J. D. Salinger’s output of writing: unchanged.

So with the passing of J.D. Salinger, everyone wants to know, does he really have several decades’ worth of writing?

Well here is an artice about it. To make a long story short, no one knows anything because the man just died yesterday.

Or did he?

The always pitch-perfect John Hodgman wrote today: "I prefer to think JD Salinger has just decided to become extra reclusive."
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27/365

So remember that I told you Violet is doing that picture-a-day project? Well she finally posted some the last week’s worth of photos. Go check out my awesome new socks, and - you know - other cool stuff.

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La Vie Boheme.

So today was one of those looooong and exhausting days. Loooooooooooooooooong day. And then class and we talked about The Scarlett Letter for what felt like eight or nine days.

But did I give up? Did I crawl into the back of my car and sleep in the parking lot? No. No I did not.

“So,” you ask, “what did you do? How did you summon the strength and energy to go on?”

Well, I will tell you.

I popped in RENT and sang and sang and sang La Vie Boheme, which I love.

This is the part I like to sing:

MR. GREY
And thirteen orders of fries
Is that it here?

ALL
Wine and beer!

MIMI & ANGEL
To hand-crafted beers made in local breweries
To yoga, to yogurt, to rice and beans and cheese
To leather, to dildos, To curry Vindaloo
To Huevos Rancheros and Maya Angelou

MAUREEN & COLLINS
Emotion, devotion, to causing a commotion,
Creation, Vacation

MARK
Mucho masturbation

MAUREEN & COLLINS
Compassion, to fashion, to passion
When it's new

COLLINS
To Sontag

ANGEL
To Sondheim

FOUR PEOPLE
To anything taboo

COLLINS & ROGER
Ginsberg, Dylan, Cunningham and Cage

COLLINS
Lenny Bruce

ROGER
Langston Hughes

MAUREEN
To the stage!

PERSON #1
To Uta

PERSON #2
To Buddha

PERSON #3
Pablo Neruda, too

MARK & MIMI
Why Dorothy and Toto went over the rainbow
To blow off Auntie Em

ALL
La Vie Boheme


Sorry this is the best youtube had to offer.


Oh, and how bad-ass is Taye Diggs, by the way? That man has some range.

Some Tasty Bits.

So here are some snippets and bits that I have come across over the last few days in my vast and extensive (and entirely assigned by my professors) reading . . .

From T.S. Elliot –

A “Sweeny” is a vulgar person.

If you’re ever in Brighton and looking for a good time, the Hotel Metropole is known to be a good place for a sexual rendezvous.

And these bitchin’ lines:
“… when the human engine waits/Like a taxi throbbing waiting,”

“And a clatter and a chatter from within”

From Emily Dickinson –

“After great pain, a formal feeling comes”

“This is the hour of lead”

From Sandra Cisneros –

“(The house is) small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you’d think they were holding their breath.”

From Robert Creeley –

“I think I grow tensions/like flowers/in a wood where/nobody goes”

From Tristan Tzara (who was a bat-shit insane Dadaist.) –

“… lamentation slows down progress.”

“I don’t want to put fences round what people call principles, when what is at stake is freedom.”

“The rest, called literature, is a dossier of human imbecility for the guidance of future professors.”

From the super-cool television program Psych -
“That is an anti-tank weapon and you are pointing it … at yourself.”

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Yet more awesome breakfast poetry!

So if you like association poems about breakfast as much as I do then today is your lucky day! Below is another one from King Heifer. You should read it and then send me yours!


Breakfast by Association
By King Heifer

Breakfast
Rutti Tutti Fresh and Frutti
IHOP
iPod
Pod people
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
D-Day invasion
Juno Beach
Juno
Paulie Bleeker
Paulie Walnuts
The Sopranos
Joey Pants
The Matrix
Blue pill, red pill
Remember what the dormouse said
That's what she said
Kelly Clarkson!!!!
Paula Abdul
L.A. Lakers
Magic Johnson
They're magically delicious!
Lucky Charms
Breakfast

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How I Got Bird Flu . . .

