Pants!... and Other Things

I bought pants!

... I felt that was worth mentioning.

I had a moment, while shopping for pants, of near panic. I had picked up a pair of black jeans that I didn't think I wanted, and suddenly thought, "Wait. Do I want black jeans? Are black jeans good? Are they stylish? Will I have any friends if I wear black jeans?"

I called Sheena. "Black jeans," I said. "Yes or no?"

"No," she told me. "No no no."

"Oh. Ok," I said. "That's what I thought."

"Are you buying pants?"

"Yeah."

"You should get cords."

"Oh, yeah. Ok."

I went looking for cords, feeling content and happy that I had avoided buying jeans that I hadn't really wanted. This feeling lasted for about three minutes when, after wandering around the store a little, I realized that I had no idea what cords were, panicked, and bought more jeans.

I am everything fashion is not.

I came back from pants-shopping to find my brother watching "The 99 Most Bizarre Surgical Accidents." I sat down with him for a few minutes. The narrator, suitably grim-voiced said, "Kelly went in to get stitches removed from her cheek."

Kelly piped up. "I was supposed to go in and, uh, right out, I was supposed to be able to go back to work the next day."

The narrator came back. "But what was supposed to be a routine minor surgery became life-threatening when, using a cauterizing tool, the doctors set her face on fire."

My brother and I sat up.

He turned to me slowly and said, "That's ridiculous."

"I know!" I said, "That's the sort of thing you threaten your friends with, because it can't happen. Your face isn't flammable."

"Well, it's better than what I watched last week."

"What was that?"

"101 Things Removed from the Human Body. Two."

Maybe real-life is only stranger than fiction because we make a conscious effort to make real-life (or, at least, the real-life you see on TV) the craziest shit imaginable.

(Now they are talking about accidentally removing a man's penis. This is quickly getting very upsetting. Oh, good, they're ending on this story. Wait. They're ending on this story?!?)

----------------------

I've said it before, but I've a feeling I'm being ignored. You will (I compel you, I command you) watch The Amazing Screw-On Head. This isn't a question, or a request. Do it.

Eunoia by Christian Bök (brought to my attention by the unstoppable W) is a remarkable book, and probably the most stunningly and carefully crafted piece of writing I've ever seen. The concept is simple - write five chapters, each dedicated to one of the vowels. And in each chapter, use any of the consonants but only use that vowel, and not the others. Which means that Chapter A only has words that use 'a', Chapter E uses 'e', and so forth.

An example from Chapter A: "Awkard grammar appals a craftsman. A Dada bard as daft as Tzara damns stagnant art and scrawls an alpha (a slapdash arc and a backward zag) that mars all stanzas and jams all ballads (what a scandal)."

It took Bök (who calls himself an artist, performer, writer, and pataphysician) five years to write it, and it went on to win a bunch of awards and generally be damn amazing.

The point of this is that the whole text is free online. You can read it here. You really should.

Finally, I'm afraid that you really, really have to watch this.