Happy Halloween!

Kids are thirsty.

Drink, my children.

Please help! (No, she's not dead.)

Recently, I purchased an oversized plush bed for my Siberian husky. After a week now, she is still sleeping on the floor. I've tried everything to get her to use this bed: put a few pieces of kibble in the middle of it, refuse food altogether until she goes on it, threaten her with the vet's office on the phone. Nothing has worked. I find her behavior tremendously disturbing. I fear that she has adopted the bed as her own child. I don't want to take the kind of action that would traumatize my dog, i.e. bag the bed and return it to Petco. How should I tell visitors that my dog has difficulty separating fact from fiction?

The English Major Writes: An Essay on "Come Sail Away" by Styx

Come Sail Away by this band Styx is a mantra about a guy’s first time sailing a majestic cruise liner across the perilous oceanic expanse. The main idea is that this cruise liner is figurative. In other words, the boat is all in the guy’s head. Another important main idea is that our protagonist undergoes all these adventures before he renounces his everyman religion to join an angelic cult.

As I stated in the introduction, the cruise liner is figurative. The way we know that is by investigating the impossible feasibility of the lines. He, the speaker, goes, “I’m sailing away.” And more importantly he goes:

Set an open course for the virgin sea
For I've got to be free
Free to face the life that's ahead of me
On board I'm the captain
So climb aboard
We'll search for tomorrow
On every shore
And I'll try, oh Lord, I'll try
To carry on
I look to the sea
Reflections in the waves spark my memory
Some happy, some sad
I think of childhood friends
And the dreams we had
We lived happily forever
So the story goes
But somehow we missed out
On the pot of gold
But we'll try best that we can to carry on
A gathering of angels appeared above our heads
They sang to us this song of hope and this is what they said
Come sail away
Come sail away
Come sail away with me
I thought that they were angels
But to my surprise
We climbed aboard their starship
And headed for the skies.

As evident, the whole thing is figurative because none of this can be possible. Also, we don’t know who he’s talking to when he beckons someone (who? me? you? us?) to climb aboard, as he is the captain, the skipper of the boat-a-rockin’. The fact that we don’t know who he’s talking to makes us come to no other conclusion than that the boat would sink if you tried to sail it. In other words, it is figurative. The speaker, or, more precisely, the singer also talks about reflections in the waves that spark his memory. It is a known fact that it is impossible for waves to reflect memories, especially because waves move really fast and no one can dictate Mother Nature’s speed. Again, figurative language infiltrating the piece.

Now that we’ve established that the piece is not literal, we can explicate the epic journey condensed in the lyrical piece. First he announces that he is sailing away and says his course is “open,” implying he is not bound by the constrictions of nautical charts, which in turn implies that his sea is indeed “virgin” because no other nautical explorers have “hit it” yet. He is optimistic about his journey, saying that he will “search for tomorrow on every shore,” which is the most poetic line of the whole work, because you can’t really see “tomorrow” as a thing you can spot on the shore with your telescope. No, you have to dream it.

Mystery unraveled. It isn’t until a few lines later that we realize who he’s asking to climb aboard and search for tomorrow: it is Jesus, for God’s sake. So he talks about how he grew up with Jesus and the other kids and had good and bad times. Suddenly, he realizes he missed the pot of gold, which shifts our attention from Jesus to leprechauns galore. Since a lot is lost through oral storytelling tradition, we will never know of the bloody battle of the sailor and the leprechauns, but we do see some deus ex machina in action: angels come to the rescue. We can surely assume that the speaker lost his faith in holiness and shunned the angels, because in the end, he renounces his everyman religion to ascend to a starship, which, by the way, is an underlying message by Styx to say that traveling by boat is out and that the Here and Now is the modern, industrialized society, where we can all travel by plane and retain our spirituality. The cult of modernity is too strong to deny.

Lyrics, deep and cruel, kinda like the sea.

