day three: Eat your words but don’t go hungry
Whenever a particularly good, interesting or significant email comes my way, I will quickly move it to my “personal” box and promptly forget about it. This is why I have 477 messages in this box. I guess that’s not bad, considering this archive goes back to 1999, but still! Electronic pack-rat am I.
I particularly like to keep little bits of prose that make me happy. Well-written, kind, funny gems that spring from the minds of my pals (and other sources.)
In this installment, we will witness the dry, sarcastic wit (and occasional angst) that is an almost-requirement of those with whom I surround myself.
My darling Andrew had a moment of angst in 1999:
My friends don’t really even pick up the telephone anymore. Bunch of running yellow dog ass bite capitalist parasites.
He goes on:
You know, I am writing you from the public library and I am granted only thirty minutes at a time at a computer. I have erased and rewritten my start time twice now. Stupid ninnies can wait till Mr. Jibbers has had his fill at the dummy box.
Miss you, Mr. Jibbers
From mom, from December 2002. She was trying to entice me to see her for the Christmas holiday:
A BOISTEROUS XMAS IS FAR PREFERABLE TO A THREE OR FOUR PERSON QUIET CONTEMPLATION OF THE NATIVITY.
My favorite quote from the amazing Brenna is too dirty to print here. Instead, I’ll print a very vintage-2000 quote (I had chosen a poor non-profit job over a lucrative corporate gig):
You are doing the noble thing staying in your job. Anybody can be a dot.com whore these days. It’s those of us fighting the good fight, penniless and bitter, who make the world go round.
Eva wrote this after I left that nonprofit job and was scrabbling for work in 2001:
i know you will find a great job cause you are great even if the paper is full of job horror stories. i try not to dwell on it. meantime, i work for shit at festivals and eat lots of rice for supper! fun bohemian that i am!
My sister Ann and I are genetically linked by the condition of birthday angst (and talking about aspects of our personalities in the third person):
My inner child is a pure brat around my birthday. I’d advise you don’t even talk to her about it. Leave her to me. If I don’t strictly control her doings, she rejects everything with a pout. She thinks there is some level beyond, some alternate universe where she really belongs where she is given her wishes, even as she doesn’t even know what her wishes are!
While we’re on sisters, here’s something from my other sister Lisa:
[A friend] has lent me the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (not book of the dead). I am reading Tibetan murder mysteries – spiritual serial killers? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BE PAYING ATTENTION TO???!!
Again from mom. She was pretty obsessed with the holidays, but kept her bizarre humor (2002):
NOW, I’M THINKING ABOUT FOOD FOR 10. DO YOU THINK EVERYONE WOULD LIKE SLIM FAST? ON XMAS DAY WE COULD HAVE HOT SLIM FAST.
There are so, so many more. How I adore my dark n’ damaged friends!
Eywww-right, now that’s one sassy badass. I have grown-up bit though, really.