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
    

Step Increases, Holla!

All that 9 to 5 stuff is wack. I got it goin' on with 8:30 to 5, when I be situated at the pimpest job of all. Check out these dope reasons explaining my stable-as-all-hell direct deposit cash flow:

1. Answering the phones has long been an unfortunate area of responsibility for me, my syntactic and vocabular decisions overly clueless. Now, however, I have been gifted verbatim the genius language of upper management. No longer will I have to embarrass my institution with my peasant-informed phone greetings!

2. Fuck jeans. They are so low-class anyway.

3. Only special and specific colors appear on the approved-for-replenishment list of paper colors. These are: blue, grey, ivory, lavender (not violet), yellow, goldenrod, and tan. Yeah, you know what I'm talkin' 'bout.

Totally Delicious!

Suddenly things became very ironic for Sunny.

Moving Up in the World

Never mind its suicidal flight pattern, a last minute reverse move to intersect my vehicle's unchanging direction. I killed a bird, a female tri-colored blackbird, and her death agonizes me. Everyone's been offering the same line of consolation to a sobbing Sylvia: that human life is more precious than that of any bird. I have to admit, I find myself sort of smirking at the swell idea that my life is precious and that I'm human. For reals! I'm not really a Care Bear! I suppose now I could employ my human potential and write to the people responsible for setting a freeway in an animal infested location.

Blog Off.

Hello, gorgeous readers. The author of Mediocrity has returned from Iowa to shut down the joint and file for divorce...from her own pissy-arsed moodiness. Oh dear, I discover from my forced British jargon that I am fictionally English like fictionally English Madonna and her fictionally commendable tale about a gang of jaundinced schoolgirls whose excremental attitudes take up most of the book, belaboring the boring fact that they be hatin' on the unwittingly ghetto-fabulous Binah who duhhhh doesn't quite get why ain't nobody be talkin' to her. For fuck's sake, Binah, you can make plenty of friends on the Internet. Why, you might even start your own blog and bitch about how Oprah's keepin' it real by pushing this pedestrian shit that Madonna must have written on a, mind you, good day.

Web Log

Sylvia is sleeping. In Iowa.

I warn you: Don't waste your time with this.

The less I have to do with life, the less I am vexed by it, thus my very goal to blog something with more than two lines to it is completely frustrated. This is line number two, and you are hoping it's a good one, because, if I didn't have a knack for making really long, yet fairly well punctuated sentences, this second sentence would not be offering you these rather uninteresting words to read right now, and you would know nothing of the natural anticipation that exists completely apart from the oft scripted realm of reality television, wherein tonight pure-hearted American Idol contestant, Carrie Underwood, preaches about people gettin' what's comin' to 'em on Independence Day in a clap along with me now! ditty that confuses the hell fiery wrath of the Old Testament God with a bunch of people who, hey, just want to light up a few sparklers for a good time.

Nudy.

Hazardous of warning notice: Not only for wild arranger use!