Memory Lane

Welcome to another installment in our acclaimed series, “Creepy-Ass Topics in Psychology.”  Today’s topic is: confabulation.  This is a common phenomenon, especially during early adolescence; some youngsters will confabulate as many as four times a day, as in, “BRANDON! QUIT CONFABULATING ALREADY! I NEED IN THE BATHROOM!”

No, no, wait.  We are confusing our phenomena here.  Confabulation actually refers to false memory -- in other words, belief in an event that never actually took place.  For example, you might believe you once belched the most voluptuous, earth-rocking belch ever to erupt from any human being who was not either a Metropolitan Opera company member or the late Queen Mother.  However, you would be wrong, because that particular belch was actually belched by my cousin in 2006.  There, your memory is false.  See how it works? In fact, if you believe anything at all, that’s probably just you confabulating away again.

Here's something else confabulation explains: nostalgia.  Exhibit A is the wealth of websites out there eulogizing novelty food products that no longer exist, such as “Shake-A-Pudd’n." I found this product at an astounding website called In the ‘80s, where people gather to remember the products of the era.  For instance: if you want to see an example of true and violent human passion, click at your own risk on the entry for Franco-American Macaroni and Cheese, a discontinued product.  For those who prefer just a small sampling, here are a few unretouched comments from visitors to the mac-and-cheese lament page:

• “The Chef Boyardee version is NOTHING like this icon. It was a sad day when this went off the market.”
• “PLEASE OH PLEASE BRING BACK FA MAC AND CHEESE1 I GREW UP ON IT AND ITS MY NUMBER ONE COMFORT FOOD WHY DID YOU STOP MAKING IT? EVERYONE LOVED IT PLEASE PUT IT BACK IN STORE PLEASE?”
• “I remember this in the 1980's. I can close my eyes and remember the unique cheese flavor.”
• “I'm 65 years old and had been eating F.A. mac and cheese, I think, since it first came out. It was that good. I really miss it and hope it comes back on the market in my lifetime.”
• “BRING IT BACK - PLEASE....”

Clearly, people believe they experienced some sort of spiritual orgasm from eating these products, whereas in fact they probably just shook a pudd’n and dumped it in the trash.  (Psssst, Franco-American Macaroni and Cheese fans: I am not referring to you guys, okay? I’m sure that particular product yielded nothing short of a mac-n-cheesy religious experience!  Please don’t come near my home!  Thank you!)  Anyway, you see what I’m saying? Our friend confabulation at work again.

Exhibit B is an op-ed piece, by writer Joan Wickersham, which appeared earlier this month in the Boston Globe (“Boston’s Only Newspaper Named After A Globe”).  Entitled “My first summer job,” the piece is a gentle ode to our first employments, as teenagers, when we spent most of our time at work screwing up.  Yet – as we did not realize at the time, but would realize later – we were learning Valuable Life Skills that would set us on the Path to Adulthood.  The idea here is that these jobs, however pointless or boring we may find them at the time, are teaching us Who We Will Become.  One day, we will realize how much we owe to those initial shy, clumsy experiences – our first summer jobs.

Now, obviously, Ms. Wickersham speaks (a) from her own personal experience and (b) for a whole lot of people, but let’s face it, there are only two possible explanations here.  One, we are looking at a classic case of mass confabulation.  Two – and I mean no disrespect here – her article refers to summer jobs on the Planet Gwuhhhhhhhhh.  Because summer job nostalgia is unmerited on this planet.  Seriously, why would anybody want to remember summer jobs? I advocate electroshock therapy to avoid remembering summer jobs.  I recommend self-induced concussions, if necessary.  

The piece states: “Summer jobs are a rite of passage […] It’s where we fall down and get up again. It’s the place where we make mistakes — not because we’re stupid or lazy, but because we don’t yet know any better. We scoop ice cream, we bag groceries, we find out what happens when we show up late to walk the dog. It’s where we start to learn.”