So you know how one of my few talents in life is ending up in situations where I’m weirdly close to wildlife? Wait … you didn’t know that? Well it is totally true! I see coyotes and raccoons and possums around my apartment complex all the time and I get attacked by squirrels at school all the time and today I almost sat on a baby humming bird! It is true. I nearly set my bag on him at the school. Anyway, below are some pictures of Theodore (that’s his name. Birds have names too! When you give them to them!).

More Awesome Poetry!

The latest awesome entry into our file of ‘Breakfast by Association’ poems. Please read and enjoy! And then send me yours!



Breakfast by Association
By King Heifer*

Breakfast
Cheerios
Hi-Ho-Cherrio
O face
Jackie O
JFK
Dead Kennedys
Trotsky Icepick
Stalin
Hitler
Springtime for Hitler
April, the cruelest month
Baseball
Jackie Robinson
Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood
Mrs. Robinson
Robinson Crusoe
Amish Paradise
Eat It
Breakfast





* So the editorial staff here at Standardkink have a standing policy of changing the names to protect the guilty and so as you have probably figured out “King Heifer” is not actually the poet’s real name. It is a pseudonym, and a pretty fricken’ awesome one at that. The real poet is an actual, real grown-up person who maybe shouldn’t get caught writing poems about breakfast for a fairly dubious (if only because it is usually lame) blog. But you know what? All the bigger props to King Heifer, for he is the real dissident, the rebel, the subversive, the provocateur! I like to think that he wrote this in his office! At his desk! On fancy company stationary! Rock on K.H.

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Do you want to see me talk a lot about movies?

At the grocery store they were having a sale on DVDs! Now I don’t actually buy very many DVDs. I can usually resist them as an impulse buy but these were two for ten dollars! And they weren’t just crap movies with Paul Walker in them!

I ended up buying “The Good Shepherd” which is that three hour long movie with Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie (both giving totally lukewarm and forgettable performances. And I say that being a BIG fan of both of them). It’s basically about the formation of the CIA as experienced by Matt Damon’s character Edward Wilson, a character that is loosely based on the real-life James Angleton, who ran counter-intelligence for the CIA during much of the Cold War (and was played – much more interestingly, actually – by Michael Keaton in the 2007 mini-series “The Company”). It is a long and slow movie that requires you too know waaaaaaay too much of the history of the early Cold War, generally and even more about the history of the CIA, specifically. And poor poor Angelina Jolie is terribly miscast as the sad and distant Company wife. Though now that I think about it, maybe her performance is good, it’s just that when you’re watching Angelina Jolie in a movie and she isn’t like scorchingly hot, you kinda just go, “Eeh.”



vs.



Is that anti-Feminist of me? If so, sorry, but you know it’s true. You totally do! That’s why you loved “Mr & Mrs Smith” but never even saw “Changeling”. One other thing about “The Good Shepherd”, it has one of the single worst pieces of casting that has ever happened. Ever.



This young actor named Eddie Redmayne (who is probably a very nice person and all) plays the adult version of Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie’s son (yeah, that guy in the picture up there). He has a sort of long horse face and he is like 18 feet tall and so he towers over both of his “parents” while looking nothing at all like them. Also he is that kind of skinny-like-the-lead-singer-of-a-faux-punk-band-skinny. And his performance is just awful. Just terrible.

Anyway, it’s a great movie to just put on in the background while you’re doing other stuff.

The other movie I bought was “Charlie Wilson’s War”. I’m sure you know all about “Charlie Wilson’s War”, it stars Tom Hanks as the Texas Congressman who basically started the CIA’s covert war against the Soviet’s in Afghanistan in the 1980s (I guess I had the CIA on the brain. Or maybe I’m just that particular sort of nerd). Anyway, it was written by Aaron Sorkin, or as I like to call him “the modern Shakespeare”. Sorkin of course was the creator and (for four glorious seasons) the writer of “The West Wing”. I hate to be the one to tell y’all but if Shakespeare were alive today he’d be writing for television. It’s true. Think about it for a second.

See! Now that you’ve thought about it you totally agree with me.

