I just found out the name of your best friend

[substitute]

I nearly got into it with the cigar guys again today. They almost literally bray their stupid little hates for hours on end. As they were leaving (and leaving a mountain of ash, dead newspaper, and wrappers) one of them said "What, is this Friday?" and I said a bit too loudly "I DON'T KNOW, I HAVEN'T WORKED IN 20 YEARS EITHER!"

One of them emitted a noise about "journalistic integrity" and I laughed directly at him. He thought I was laughing with. I said: "Did you say what I think you said? That's hilarious!" "Well, it's just going by the WAY SIDE!". I told him to go read Mencken from the 20s about "journalistic integrity". What a tool.

And now, an Ann Landers Moment:

Confidential to Crampy in Carson: If you didn't drink so many alcoholic beverages every night, you probably would have less problems with insomnia, headaches, and mood swings.

Confidential to Moody in Marin: Your fluctuating "energy level" may be improved by changing the behavior pattern in which you start the day with 4 cups of coffee and don't eat until 9 pm, at which point you pasta-binge.

Confidential to Hoarse in Harrisburg: If you read more books and listened to less talk radio you'd make more sense and fewer people would yell at you.

hydrozoa is right. I'm a terrible writer. One thing about livejournal as a medium is that no consistency of voice is enforced, so I'm Holden Caulfield Jr. one day and an enraged Abe Lincoln the next. I should be more disciplined.

Got any gum?

Comments

[brianenigma.livejournal.com]

That gum I like (Black Jack) is coming back into style. The retailers seem to haul it out every holiday season.

You are a most excellent writer. LiveJournal as a medium not enforcing consistency is a good thing, in my opinion. It lets you be a bit more experimental, if you want. My journal entries tend to be very matter of fact "today I..." type stuff, but the ephemeral and intermittent nature of LJ let you do all sorts of stuff because people do not expect it to be consistent. If an entry is sandwiched between "Billy looked at me in Biology; I think he likes me" and "The sadness of my soul darkens my bleak life, which flows like a weeping river of blood and darkness," on someone's friend page, they will not have the attention span to realize that your previous entry was written in a different style. If you want consistency, write a novel or collection of short stories. There are still a few more days left in the "Write A Novel" month!

[chaptal.livejournal.com]

It's your journal. Yoo can be as consistent as you wish. I think the more your write, though, the more consistency one can acheive.

You're quite observant, I enjoy when you write about ehe characters you witness.

Hush, you.

[redmaenad.livejournal.com]

Your voice is perfectly consistent; it's your emotional and psychological perspective that changes constantly in your entries. This fluctuation may be personally detrimental, but it works to great effect in your writing (and, hell, in literature in general--look at Ulysses, or the Waste Land.) The only time changing voice is a problem is when it's a result of stupidity or lack of control (like changing dialects mid-paragraph,) which is certainly not a problem with you.

Though it makes me feel great shame for my own writing, I always look forward to reading your entries. :)



P.S. I FEEL IT...I FEEL THE COSMOS!

Consistency

[torgo-x.livejournal.com]

Naked Lunch was pretty iconsistent -- but I think it worked great.

[nickjb.livejournal.com]

"Consistency is agianst nature, against life; the only completely consistent people are the dead"
Aldous Huxley

[nosrialleon.livejournal.com]

"Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds"
- Lewis Carroll

almost

[substitute.livejournal.com]

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" is a great quote, but it's from Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self-Reliance.

to be great is to be misunderstood

[citizenx.livejournal.com]

I still have the copy of Self-Reliance I had to study in high school.

So much better than Thoreau (because Emerson wasn't such a massive tool).

[frobisher.livejournal.com]

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

- Walt Whitman

[nosrialleon.livejournal.com]

That's how I should have responded. At least I remember who said THAT.