Somehow this compelled me to look back at the very first essay I ever wrote for this blog – “How I Spent My Summer Vexation” – from which I present my OWN statement on the same topic:

“Being a summer gig, mine has lasted only 2 1/2 months, but bear in mind this is equal to 387 Customer Service years. … [In] Customer Service (motto: “Smilingly Refunding Your Befouled Froot Loops Since 1805″), I have had the opportunity to perform numerous vital functions, such as: (1) Taking back fetid seafood, (2) Taking back REALLY fetid seafood, (3) Announcing over the speaker to various managerial beings with names like ‘Stan’ that they have a call on ‘405,’ (4) Directing customers to the restrooms, and (5) If restrooms are full, directing customers to the Fresh Maine Lobster tank … Thus, needless to say, my mental state has been such of late as to render me unable to create anything nutritive (or non-phlegm-based)."

Not that I am bitter that I didn’t get asked to be in the “Boston Globe.”  If that IS its name.   

So if you ask me, there’s no question that people confabulate their summer-job memories.  I think the real question here is: Why? Not, “Why would we want to have had good experiences?” but “Supposing they were actually bad, why would we want to remember them as good?”  In other words, isn’t there something to be said for remembering things the way they WERE, especially if they were painful and comical? Sure, those experiences are no fun at the time, but there’s endless material to be derived from them.  Not to mention, painful experiences can actually produce joy, pleasure, laughter!  Especially they happen to someone else! If you ask me, the best kind of nostalgia comes from remembering other people’s pain.  Call me sentimental if you must.

I do want to stress that my aim is not to pass judgment on people who remember their summer jobs as positive experiences.  It’s not mine to say whether those people are confabulating their memories or not.*  But, if you are remembering something falsely, there’s something to be said for exploring that memory and seeing if you can’t come to remember things the way they actually were.  Your life will be richer for it.  I know mine has been, ever since I won the Preakness back in ’77, under the name of Seattle Slew.  

Good times.

---

* They are, duh.

©2010 Nicola McEldowney

Lit for Brains #1: Selling Hope and Big Nate: In A Class By Himself

One of the perks of my summer bookstore gig is occasionally I get to pick some books to review from whatever happens to be lying on the Advance Reader Copy table.  I'm partial to the kids' books.  I'm a bit overdue with these two - I read them on the flight to the Comic Con.


Selling Hope - Kristin O'Donnell Tubb 
It's hard to separate this book's promise from its execution.  On first reading the back cover blurb, I thought it was a neat story idea, and still do.  In 1910 Chicago, with Halley's comet approaching, a 13-year-old on tour with a vaudeville troupe (she plays assistant to her father, a magician) gets the idea to raise some money by hawking fake "anti-comet pills" to terrified townspeople.  However, she hasn't anticipated the emotional consequences that ensue - both for the customers (who cling to the belief that they now have "hope") and for our young entrepreneur (not-so-coincidentally also named "Hope") herself.  Along the way, she grapples with her feelings about her mother's death, navigates her relationship with her dad, and forms a bond with a fellow troupe member, who just happens to be a 15-year-old Buster Keaton.

It's a mixed bag.  The substance and Ms. Tubb's imaginative resources are commendable.  The narrative, on the other hand, is awkward.  Narrator Hope's voice, while distinctive, is labored, making her come across as self-conscious in the way she describes things.  (Furthermore, as an incidental point, I find it hard to buy that Buster Keaton could have been such a bland, vanilla-milkshake presence -- but I admit I wasn't there.)  Despite the problems, it's worth a read: every plot point is tied up, no character is left undeveloped, and whenever Ms. Tubb describes Hope's reactions to Buster, her writing really shines.  Her investment in her characters, story, and research is obvious; the excesses should be taken along with the positives, not automatically allowed to overshadow them.  Decide for yourself.


SNARK-O-METER RATING: 1.5 snarks ("You Might Just Watch The Playhouse Instead")




















 Big Nate: In A Class By Himself - Lincoln Peirce
Having grown up with 11-year-old comic strip antihero Big Nate (although I didn't specifically attend P.S. 38), I'm happy to see the kid get a book of his own.  Although the inevitable comparison will be to Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid and its sequels, I was actually reminded of Marissa Moss' Amelia's Notebook series; Amelia, like Nate, draws her "own" cartoons to accompany the story, and the tone of the humor is not dissimilar.  Both characters have engaging, first-person voices that engage the reader as a friend.


The story is told with ease, humor and style.  Readers may well figure out the ending ahead of time, but it's still entertaining and the story never insults the reader's intelligence.  Personally, I only wished Nate's character had had more of a chance to develop in this book; given that this was a story told outside of the constraints of a daily comic strip, I felt that the character could have had a lot more room to grow.  There's plenty to him; this is, after all, the same kid who created the comic strip hero "Dr. Cesspool."  So naturally he's a sentimental favorite of mine.  Here's hoping we see sequels.