Anyway, “Charlie Wilson’s War” was Sorkin stretching his legs after being confined to 43 minute television writing for so long and it kinda shows. The first half of the script is really good but by the time it gets around to about an hour and twenty minutes he sort of realized, “Holy shit! I don’t get to leave all of this story for the next episode!” So what ends up happening is this montage of actual B-roll of Soviet tanks exploding and Mig-24 gunships being blown out of the sky. And then TA-DA! We totally won and stuff!

It is really underwhelming.

Also it doesn’t help that the director Mike Nichols did a really second-rate job. He is kind of a legend, he did “The Graduate” and “Catch-22” and “Working Girl” but he probably shouldn’t have tried to direct a movie about back-room politics and international intrigue with the same happy-go-lucky zip that he used in “The Bird Cage” and “Biloxi Blues” (Fun six-degrees-of-Kevin Bacon moment: Aaron Sorkin wrote “The West Wing” which stared [among others] the delightful and talented Allison Janney who got that part not because of her pitch-perfect performance as Wes Bentley’s soul-dead mother in “American Beauty”, but because of her vibrancy and wit and grace in the film “Primary Colors”, which was directed by … wait for it … Mike Nichols!). It is pretty clear, as soon as you get a nice big shot of Tom Hank’s bare ass early on in “Charlie Wilson’s War” that Nichol’s thinks this story is fun and zany! Also, he inserts a lot of lithe young actresses in the movie and tries to get away with it because the actual Charlie Wilson was a notorious cad and womanizer, but I was a 14-year-old boy once and I recognize a blatant sexual objectification of hot actresses when I see it and, quite frankly, that’s all fine and good if that’s the movie that you’re making, but here Nichols is basically just being a dirty old man and no one has willing to say, “Ummmm, Mike, why does that girl need to have her top off?” (How awesomely long was that sentence that I just wrote BTW?). I like to imagine the conversation when Nichols told Oscar-wining (and dreamy!) Amy Adams, “Yeah, so for this shot we’re going to do a tight shot of your ass as you walk down a marble hallway in high heels for like ten minutes.”



Also, if you read a little about the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan you know that those Mig-24 helicopter gunships were basically the most frightening thing since god sent locust down on Egypt. Those things were designed to chew up American tanks on the battlefield and the Soviets sicced them on mud huts and children. If you know anything about the Mujahideen you probably know that one of them told a journalist (I’m paraphrasing here), “We don’t fear the Russians, but we fear their helicopters.” The film does a pretty good job of helping the viewer understand that giving the Mujahideen the ability to shoot those things down is what turned the tide against the Soviets, but Nichols treats them like they’re kind of cute. I think the one scene where we see one of them doing its thing has some sort of farcical version of “Russian” music playing over it. Like Wild E. Coyote is using it to go after the Road Runner. The director doesn’t understand the terror.

Or am I going on too much?

To Sorkin’s credit he does end the movie with a discussion of the way that America bailed on Afghanistan once the Soviets left and that we were (at least tacitly) responsible for the rise of the Taliban. I thought that was refreshing because no one really talks about that anymore. No one has ever really said, “Maybe we shouldn’t have taught Osama bin Laden how to raise a guerilla army and given them all of those guns, missiles and training.”

It is occurring to me now that maybe I bought these two specific movies not because I like them, but because I like talking about them. That’s totally possible.
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A is for Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.

So one of my classes this semester is 19th Century American Novelists. I took the class because I had heard that you’re required to read Moby Dick and while the pragmatist in me is all like “Holy Jesus H. Christ don’t do that!” but everybody here stopped listening to that guy about the same time we decided to go back to college and get a degree in Creative Writing.

Anyway, it’s not just Moby Dick, oh no, it begins with The Scarlett Letter. Yes. That one. The one from High School with Demi Moore in it. And okay, fine, I’m a fancy panys English major so okay. But I have to read the first half of it by next week. And I know that’s actually not that bad either, it’s like 122 pages in a week. Fine. I guess that’s not even worth complaining about, but – you know – shouldn’t the Professor check with me first? Because I have a killer week coming up and also, I don’t wanna.

I guess that’s the actual point here. Maybe the ‘A’ actually stands for, “Stop complaining like a whiny little girl.”
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Colors are Pretty Cool.

