In an effort to make my life a little less noodlesome, I broke some bad internet habits a couple months back.  I weaned myself off some message boards, killed an e-mail address or three, unsubscribed from some listservs, and otherwise tried to decrease my virtual footprint.  Nowadays, when I fill in my odd hours, I tend to visit various news sites to see what’s cookin’.  In retrospect, I might have been better off paying my regular visits to existentialclambake.com.  (NB:  that is not a real site, though it should be.  The less you know about my browsing, the better.)

I am no rhetorician, nor have I recently stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, but the rhetoric out there in the newsie world alternately amuses and appalls me.  We have the “Arms Across Zimbabwe” coalition government appeal coming out of Zanu-PF, which would be a lot like a great big gubernatorial hug… were it not for the rampant beatings, egregious attempts at ballot box stuffing, inflammatory rhetoric, and other fairly compelling evidence that any coalition would be little more than a travishamockery.  We have the Team America spirit of ex-military talking heads trumpeting our successes in Iraq and Afghanistan…which doesn’t seem quite so shiny when we learn that these fellows own stock in the war machine and have been strategically placed to serve as “message force multipliers” (which ranks only slightly behind “Hilary Duff scorpion pants” in the list of search terms my irresponsible readers have sent me this week).   And of course we now have the Clinton campaign’s “Debate Watch,” an awesomely middle-school attempt to imply that Barack Obama is scurred to enter the ring with Hillary once again.  Note to Senator Clinton:  if the actions of your campaign staff seemingly would cast you as a 21st-century Grover Dill, tittering in the background to George Stephanopoulos’ Scut Farkus, all the Rocky references in the world won’t make you look tough.  Not a good week when John McCain halfheartedly lodges a form protest and outclasses you by a chickahominy mile.

Because I am wired improperly, however, such news makes me crave poetry.  While waiting for my copy of The Mariner’s Wife to arrive–oh yes, I’ve ordered; don’t you want to be cool like me?–I’ve been digging through some Dennis and Doty, and their complete works (or as many of them as I can find on Amazon) stand a good chance of becoming a self-inflicted gift.  Political rhetoric, even when it’s been turtle-waxed to a brilliant shine, makes me hungry for the chewiest words, the most appetizing language, the meatiest, most filling discourse I can find. 

I’ll only be able to nibble for a week or two, as the semester’s winding down here and I’ve got to finish scripting a new prep for Summer I.  After that, however, I would urge you to keep your appendages away from the table:  the bald man’s gonna get his gorge on.

On the radio this morning a woman was lamenting her romantic fortunes.  First she wed the inattentive go-getter, the one whose wealth and ambition could not fill the hole in her heart.  Next she wed the charming philanderer, the one whose philandering had already philanded him in divorce court twice (to her knowledge) before they tied the knot and he philandered once again.  Finally, she married the passionate junkie, the one whose affections waxed and waned in direct correlation to his supply of smack.  At the end of her chat with the deejays, she posed the poignant question:  “why, oh why, do I attract such terrible men?” 

Color me crazy (for which you will need the Crayola 256-pack), but methinks she was asking the wrong question.

In the gym, thinking that thought and watching CNN on the teevee, I saw an interview with a Concerned Parent.  The Concern in question?  Two seventh graders in Arizona were found with a “death list,” a list that included the names of students, teachers, the principal, and Barney, the purple dinosaur (he knows what he did), a list for which the seventh graders were suspended pending further investigation.  The parent, however, was not Concerned with the list itself or the thought process that prompted it; instead, he wondered aloud “why were all Concerned Parents not notified immediately?”

In his defense, he had an especially fine haircut.

Last in the lists of quizzical questioners, the bookkeeper for my dentist.  I received a sooper-scary “you are 90 days delinquent/we are about to send Knuckles after you” billing statement late Monday afternoon, and I called back this morning to investigate.  I owed a whopping $17 (an overage that my insurance should have covered but didn’t), but even a small amount, once sent to collections, can make a monumental dent in one’s otherwise shiny credit rating.  My concern in the case was the subject of delinquency itself:  I had, after all, paid $90 at the door in January, which I think bespeaks a certain amount of good faith on my part, and I had not received a single billing statement prior to the 90-day red-letter threat.  I accordingly called up, ascertained the nature of the money owed, and explained my concern regarding the prospect of seeing the matter sent to collections. 

The bookkeeper’s question?  “Alriiiight…and the reason you’re calling?” 

I suppose I should have introduced her as the bookkeeper to my former dentist, but that would have ruined the suspense.

Whenever I identify a tendency in others that upsets or perturbs me, I try to spin the camera and engage a little self-examination.  Have I been asking comparably problematic questions?  Have I been engaging in the same kind of defective/deflective thinking that makes matters that fall to my account the properties and problems of others?  Most importantly (for the sake of the blog, anyway), has a species of comparable denial affected my writing?

Perversely, if it has, it seems to have done so in a positive way, in a manner that obliges me to table my own self-consciousness as I render events or imagine the lives of others. 

If I knew how much of myself was seeping into my fiction and verse, I suspect I wouldn’t write quite so much, if at all.