SNARK-O-METER RATING: Bag of Cheez Doodles (because I know Nate would prefer that to bubble tea)

It Takes Balls

As a renowned expert on bowling, I get asked questions a lot. For example: "Are you aware you're not actually a renowned expert on bowling?" At which point my usual practice is to point the other way, shout "LOOK!," give the person a Death Wedgie while he or she is turned around, and then run like hell. So far it has worked out pretty good.

So what is it that makes this sport the undisputed Sport of Kings, at least assuming we are referring to King Brent the Slightly Pockmarked of Hullaballoo, who was known mostly for running around naked, except for a toy stethoscope worn backwards over his head, and impersonating a superhero named Captain Blammo? (This king was a pretty good bowler, you see.)

I will answer that question for you, based on my fairly reliable recollection (without actually having to look back) that there was one. Bowling is the greatest sport because it is the only sport - and I except neither fencing nor "Skee-Ball" from this claim - that you can play in constant proximity to bowling alley chicken fingers ("Made from Parts"), and nobody ever bats an eye.* Whereas if these chicken fingers showed up in other prominent sports - well, I mean, can you imagine? Suppose they showed up in a swimming pool during the Summer Olympics! The international swimming federation would have a fit! The chicken fingers would immediately be made to submit to a urine test. All hell would break loose, and that is not even counting the incriminating photos that would later surface of the chicken fingers engaged in illicit activities with Michael Phelps.

I do not mean to suggest, of course, that chicken fingers are all bowling alleys provide. On the contrary, any respectable bowling alley - any alley worth its weight in those ugly-ass shoes - will also feature: large quantities of crud.

"Harrumph," you are saying. "What about Bowlmor, the bowling alley of the rich and famous, as advertised on the Manhattan subway, with locations in New York's Union Square, as well as Bethesda, Cupertino, Long Island, Miami, and Orange County?"

Good point. You can be sure there is no bacteria in a place where both Paris Hilton and the Olsen twins have courageously lent their names to the bowling cause. I have never personally been to this bowling alley, although I have seen its subway ads many times, usually in between the ads for Minimally Invasive girly-parts surgery and the ads for the grim-faced actors playing lawyers who once fictionally got a $5 quintillion settlement for a Queens man whose face got eaten by squirrels, or whatever. I like the bowling ads best of the three, because they list all the celebrities who have ever bowled there, like this:

MATT DAMON * JULIA ROBERTS * BEYONCÉ * WHATS-HIS-FACE FROM THAT ONE SEASON OF AMERICAN IDOL * THE DALAI LAMA * GALILEO

"You're just bitter," you're saying, "because you suck at bowling. Maybe you should stick to things you're better at, such as picking at your teeth." I admit there may be some truth to this, though my suckage at bowling is through no fault of my own. The blame lies squarely with genetics, as I discovered yesterday upon bowling with my family. To give you an idea of our prowess: collectively, the four of us, bowling two games apiece, could not amass the kind of score your high-octane bowler such as Galileo could amass in one frame.

The blame also lies with the diabolical system known as "candlepin bowling," which is what they have at the local alley here. Now, at every other alley I have ever visited, people bowled with large bowling balls that could - call it a crazy game-enhancing tactic - hit pins. The candlepin system, on the other hand, is designed to ensure you never make the slightest contact with a pin. This is done by (a) making the ball so light and ineffective you could fire it out of a cannon and still not gather enough force to knock down the pins, not to mention that (b) even if you DID somehow gather enough force, the ball is expertly designed to sail BETWEEN even the most central of pins, missing contact with them by mere molecules. It would be considered an astonishing feat of precision if you were to do a throw like this on purpose. (DATING TIP: If you are trying to impress a date, just say you ARE doing it on purpose.) (ANOTHER DATING TIP: If your date is actually impressed by this, you should probably get another date.)

How could the candlepin system be permitted to exist, you ask? Here's my theory: candlepin bowling is the brainchild of crazed, diabolical tiny people (I am looking here at people of the Fisher-Price variety, and those troll dolls, and Regis Philbin) who invented the sport in the interests of watching people of standard dimensions fail miserably. If you ask me, these people hide out in the ball-return machine and scream with laughter every time you miss a shot. (They think they're muffling this laughter. But they're NOT.)

