*----- Original Message -----
Aibohphobia. Caibohphobiac Donna. My friend Donna asked me if I was like Wolf-Rayet 104, a spiral star hailed by the democrats. "Star? Come Donna Melba, I'm an amiable man, no Democrats." "Egad, no bondage," she replied because she saw Democrats as being "into" the whole S&M thing. I am apolitical. She is a masochist. Growing up I was raised to see one-on-one sexual experience as a good thing, as long as there was no fetishistic deviation. Bondage was coming onto the scene on our block, and was frowned upon. As was one-on-oneself sexual experience, hence my father said to me, "No, son! Onanism's a gross orgasm sin -- a no-no, son." Ida So, Ida, adios. Do geese see god? No witness, a fool. A nasal aria's time emits air. Alas, an aloof assent: I won. Why I hate stetson hats and think operas are the focus of a team’s offense in basketball My dad used to wear a stetson hat, and I thought it was dumb-looking, so I don’t like them. He used to be a center for the LA Lakers, was best when playing post, and he was opera (he was made up of more than one opus). Therefore: No stetson hats. Operas are post. Ah, no stetson. Message to Rack, and telling Carol "what-for" as Nona in the first person Do good? I? No. Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw, sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I. Lo! Rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God. Pick-up league baseball teams in Illinois use tour bandmembers from famous bands My dumb friend asks how many men are on a team, "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod. (*Note: nine Devo-organists in a groove den in Eaton.) Why I didn’t feel that I had to give Christmas presents to my 61 co-workers Dennis, Nell, Edna, Leon, Nedra, Anita, Rolf, Nora, Alice, Carol, Leo, Jane, Reed, Dena, Dale, Basil, Rae, Penny, Lana, Dave, Denny, Lena, Ida, Bernadette, Ben, Ray, Lila, Nina, Jo, Ira, Mara, Sara, Mario, Jan, Ina, Lily, Arne, Bette, Dan, Reba, Diane, Lynn, Ed, Eva, Dana, Lynne, Pearl, Isabel, Ada, Ned, Dee, Rena, Joel, Lora, Cecil, Aaron, Flora, Tina, Arden, Noel, and Ellen sinned. I tried to smuggle a Cuban cigar from Paris into Mississippi but it got wet Jennifer dropped my luggage in the airport terminal toilet at Paris International when she was trying to dump the hash we bought from a guy near the Arc de Triomphe. "The Cuban got wet." "Cigar? Toss it in a can. It is so tragic." Letter to Dr, my brother who doesn’t have a vowel in his name, me, and my dad from my sister(who really spells her name ".") concerning the daily meat intake of our mom To Dr, et al. Re: Grub. Ma had a hamburger. Later, [Dot]. A postscript concerning my sister "."’s eye problems [Dot] saw I was Tod. *
From: Eyeshot
Please explain how you imagine a reader would enjoy this? We are looking for an in-depth discussion of your intentions and your anticipations regarding reader response. Thank you. * From: Donnie Boman
I would hope that the reader would try to figure out what is going on. By trying to solve the word puzzles, they would have fun with the piece. I heard a fantastic palindrome this weekend, so I tried to find it on the internet. I came up with websites listing a whole bunch of them, and didn't find the one I wanted. But, it was a fun game. And since the tactic of narrative confusion is touted on your submission recommendations, I thought I would send this piece in. I tried to keep things logical and played with the statement heading & response construction. Toward the end, I decided that punctuation didn't matter in the letter arrangement of the palindromes, so, I added brackets and dots and whatever. Whoever the readers are will try to make everything fit into a pattern. This is funny to me, because I don't think things really have to have a pattern. You can deconstruct everything, but it doesn't really matter. Maybe I'm just feeling a little cynical today and want to take all the meaning out of everything -- except funny. I like funny. That's why I couldn't help but include democratic S&M references, masturbation references, and referring to myself as a salami ... which I guess goes back to phallic imagery that perhaps will be what a crazy analysis of this piece will use to prove that I am really a feminist firehose. So, um, I think that a reader might love to read this and play with it. What else do you want to know? * From: Eyeshot
Thank you for that prompt and rather in-depth response. You say "you can deconstruct everything, but it doesn't really matter." If if doesn't really matter then why do this in the first place? Just for the play? The grown-up indoors literary version of throwing a ball against a wall? Why are you interested in palindromes? We are interested in this. Please explain as fully as you can. Thank you. * From: Donnie Boman
"Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas." Oh boy, you called me out. Why do it in the first place? I don't know. I guess it is because I can. Most of the time I feel like I should be writing and talking about what I think should be more relevant to me - like govt, politics, "real-life" issues. Blah, whatever, I know. But I don't write about that because it usually sounds like crap for a layman to write about what they don't know about. I'll leave Gore Vidal and Tom Tomorrow to write and draw about what's going on in the world. It's easier for me to play games with words. I like linear stories too, though. Don't count me as a post-modernist, else I receive criticism from the ULA and end up being defended by Stanley Fish. If you do put this up (or anyone for that matter) it'll be described as masturbatory, solipsistic, whatever. Well isn't reading it and trying to figure it out by opponents of such types of writing pretty masturbatory? I think so. But anyway, "the grown-up indoors literary version of throwing a ball against a wall" is a damn lot of fun, and that is what i like to do. Palindromes are pretty fucking cool too. And nobody's been talking about palindromes lately in the literary circles that I know of. Maybe they have, but I haven't seen it. Maybe I can start a new wave of imitators. It would be nice for people to imitate me. There'll probably be palindrome imitators of me and competitions devoted to me at The Atlantic Monthly or The Paris Review or something. Anagrams are cool too, but they're played out in my opinion, and one often gets into the over analyzation of them like people like to do to Lewis Carroll: 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
-- from Jabberwocky ... translates to -- Bet I beat my glands til,
Who knows what people could translate the star democrats into? * To: Donnie Boman Sent: Monday, July 15, 2002 9:35 PM Subject: Re: Lee had a heel. I don't see how the Carroll excerpt translates into what you put there? Is that some kind of joke? Or am I missing something? I think I'll put the whole thing up. The piece and then the correspondence. Including these words here, ok? * From: Donnie Boman
It was just an addendum to the overanalyzation stuff, and sent as a joke too. I just got through watching a travel documentary by Tom Bodett of Motel 6 fame talking about the Klondike Trail from Seattle to Juneau, and his voice just kept ringing in my head. I imagined him trying to figure out anagrams and Lewis Carroll and talking in palindromes. I don't know. I have been thinking too much today about nothing, I guess. Star democrats, correspondence, Tom Bodett? Sounds awesome! * From: Eyeshot
"Thinking too much about nothing" is a central element of our strategically chosen "keywords": "egotourism, egotourist, illiterati, literature, literary, lit, prep school drug use, rejection, hungrybirds, sassy, masturbatory writing, metafiction, heteronyms, worthless crap, one-thousand shit-ass words for which a single picture would be much better, interrogations brought on by public urination, Love in the Time of Coca-Cola, Allen Iverson, Albert Ayler, Aylerson, 21st-Century Religious Writing, Knicks, Kool-Aid, NJ Lit, cutting-edge pork products, neen, steak ums pressed in a waffle iron and drained to be served chilled with celery sticks and smiles all around, hellcircle, navel dust, downward flush of thinking too much about not enough" |
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