Come Sail Away by Styx

I'm sailing away
Set an open course for the virgin sea
For I've got to be free
Free to face the life that's ahead of me
On board I'm the captain
So climb aboard
We'll search for tomorrow
On every shore
And I'll try, oh Lord, I'll try
To carry on
I look to the sea
Reflections in the waves spark my memory
Some happy, some sad
I think of childhood friends
And the dreams we had
We lived happily forever
So the story goes
But somehow we missed out
On the pot of gold
But we'll try best that we can to carry on
A gathering of angels appeared above our heads
They sang to us this song of hope and this is what they said
Come sail away
Come sail away
Come sail away with me
I thought that they were angels
But to my surprise
We climbed aboard their starship
And headed for the skies

I Eats Spam.

Spammers are relentless with this righteous blog. I swear, it makes a sister not want to blog anymore; that is, until I was spammed by "Enlargement" who had some things to tell me about scrapbooking embellishment:

Interesting blog you have here, I landed here on accident. I was searching for something else and came across your site. I found it pretty interesting and entertaining. I got you book marked.

I will pop back in from time to time to see what you have new here.

My site is a bit different than yours, but just as entertaining and educational, I run a scrapbooking embellishment related site pertaining to scrapbooking embellishment related articles.

That shit really piqued my interest, but, I gotta say, it was that comment about how your site is "just as entertaining and educational" as mine that killed it. Word. Your shit don't even compare. I hope that when you "pop back in from time to time" you see this post and improve your wack site.

I got somethin', I say. I got borrowed lyric.

Up
and down.
And in the end
it's only round and round
and round...

I've lost my voice.

Check back in a month. Activity might be seen elsewhere.

Postcard of flags and a Space Needle looking structure.

Mr. Happy Crack Ain't the Only One that's Happy

Yesterday a Sidney Crackstein from St. Louis' Crack Team left a comment by my original Mr. Happy Crack post (making the streets of St. Louis safe again). I removed the post entirely and e-mailed Mr. Crackstein to be certain he was all right with my voluntary endorsement of his fine crack-loving company. Needless to say, I was struck with ultimate delight when I received the following e-mail from Mr. Happy Crack himself, addressing my concern that Minnesotans like myself have cracks up the wazoo--especially after the winter months:

Sylvia: Hopefully Minnesota will be seeing Mr. Happy Crack very soon, as we have plans on opening an office in your fair city within the next few months. I just can't sleep at night knowing a large group of very nice people have cracks up their wazoos. It pains me Sylvia. Regarding our image on your blog, don't be silly. Slap it up there as you wish...And as a reciprocal measure we'd be delighted to send you a free Mr. Happy Crack tshirt for the nice mention on your site. May all your cracks be happy, Mr. Happy Crack

Anniversary Post

A year ago today, Mediocrity was. And Mediocrity was the light in the basement of my water-damaged life. Like a soft-spoken miracle, Mediocrity began to prosper like some well-nourished philodendron, tendrils of tolerability clinging and expanding across the web of the wide world. Blessed with Mediocrity, I was never a bad writer, and that was safe. Then came the people, the blog readers, bitching, whining, and feeling sorry for me whenever I was having a bad month or three, despite that which my blog explicitly claims: mediocrity is safe. And you all wonder why I curse so much. For misty watercolor memories, see below:

• August 2004: I wish I were Snow White, so them twelve elves could clean my pad, but I ain't.
• September 2004: Check me and me and me out.
• October 2004: Mediocrity for life!
• January 2005: Asian at work.
• March 2005: Children love me.
• April 2005: Something for the haters.
• May 2005: It's hard work--it's not easy!
• July 2005: A heartfelt letter to my readers, expressing how I wouldn't be here if it weren't for them, but thanks first and foremost to the dear Lord almighty, for allowing me to cross paths with Ginuwine at LAX in the winter of 2001.