Of course, needless to say, just because you fail at bowling doesn't make you a worthless person. You could be a worthless person for all sorts of other reasons. For example, you could fail at the bowling alley arcade games. I am thinking here of air hockey. Especially if you play it the way I did the last time, namely against my particular opponent, a perfectly docile-looking girl who preceded our match with the statement, "I should warn you: I'm pretty aggressive."

Now in those days, I tended not to pay much attention when people tossed around words like "aggressive." I was not as old as I later became (immediately following that air hockey game). I have little memory of the game itself, except that my opponent played with such astounding, bladder-voiding violence as to make me truly fear for my life. As I recall, it was roughly around the time she sent the hockey puck flying clear through the opposite wall of the bowling alley that I chose to "throw in the towel," mostly because it would have been pretty hard to play in a fetal position. However, I am no weenie; I will have you know I got up from that fetal position roughly last Thursday, which is pretty impressive when you consider that that game occurred in only 2008. My joints are stiff.

When I got up, I'm pretty sure I heard badly muffled laughter from inside the ball-return machine.

And speaking of bowling!

TUNE IN NEXT TIME FOR: Bowling products you don't have. Because you're not cool.

* Speaking of which, I've always wondered: how do you bat an eye, anyway? Wouldn't the owner of the eye complain?

©2010 Nicola McEldowney

San Diego Revisited, Part 3: The Puppet Theatre

Here is the Marie Hitchcock Puppet Theater, in San Diego (official tourism slogan: "28 Days Without a Commercial Airliner Landing on Someone's Head"). Specifically, the theatre is located in the heart of Balboa Park, which is near the spleen of Balboa Park, which is just around the corner from the pancreas of Balboa Park, which is where they keep the Spreckels organ.* The theatre has an interesting story behind it, which I almost never found out because I almost never went in. This was a direct result of the music playing outside, a perky canned rendition of "Sing a Song of Sixpence," sung with such ooey-gooey jollity as to make Barney the Dinosaur look like Darth Vader.

Now don't mistake me (SEGUE XING); technically, I'm all for children's entertainment. It and I go way back, in fact: I have fond memories of taking a car trip, at age two, from Nebraska to Connecticut, while listening to an audiocassette of the cheery vocal stylings of Disney singer Larry Groce, as aided by the Disneyland Children's Chorus, delivering such numbers as "It's A Small World After All."** This is all very well and good,*** until you consider that when you are two years old, your natural tendency is to listen to such tapes over and over and over and over and over and over and OVER AND OVER AND OVER, until the others in the car (because, you see, there are others in the car) are moved to turn to Satan-worship. Chances are everything will turn out okay, though, and eventually everyone will remember that car trip fondly, due to having finally been able to purge the songs from their psyches somewhere around your sophomore year of college.

But there comes a point (your sophomore year of college) when you begin to put aside such juvenile affinities and acknowledge, with affection yet maturity, that they cause you to barf. So that's why (END OF SEGUE XING) I almost didn't go into the Marie Hitchcock Puppet Theatre, but I'm so glad I ultimately did. First of all, I noticed there were puppets for sale. This was extremely dangerous for me because I would go into pretty much anywhere there were puppets for sale, including places with names like Uncle Nick's House of Unanesthetized Open-Heart Surgery and Deep-Dish Pizza.

While I was geeking out over puppets I struck up a conversation with a nice guy who turned out to be one of the theatre puppeteers, preparing for that afternoon's show. Although unfortunately I now can't recall his name, we chatted for quite some time - he was eager to introduce adult puppet theatre to the company repertoire, which I admired - and he showed me around the theatre. I had explained that I was a scholar of the puppet arts, having written a research project in France entitled L'art de la marionnette dans les années 1930 et regards sur aujourd'hui (literally, "DUDE!! There are PUPPETS FOR SALE here!!!")

