I feel I must clear my name. My last letter was not meant to be seriously regarded.

First of all, my appearance is NOT deliberate. I will sum up the real reasons I end up that way: I wear penny loafers because I don't feel the modern shoes they've developed look right on me--I don't like them. My top button is buttoned because when I first had a button shirt, I was dumb, and used the top button, and I did this for a few years without realizing that no one else liked it. Then, I suppose, my neck grew into the collar size (top buttons usually choke people), and if I didn't have it buttoned my neck felt cold. And now, if someone tries and tries to get me to unbutton it, (sometimes by force,) I keep it buttoned, maybe for the same reason the Japanese war mongers wouldn't give up the fight after the first atom-bomb was dropped on them. (Nice of us.) I don't wear blue-jeans because of a hidden fear of teachers scolding me for not wearing school-pants.

Most about my opinion of sports is true. But the fact that if I feel sorry for the other team I fumble something up, is untrue, I'd just like to. I do, however, bumble things anyway, because I'm not highly co-ordinated.

I AM a happy loner.

About the non-conformisies--I am not a true non-conformist, and I don't like to aggravate people, unless they've deliberately aggravated me or someone else for no reason. I don't attend religious gatherings because my parents never took me to them. This does make me an agnostic.--My mother was born a baptist, my father an episcopalian, together they became basically Atheistic, leaving me nowhere to go. I will attend Limbo when I die. My hair was shortish because I liked it, and it's the way it is now, because I've not bothered to have it cut. I listen to 78's for historical value. I read Pogo and Doonesbury because I think they're funny, and I go to bed late because during the T.V. prime time hours I am eating and starting on reports due the next day. I like the 11:o'clock CBS news because they are liberally biast, and can escape with it. (The sports reporter is biast against managers of teams. He is funny.) The 6ix o'clock report isn't very biast (even the sports reporter, who's on both the newses) because little old ladies watch.

About my way of speaking--I really don't normally do it. It COULD be because I'm afraid of people in schools. I AM a paranoid, there's no denying it.

I answered your question about you supposedly being vain, the way I did, because I was confused as to how it should be answered, and I just used the easiest one.

I hope I've gotten everything straight.

If not, please say so.

(I am very image-conscious-not, though, whether I look good or not--I just don't want to look bad.)

SINCERELY,

Fred Wemyss

P.S. For a generalisation--I am what I am, and I don't know why.

The other was answered the way it was, because there was nothing else to do.

(?)

[The parenthetical question mark was part of the original. I wonder what was in the letter this letter discusses. I seem to remember writing a paper about being a conformist who masquerades as a non-conmformist. This particular teacher managed to make me feel my every thought could be put into words, or, more to the point, that they should be put into words.]

****[The piece below is from 1979, when I was a freshman in college. I used to speak a nonsensical language with the guy across the hall in my dorm. One day, I decided to write something in that language. It does not follow a plan, as does pig-Latin. I'm not even sure if it conforms to a rule of gibberish]:

Beh Diestaul

Eh leh-faul ti powsenry pe liesenbraumel ke heh towlama si nah shymer gowl. Lyma fe myla si rowstama. Perters cha lyme ky dipe.

Lau rimoa ti derstina lihne. Marfolo by todo sky tow di faul gor Yowsha. Yowsha stoul da Marfolo ropa rowma sirv, xekaniphaupa, bestiedlemower Saranga. Yalah, sopel la wep.

"Marfolo, Yalah, fenmiche; Wheh sine tine sos fababas?"

"So blee das, Yalah Yowsha di."

Ke te Blada harangas, Sarangas, Chochos de bes da Yowsha ka Marfolo, tes fenmashas; fenmashe!

Faul!; Ki laflayder:

Si opaepae, re Bladas iiune,

Aye-eee Yolly Golly Dolly Wah

Eee-Schnah!

Si Frautzenburgurs Yah

Eee Chautzenkurgers Yah

Aye-eee Yolly Golly Dolly Wah

Eee-Schnah!

Tzah nabb bel tando joblabohe yie diestaul Phlafs!