If we lived in a world that was much much cooler, this is what all search engines would be like.

Basically it searches Flickr by color. And I think that’s pretty cool.



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I can read minds!

I know what you were just wondering!

You were just wondering how much it costs to order a bottle of Courvoisier from room service at a hotel in Salt Lake City.



It costs 150 bucks.

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The Plan.

This is a very short and funny story that I have no right at all to post on this blog. Also, I wish I had written it.



The Plan
by Jack Handey

The plan isn’t foolproof. For it to work, certain things must happen:

—The door to the vault must have accidentally been left open by the cleaning woman.

—The guard must bend over to tie his shoes and somehow he gets all the shoelaces tied together. He can’t get them apart, so he takes out his gun and shoots all his bullets at the knot. But he misses. Then he just lies down on the floor and goes to sleep.

—Most of the customers in the bank must happen to be wearing Nixon masks, so when we come in wearing our Nixon masks it doesn’t alarm anyone.

—There must be an empty parking space right out in front. If it has a meter, there must be time left on it, because our outfits don’t have pockets for change.

—The monkeys must grab the bags of money and not just shriek and go running all over the place, like they did in the practice run.

—The security cameras must be the early, old-timey kind that don’t actually take pictures.

—When the big clock in the lobby strikes two, everyone must stop and stare at it for at least ten minutes.

—The bank alarm must have mistakenly been set to “Quiet.” Or “Ebb tide.”

—The gold bars must be made out of a lighter kind of gold that’s just as valuable but easier to carry.

—If somebody runs out of the bank and yells, “Help! The bank is being robbed!,” he must be a neighborhood crazy person who people just laugh at.

—If the police come, they don’t notice that the historical mural on the wall is actually us, holding still.

—The bank’s lost-and-found department must have a gun that fires a suction cup with a wire attached to it. Also a chainsaw and a hang glider.

—When we spray the lobby with knockout gas, for some reason the gas doesn’t work on us.

—After the suction cup is stuck to the ceiling, it must hold long enough for Leon to pull himself up the wire while carrying the bags of money, the gold bars, and the hang glider. When he reaches the ceiling, he must be able to cut through it with the chainsaw and climb out.

—Any fingerprints we leave must be erased by the monkeys.

—Once on the roof, Leon must be able to hold on to the hang glider with one hand and the money and the gold bars with the other and launch himself off the roof. Then glide the twenty miles to the rendezvous point.

—When we exit the bank, there must be a parade going by, so our getaway car, which is decorated to look like a float, can blend right in.

—During the parade, our car must not win a prize for best float, because then we’ll have to have our picture taken with the award.

—At the rendezvous point, there must be an empty parking space with a meter that takes hundred-dollar bills.

—The robbery is blamed on the monkeys.


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I borrowed this from The New Yorker (because I’m pretentious like that).

Space Invaders from the Planet Virgin!

I can’t believe I have never shown you this. A couple years ago I went to Comicon with my brother and let me tell you, if you like anachronisms Comicon is the place for you.

This is a picture of a bunch of those fake storm trooper things from Battlestar Galactica riding on an escalator.

Awesome.

A Q & A

So people are always writing in to this blog and asking things like, “Why don’t you tell us more about yourself?” or “What do you actually do for a living?” or “Did you make us up as a kind of validation or just to make yourself seem cool?”

Well, I will answer some of these burning questions. You’re welcome.

First, I am trying to maintain an aura of mystery around myself! It’s totally working too. No, actually I would usually rather write these short little non sequiturs of inanity that go on and on about myself. I mean, if I wasn’t writing posts about the wild cocaine orgies at NASA you might never hear about them.

Second, I will now tell you a small bit about my work. I won’t tell you anything specific because I have no interest in getting fired at the moment (though my mother was kind of encouraging it recently because the unemployment benefits keep getting extended on account of the Great Recession, which is apparently what we have named this thing) but I will tell you that what I do is analyze numbers for a credit card processing company. Basically every month I take a whole lot of raw information and I plug it into some database software (Microsoft Access, mostly) and then I do some other stuff and the computer thinks real hard and spits out some more information and then I go through that information and I “audit” it and then once I am confident that all of these numbers have been squished together correctly, I pay people based on the numbers.