The Marie Hitchcock Puppet Theatre, I learned, is the oldest continuously operating puppet theatre in the United States (they put the emphasis on "continuously"; some of the other puppet theatres have occasionally gotten up to go to the bathroom). I was shown photographs of Marie Hitchcock, who must have been a memorable figure given that she was six-foot-five ("You can tell because all her string puppets have incredibly long strings," noted the puppeteer). She died in 1994, aged in her 90s, but not before bringing the California condor back from extinction using a condor puppet. I am dead serious (no, sorry, I mean back-from-extinction serious) about this. In the 1940s, the California condor was at the brink of extinction. The condor chicks needed to be fed but couldn't be fed by a human hand, lest they become habituated to it -- at which point they couldn't be introduced to the wild. That was where Marie Hitchcock came in. She built a condor puppet with which she not only fed the chicks, but, ultimately, brought the species' numbers back up to somewhere in the two-hundreds today (which means they're off the endangered list).

The whole thing was astounding to me -- there's a beautiful photo in the theatre hallway of the puppet feeding little baby condors. The only thing that could have made this story better, as far as I'm concerned, would have been if we could have seen the Big Scary Raptors of Tomorrow being fed by:

Which brings me to another point: you never see celebrity puppets doing this sort of thing, now, do you? When was the last time Miss Piggy brought a species back to life? Meanwhile, the true puppet heroes of our society, like the condor, remain totally unsung. It's like how, at a conservative estimate, 103% of American magazine covers feature Entertainment Personalities with names like "Kortnee" who are famous for nothing except rubbing key regions of themselves on yet other Entertainment Personalities. This means that all 103% of these magazine covers feature headlines like "KORTNEE'S BABY JOY!" while, in the meantime, the people of real distinction remain ignored. You never see, for example, Bill Nye the Science Guy on these kinds of covers. This calls for a serious and thorough examination on our part of our deplorable national celebrity culture, which, as a scholar of the arts, I am totally willing to leave to somebody else.

*Ha ha! Organ! See what I did there? Never mind.

** In later years, I would invent a Forbidden Version of this song, but that is to be dwelt on another time.

*** Not really.

©2010 Nicola McEldowney

San Diego Revisited, Part 2: Hero Worship at the Museum

Last week, we visited the San Diego Museum of Art (motto: "See Below for Our Motto in Mexican"), where they have an exhibit on the heroes of Greek mythology. My favorite part was the interactive bit, the bulletin board just outside the main exhibit, which asks the following question:


As you can see, there were many contributions. Here are some I liked in particular:





And, apparently from the opposing camp:





(though I am sorry to say Team Rocket got no love)

And, last but not least, my very favorite contribution of all, submitted by a young person who obviously took the Greek-hero theme to heart:

San Diego Revisited, Part 1: The ComicCon!

I've now returned from the ComicCon, where, defying predictions, I never did contact the dreaded Pony Rot. So I guess I can call it a success. And that's not the only reason: those of you who remember last year's GREAT LOOMING PIKACHU ASS OF DEATH will be pleased to know I found a worthy - if not quite equal - successor in the Great Lego Buzz and Woody:



Let me tell you, these guys were popular. More Con attendees were interested in getting their pictures taken with old B. and W. here than with, say, Angelina Jolie. Side note: curiously, despite being an American and therefore exposed daily to more Angelina Jolie images than air molecules, I would probably never recognize her in person, whereas it took me approximately .05 seconds to recognize MythBusters' Grant Imahara in the crowd outside the convention center, an anecdote I related with great enthusiasm to my sister, a loyal fan of the series:

MY SISTER: Like you even care about the show.
(Beat.)
ME (Cleverly): Shut up.

My other Celebrity Sighting occurred while my dad was doing signings, when some guy from some TV show walked by the booth. I have no idea what TV show or who the guy was, but I am assured it was awesome. So I just wanted to share the experience with you. Thank you.

Here is my father (on the left) at his signing, alongside author Alan Dean Foster:



I will of course refrain from mentioning those four Pibgorn books on the table, available respectively for $26.99, $16.99, $19.99, and $18.99 from Pib Press, pibpress@gmail.com, and not mentioned in this paragraph.