[While a lot of the words in "Beh Diestaul" sound like words from English ("harangas" might be "harangue," "laflayder" might be "laugh later") only the part which is a poem is actually meant to be a borrowing from any language. I took "Aye-eee" from "Doonesbury" (picture large handwritten letters which say, AAIIEEE!, which, in its turn, is Garry Trudeau's variation on Charles M. Schulz's AUGHHHH!) "Frautzenburgurs" certainly attempts to get mileage out of "burgers." The poem is a little bit of cheating. The rest of "Beh Diestaul" is more in earnest. It has a certain rhythm. "Yalah, sopel la wep," tends to get a laugh if the piece is being read aloud, whereas the poem does not.]

[The following story, "Widowed Couch," was written in 1973 or 4, some time when I was in the eighth grade. Here, I have changed spelling errors. The grammar's as it was. Some of the punctuation's been fixed. The actual evidence of my sloppiness, circa the Watergate era, is available upon request.]

WIDOWED COUCH

(My Secret Horror That Has Never Before Been Revealed)

It was my birthday, that's for sure, because it's only then that I stay up in my room feeling unnecessary.

Well, I was doing just that when my brother called me from down the stairs to come to what we called "the Mask Room" to celebrate. "Fine with me," I said, and flew down the steps.

I walked into the Mask Room which was just off the kitchen, and saw each member of the family standing all the way on the other side of the room, grinning from ear to ear. They looked much the way relatives do in those suspicious family photographs they manage to send every Christmas. Anyway, I didn't think much of this, and flopped down stomach-first on the old blue couch. Everyone seemed to think this was great, and started to chuckle. But, soon the faces seemed to grow longer, as if something expected didn't happen. They were waiting for something. "Come on!," one of them said impatiently. Nothing seemed to happen. I heard sighs from the family. Finally, I helped them get their message across to whoever by saying uncourteously, "Well let's get a move on it!"

Oh, I wish I hadn't said that, for as soon as I did, a furry black thing under me, which I had just noticed, started to wrap each one of its eight legs around me. Yes! It was a giant tarantula. My family started to laugh; they had emplanted it! I shrieked, which led someone to saying, "See, I DID pick out the right one!"

"What have you done?," I asked, choking. They just kept on laughing. Then, to my amazement, old and new acquaintances, along with my best friends started to emerge from other couches, chairs and cabinets. They threw confetti about, and cheered. Each of them had a package with them. Someone got my attention, and told me, "Here! Catch!" A present was thrown at me, but as I tried to catch it, the spider tightened its grip on me, and licking its chops. And now one by one, and each other time two by two boxes, gifts and packages were thrown at me or on the couch.

Then, I saw a large silken sack, easily pierced, placed on the rug. "This is your main present," my father announced. "I'll open it for you." Amid the confusion, I saw him untie the lace at the top. People started to gather around my father as he lifted the sack over his head, and soon all the attention was being paid to him. "Everybody ready?" "Yes!" My father then turned the sack upside-down, and with a carefree, "stand back" from him, millions of tiny black things fell out, and started to walk over to the couch.

"Are their eyes open yet?," asked my mother. Then, the baby spiders jumped up and crawled on me, much to the tarantula's dismay.

"They LIKE you," was what most everyone said, along with "Feed them twice a day."

I felt little pinches all over my body, and once in a while, tremendous tickling, for some of the spiders were fighting with each other.

"You wouldn't believe how silly you look, all tied up and in convulsions," James White from next door told me.

Apparently, someone had given me a phonograph, for soon, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was being played on alien speakers. The radio was turned on, and I heard some Firesign Theatre broadcast coming through. The heavy meaning of both "Sgt. Pepper's" and the Firesign Theatre must have delighted the new-born spiders, for I felt little feet dancing on my back. The tarantula rocked back and forth. I felt worse than Gulliver in Lillaputen town.

The novelty, though, did not wear off, because I was still shocked as ever.

Then, as a thing to end all things, down from the ceiling on her thin web came a puffy, about-to-burst black widow. Her legs, how they pierced, and her teeth--how they could chew. The little babies saw her and followed her example; little teeth gnawed away at me. And then, the tarantula opened up her jaws and hissed--and started to eat me.

All my family and friends noticed me, and they all sang the following song:

"For he's a jolly good feh-low;

For he's a jolly good feh-low;

He WAS a jolly good feh-eh-low;

Which nobody can deny!"

-end-