Winowhere, MN

Blogless friend Patrick has never been so eloquent...in a motel room in Winona, MN:

I got to my motel room at midnight and vegetated on beer and cable TV. It was so, well, Winona. I was up until 4:30 though, partly due to a headache and partly due to just plain old insomnia (not even nerves induced). Around 3:30 I walked over to the 24-hour grocery for aspirin. On the way back to the motel room, I noticed two things. One was that the message board below their sign read "Even a broken clock is right two times a day". Another was that the "l" on the cursive lettered neon "motel" sign was burned out, spelling "mote", which led me to wonder about the mote in my eye, and if that was what was giving me a headache.

Hatin' on my dog.

It kills me that my dog is cuter than I am. When people give her biscuits, I get jealous. When she is sleeping, I want to step on her head.

Because I struggle with math...and HTML.

Dear Literate Person,

You didn't become literate for me, I realize, so I extend a thousand thanks to you for humoring me with your stealth brand of readership, which I still find so queer. Even though you are a mute and forgiving happy face in my, perhaps, overly-generous imagination, I, shamefaced and unforgivable, do experience a worthy lot of guilt when I leave you with a blog that hasn't been updated in over a week. Starved but loyal soul, you've been recycling these mediocre stubs of prose, sometimes reading dangerous and unsavory possibilities into my often heedless pile of words, words, words. I give credit to you, lively thinker, since most people don't even bother, but that's because they sense I am wasting their time--and they would be right. My time, my life, after all, is much too valuable to waste on writing.

Syl

Weak and Strong

Man on bike is some fine machine, catches my eye for a while, like seconds stretched out into fractions on a clock at the finish. Streaming through my mind is Teddy Pendergrass with a contemporary rap interlude added for my contemporary rap body and soul, and yours too, bike man, if you had the my-my-my-my-my-my-my soul to go with all that rhythm.

Since I moved to the Midwest, the most enjoyable radio station appeared on L.A. airwaves, but I don't regret not being there: They don't play enough Johnny Gill. It's like sipping on weak ass coffee all day.

Corndog was an animal.

This post is going to suck, too, but since you all read this for free, I, with no writerly integrity, will continue to post whatever I want until I regain a wit so biting it leaves a mark prominent enough to make your momma ask who's been pickin' on you. And when she tries to cheer you up with a buttery warm grilled cheese sandwich, I'll be there to mouth it down myself--but not before I wedge your pet hamster Corndog between each toasty, cheesy flap of bread.

If you were offended by the tale of Corndog, then you obviously didn't visit this blog to lap up my saucy prose. You came for the Nudy.

(The) Baseball is Hard

This is the field where I hit a solid liner into the opposite field--Astros scout watching from the dugout. He gave me props afterward, but, hell, I never saw a contract. I would have settled for ball girl or cheese sauce churner for the rich nacho lovers in the luxury boxes, but none of these dreams would come true. Often during my Faulkner seminars, I'd turn my chair and peer out at all the bat-clinking activity from a tall building behind right field. My friend Eric claimed the nachos and soda lady at these Cal State L.A. games had the hots for him, which was fine, I guess, but I never liked when she showed up to mock my Houston dream.

Eat Shit and Excel!

This is the dog who ate shit and didn't die. In fact, it made her run faster! Now that's incredible!

Noooooooooooooooo!!!

Sunny stopped making me laugh. So I threw him out.

So-So Personality Seeks Mediocre Place to Live for Average Rent

Live in L.A.? Got extra space? Need a few extra bucks? For the right price, I'll hang with whatever:

1. sleeping in the living room
   
2. low water pressure
3. broken a/c
   
4. listening to KROQ (except for mack daddy Jed the Fish) or Jay Z
   
5. group shots of your trendy ass friends all over the fuckin' place
6. mice
   
7. roaches
8. mice and roach traps crowding out the places where I'm trying to store my food
9. unexpected visits by a landlord who wants to be let in to fix shit that ain't broke and really just wants to mack on those trendy ass friends he's seen in the past
   
10. flies and/or trick daddies