But you and I have not yet discussed the most pivotal, the most fundamental - yes, the most meaningful - part of the ComicCon: namely, finding a lot of perfectly useless products you absolutely totally desperately need NOW NOW NOW. I refer specifically to the following journal, distributed by Chronicle Books, which has cute little anthropomorphized internal organs on the cover. Every home should have one:



I don't know for a fact, but I like to think they have names, like Sally Spleen and Patrick Pancreas. (DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: If you were an anthropomorphized spleen, how would you feel? Do you think it would be difficult to be a girl spleen? Explain.) Either way, Chronicle Books has become hands down my favorite publishing company, easily eclipsing all the other publishers I pretty much never had any opinions about anyway. Not just for the internal organ diary, but for the following notecards, suitable for familial communications:



Thus it is with a heavy heart that I return to "the grind" back east, with an entire ComicCon-devoid year stretching before me, a year of no parasitic bloodsucking supervillains whatsoever, at least not unless I feel like going over to the university Career Counseling Center. So I'm a little melancholy right now, but it'll pass. After all, there's always next year. I'll be back at the ComicCon before I know it.

Who knows: I may even be moved to send you a notecard.

Job satisfaction

I picked back up my old summer job, the one at the candy place. This causes me to cast my mind back to my once-upon-a-time job at the supermarket, my first-ever in an endless succession of mindless Jobz 2 Pay 4 Kolij. That one stands alone, though, in that it inspired my supermarket musical, Aisle Six -- the one that's perpetually Between Readings in the city. (This has something to do with my personally having not been in the city much lately. But I digress.) There was just something, something unique, about the way you'd walk into the store in the morning only to be FWOOOOOM instantly engulfed in a steaming toxic cloud of employee hate fumes, mixed with just a hint of whatever the bakery had whipped up that morning. Of course, as you would gradually realize over the course of the work day, your co-workers weren't just embittered crazed foam-mouthed paranoid loons bent on the destruction of all those around them. They were also - and I say this from the bottom of my heart - generally homely.

All of this just totally screamed musical theatre at me.

Anymore, I think only of the musical itself. The experience that inspired it was so unimportant in the first place that generally I forget it even happened. But the candy store brings it all back. Not because it's similar -- quite the opposite, in fact. I've found it to be an unfailingly lovely, non-aggravating place to work. If I were to write a musical about it, all the scenes would consist of me leaning over an ice cream counter idly thumbing through whatever book I had brought with me. Sometimes - in a true Show-Stopping Number - a customer would come in and buy something. The heart-pounding climax would consist of me washing the store utensils for the night, during which I once cut my finger.

Bummer. You don't want to think that experiences like the former only happen once. Or ... wait, yes, you do.

Job satisfaction: talk about your muse-killer!

Mes chers amis,

My apologies for another long absence. What have I been up to? Reverse culture shock, mainly, and making puppets. As evidence of the latter, I present you: Insecurity Blanket.

(He's the one on the right.)

I've been pondering whether to continue this over the summer as a photo retrospective of stuff from France, or as a sort of what-have-you chronicle of the present, as I've done before. Or both. Any preferences?

In the meantime, they put a couple more of my theatre reviews up (in French) at Allées et Venues. They're a few posts down.

Also, come next week, I'll be contributing to the blog weBEgirls as an occasional columnist, about twice a month. Check back around Wednesday for my first feature, a primer on online relationships.

À bientôt (really).

Nicola

All Better Now!

Hey, New Yorkers: just when you thought your crippling life problems were deserving of legitimate attention, guess what? PHPHPHLBPPHLBTHHHBBBBLBTTTT My, what was that apocalyptic armpit noise? Ah, yes. That was the sweet, sweet sound of Dr. Debbie. Caring.

I don't mean to leave out the rest of you urb- and 'burbanites here; only to recount this latest of gems from Time Out New York, the publication that, through thick and thin, has unerringly been there to provide me with biweekly late-breaking intelligence on which lesser-manicured bodily orifices may be waxed for under $58 at boutiques with names like "Sasha." You can't put a price on knowledge like that.*

Anyway, earlier this month, Time Out ventured into the field of career solicitude, introducing psychologist-person Dr. Debbie, an individual who bravely and single-handedly smashes the boundaries of a formerly staid profession by being pictured in a cartoon booth. As if that weren't enough to convince you of the magnitude of this courageous pioneer's gifts to society, let us consider a nugget of her advice to one of Manhattan's job-seeking, 22-year-old Samantha Ringstaff, determined to become a professional contemporary dancer but forestalled by the combination of toilet-bound economy and cutthroat industry.