It is even less exciting than it sounds. There is also a lot of math. The kind of math that when you had it in high school you were all like, “When the hell am I ever going to need to know this?”

Now you say, “Oh god, that’s what you do for a living?”

“Yes,” I answer solemnly.

“But why are you telling us about this now?” You ask.

“Well, I’m glad you asked.” And I am.

Because I just found this note that I wrote last month. It is written to the guy at work that is the database expert (he tells me how to do the stuff I need to do), his name is Curt and he’s a cool guy.

This is a real note, BTW. This is not some cute thing I wrote for my blog. This is something I was stressed out about.






If you can’t read it because of my richly nuanced handwriting or because the scan is bad, it says:

Curt – Double check if the Volume Variance Report is accurately reflecting the sum of all Net volumes or if Discover still only reflects gross income before refunds and chargebacks.

Yeah, that’s what I do for a living.

The report wasn’t, BTW, but we fixed it.

So that’s what I do for a living.

What was the third question?

Oh! I remeber now.

Yes and yes.

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Weather.

So as you know I live down here in southern California and it has been raining like crazy. Although it has probably been doing the same wherever you are, but that concerns me less.
Right now I am on the third floor of the English Department building at CSU Northridge and below is a picture of what it looks like out the window (I took this on my camera phone)!



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The IRS and also some aliens.

So I don't know if these things are true, but last night I read them in a book (so I am inclined to believe):

A memo written in July 1969 refers to the formation of an internal unit to oversee all IRS monitoring of "ideological, militant, subversive, radical, and similar type organizations." This group was known as the Special Service Staff.

Also this tid-bit:

If the government has no knowledge of aliens, then why does Title 14, Section 1211 of the Code of Federal Regulations implemented on July 16, 1969, make it illegal for U.S. citizens to have any contact with extraterrestrials or their vehicles?

That I found both of these "facts" in a book called "The Paranoid's Pocket Guide" does not mean that these things are lies.

Somebody should look into these things. Somebody who is not me.

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Zeppelin

This is a piece of micro-fiction that I think is funny.

Zepplin
By James Bezerra

‘Zeppelin’ is such a loaded word when you say it because suddenly in my head there is a music video of the Hindenburg exploding over the bitchin’ bridge of “Kashmir” and it is a singularly sweet moment of awesomeness until my brain catches up to my ears and I realize that you are screaming, “Look out! That out-of-control zeppelin is about to crash on top of y







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Context.

Is it insensitive of me to point out that they have not shown a single “Before” picture of Port-au-Prince?
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Question ...

Is it weird that I kinda want to watch that Fame remake that came out like last year?

It's not, right?
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I (James Bezerra) am lame.

So the other day this guy at my work told me (me, James Bezerra) that if I (I, James Bezerra) want people to be able to find me (me, James Bezerra) or my blog (my [James Bezerra’s] blog) then I (I, James Bezerra) need to make sure that my (my, James Bezerra’s) name is in the posts themselves.

So, um, that’s what this is all about. I know it is just about the lamest thing that you have ever seen, but why don’t you try googling me before you judge me, huh? Why do you judge so much? Why are you like that?

Seriously, I’m seriously asking. Why are you like that? Email me (me, James Bezerra) and explain yourself.
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The Onion Makes Me Cry.

Hey do you enjoy laughing at things that are funny? Do you enjoy laughing until you cry all over yourself?

Then check out this article from The Onion:

Scientology Losing Ground To New Fictionology.

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Write a blog post if you’re a yuppie hipster!

So today I realized that the shirt, pants, jacket and eye glasses I was wearing were all Converse products.

My shoes however, were not.
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A Love Letter.

This is my love letter to Violet – which she told me I had to write - whom I love dearly:

Dear Violet,

Roses are red …

Violets are blue …

Sorry if that recent post about grad schools made it seem as if I was excited to get into Florida State …

I totally love you! **




** Even though you totally have said on several occasions that you don’t love me enough to move to Florida.
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Postsecret.com

Post Secret, still the best website on the internet.