Dr. Debbie will make it better!:

"Dr. Debbie says: It's important that Samantha stays positive and focused on her goal. She should create a vision board -- a place where she posts pictures of her goals (dance imagery) and encouraging words (I've made it to Broadway, etc.) -- and look at it every day. She can take ten minutes at different times during the day to recite positive affirmations in the form of 'I am...' (not 'I wish...,' 'I want...'); for example, 'I am a great dancer.'")

Listen up, all you jobless: it's high time you stopped all your wimpmeister whining just because the economy has left you without your weenie-butt "artistic fulfillment" and "intellectual stimulation" and "financial security" and "food." Wallowing time is over! Dr. Debbie commands that you get up off your "butt" (assuming that (a) you can dislodge yourself from the "cardboard box" you now call home and (b) you have not already pawned your "butt" to pay for one delicious, delicious meal of "Slim Jims") and create yourself a "vision board" from whatever materials** happen to be available to you! Then, and only then, will you achieve the goal of each and every job-seeker in these troubled times: namely, you will have a vision board.

ASK DR. SNARK

Q. Well, okay, but what if I can't feed myself?

A. We suggest developing motor skills.

Q. But I sold mine to pay for medication for my small ailing child, Braner.***

A. We feel your pain.

Q. Really?

A. Mmm, nah.

Q. Will reciting positive affirmations really help me achieve job security?

A. It depends.

Q. On what?

A. On whether you are a LITTLE PINK CAAAAARE BEEEEEAR WITH A RAAAAAINBOW ON ITS CHE-E-E-E-E-EST FROM THE MAAAAAGICAL LAAAND OF CAAAAAARE-A-LOT COPYRIGHT THE EIGHTIES, THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY, UNDER POTENTIAL THREAT OF WHOM I SWE-E-E-EAR I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF ANYTHING CALLED A "CARE BEAR," SIGNED, DR. SNARK.

Q. What?

A. We said you should look into the exciting field of new media.

Q. What is "new media?"

A. It is media that is not as old as "old media." As opposed to old media, it is comparatively new.

Q. May I recite positive affirmations about it; for example, "I am a great dancer?"

A. Not near Dr. Snark.

Q. But what if I'm not actually a great dancer?

A. Then the Care Bears, who do not tolerate lies, will have you killed. (DR. SNARK HAS NEVER HEARD OF THE CARE BEARS. DR. SNARK HAS NEVER HEARD OF ANY ENTITY ASSOCIATED WITH THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY, ESPECIALLY NOT THE GREAT FESTERING PIECE OF SNOT KNOWN AS "BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, THE BROADWAY MUSICAL," SO PLEASE DON'T HURT ME.)

Q. But what about Braner?

A. You again?

That is all for today's informative edition of "Ask Dr. Snark." If we have helped but one job-seeker today, we will be very surprised. Not that we will let this get us down or anything, because we are a great dancer.

* Actually, you can: $47.50 at "Sasha."

** Such as, for example, maggot hide. What, does Dr. Debbie have to think of everything FOR YOU???

*** DISCLAIMER: Please be advised that small ailing children are not funny. Unless they are named "Braner."

©2009 Nicola McEldowney

The Snark Ascending

How To Practice Singing When Left Alone At Work (for musical theatre practitioners, or those for whom the workplace is the new shower)

Step 1. Sing loudly in the back room, where no one can see you.
Step 2. Pause every 15 seconds or so, to peek out and make sure the coast is clear.
Step 3. If coast is clear, resume.
Step 4. If customer slips in without your notice, canter out in cheery fashion, providing subtle commentary as follows: "Whoo-hoo-HOO! That RADIO, which MYSTERIOUSLY TURNS OFF whenever I exit the back room, sure does sound like ME, only more INCANDESCENT and TOE-TAPPING, but definitely ISN'T me! What?! Leaving already? Have a good one!"
Step 5. Repeat from Step 1.





©2009, Nicola McEldowney
The Snark Ascending

The Comic Con, Days Five and Six: Now With Less Comic Con

I didn't go back to the Comic Con. Instead, we went to the San Diego Zoo, where we witnessed violent Galapagos tortoise sex (complete with violent Galapagos tortoise sex noises), as well as one particular monkey who behaved in a perfectly urbane manner until her audience consisted of several small children, at which time she decided to display herself brazenly.

So all that was missing was the Pikachu ass.