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MFA Creative Writing Programs.

So I was just thinking, maybe you were curious what Creative Writing MFA programs I applied to. Here they are:

The University of Iowa
Brown University
UC Irvine
Cornell University
The University of Michigan
The University of Oregon
Vanderbilt University
Florida State University**

Arguably Iowa is the best program in the country. UC Irvine and U Michigan are in the top five. So is Brown, but the program bends toward experimental writing so I have my fingers crossed. Cornell is a very serious (very small) program. Oregon seems liberal and touchy-feely. Vanderbilt has a newer program with some good money. Florida State has an incredibly popular (and blessedly large) program.

So that’s the deal.

I was looking for programs with good reputations, full funding and only two years long.
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**Violet refuses to move to Florida, so if I end up going here I will be single. Ladies.
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A Foto A Day.

If you haven’t checked it out in a little while, take a look ate Violet’s Flickr page. She is doing something called The 365 Project, which basically means that she has to take a picture every single day. It sounds easy right? Well you try it.

She can’t post every day, but she takes pics every day, so check back!

Violet's Flickr
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WTF?

Screw you Massachusetts! And your new Republican Senator too!




Yeah that’s right, he used to be a “model”.

Having Arnold Schwarzenegger as my governor isn’t quite as embarrassing anymore.

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Netflix Your Zip Code!

So you know how you’re always calling me in the middle of the night and whispering, “What is going on with my neighbors? I’m so afraid right now.”?

Well first of all I feel bad that I always hang up on you. Second, perhaps all the screaming and chainsaw noises that you hear next door are just coming from their TV (which probably has like super Dolby surround sound or something).

Maybe they are just enjoying a fun film from Netflix.

“But how can I be sure?” You ask.

“Well,” I tell you, “you can’t.”

But what you CAN do is see what movies people in your zip code are watching!

Click here if you like voyeurism!

Here is what Violet wrote when she sent me this link:

" ... the most popular movie in our zip code is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. In fact, that seems to be the most popular movie in all of Los Angeles County... EXCEPT in Glendale, where Rachel Getting Married is the most popular. WTF?"
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How Do You Like Your Awesome?

Do you like it awesome? I do.

Speaking of awesome, did you happen to catch Neil Patrick Harris singing about how much his character Barney loves suits? It was the on the 100th episode of “How I Met Your Mother”? You didn’t see it? I’m so sad for you. If only there was a website where you could retrieve any video ever and then post it on your blog!

A rose by any other ... something.

How do you like your Shakespeare? Me? I like it performed by people who don’t really know what they’re talking about.

Well the good folks at the Nature Theater of Oklahoma have staged a version of Romeo & Juliet based only on what people remember about it.

Yeah, I’m buying my plane ticket to New York right now.


Read the review! Read it now!

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Thanks to Violet for tracking down this theater company and thanks to
bradfitzpatrick.com (that's where I "borrowed" the cool Shakespeare cartoon from)
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A Thought About NASA & Cocaine.

So sometimes you have to ask yourself, if there is anyone in the world who should totally NOT be using cocaine, who is that person?

Well, I would not suppose to answer that question for you, but I would like to make a suggestion: Perhaps the people who care for and maintain the fricken’ space fricken’ shuttle!

Yeah, so apparently they found a bag with cocaine residue in the hanger where the keep the fricken’ space shuttle. Maybe NASA should knock that stuff the hell off.

Read all about the potentially disastrous fun high jinx here!

This is pretty funny though because just the other day Violet and Mike the Director and I were brainstorming an awesome show about the most unqualified guy to ever work at NASA.
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Thanks to Violet for finding this article!
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Glenn Beck Sucks.

Hello dear blog,

So it has been a while since I have posted, but life has been very busy. It will be slowing down very soon (although not really). For now though, I just wanted to give you this article about Glenn Beck and how he has the same tax problems as the people that he screams and cries about on his show. How do you spell hypocrite?

Here is the link.

Q: Could that guy be any more of a douche bag?
A: You know what, yeah, he probably can be, and will be.

Oh, and just for google purposes: James Bezerra says Glenn Beck is a douche bag and a hypocrite.
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