Also (and this bit was the highlight of my young life so far) I saw a striped hyena. It was sleeping, but still, I saw it:



As my father put it: "You're probably the only person who can see a hyena and go 'awwww.'" I disagree. There have to be a few others. Although being on death row probably makes it hard to go to the zoo.

Meanwhile, the party's over, and tonight it's back to the Deep North, land of ... the place where I work. I'm thinking of riding the giant Pikachu ass out to sea, where we will live in sin in Tijuana. But don't tell anybody.

There's Something About You Next To That Toaster

I opened up the mailbox the other day to learn that 141 New Yorkers wish to "hook up" with me. This is the kind of news that can really boost your morale, until you think of the 24, 495 social diseases you will (at a conservative estimate) contract, and then it is the kind of news that can really remind you to take your Flintstones vitamin.* Naturally the purveyor of this bulletin was Time Out New York, the same estimable publication that routinely instructs its readership in how to do the nasty, something even your standard-issue australopithecine generally mastered without ever picking up an issue of Time Out New York.**

Of course you ask me the obvious question: So if it offends your itty-witty sensibiwwities SOOOO much, whyja keep READING it, HUH? Well, friend, evidently you are unaware that as a highly socially conscious member of the Next Generation, a leader among Leaders of Tomorrow, I answer to an impulse than which there is no loftier intellectual, nay, moral reason: I have a free subscription. Nothing is quite so compelling as free stuff. Take my kitchenware last year, namely, free plastic cups from Subway. I never actually got around to using them or anything, but the point is they were free. Each time I amassed a new one, I would dutifully place it by my bedside, then forget its existence forever afterwards. Though come to think of it, I did awaken each day in the throes of a raging, inexplicable urge to Eat Fresh.

But back to my 141 paramours, all anonymous, all staring out at me from tiny squares on the page, like so many e. coli. No indication of identities, save for an icon indicating each individual's preferred gender (Little Blue Person, Little Pink Person, or combo thereof) and a snappy self-encapsulation, such as this honey, transcribed verbatim:

"I love kung fu movies and sleepy morning sex."

I don't mind telling you I spent some time in straining to wind my mind round this young woman's weltanschauung. I suffered from sleep problems for upwards of twenty seconds before I determined the source of my disquiet. Frankly, I think she comes within a hair's breadth of showing great promise -- if only she went in for sleepy morning kung fu. (Potential life partners take note. We'll talk. Let's do bubble tea.)

Yet this lovely, near-perfection though she may be, pales in comparison to the dude (seeking Little Pink Person) who declares:

"I need a woman who looks sexy next to the stove."

Not that I am suggesting for a moment that we should pigeonhole these people based on one tiny statement they make about themselves. No, instead, we should pigeonhole them based on what I say about them. For example, we must consider the very real possibility that this young man's statement indicates a grave psychological condition whereby life cannot be endured until every appliance in Creation is flanked by the mammal of his choice. Not until every stove is adjacent a woman, every refrigerator a chipmunk, every microwave by a Pygmy Sperm Whale, can he achieve the cosmic balance he so dearly craves. Therefore we should all take care to show certain touches of solicitude toward this tortured soul. For example, we should definitely not make any more totally coincidental references to Pygmy Sperm, which we will quit doing right after this totally coincidental reference to Pygmy Sperm.

But I'll tell you who runs the greatest risk of stimulating New York's loins to Tilt-A-Whirl velocity. That would be the funky mademoiselle (you can tell she is funky because of her glasses) who synopsizes herself as follows:

"Likes include buttermilk biscuits and power ballads."

Sapristi! Could it be? For all our hopes and our dreams, our neuroses and needs, our travels and our education, our pursuits intellectual, artistic, creative, and entrepreneurial -- do we in fact, at our very cores, boil down to a cookie and a song? How am I to deal with this revelation, so unexpected, so sudden, but by clinging to thoughts of you, you and your funky glasses, as they lead the rest of us into a funky future? You open my eyes, La Funky. You are the wind beneath my wings. And the power ballad beneath my buttermilk biscuits.

And yet, no matter how ducky it may look to be such a human specimen, we must bear in mind that they too undergo trials and tribulations, even life crises. For corroboration, let us look to her fictional journal:

Dear Diary,
Could I have been wrong? It eats my soul. I think I'm - I'm - [words obscured by splat of projectile tears] - actually into FIG NEWTONS. What can be next? Is this the end of life as I know it? [smudge of anguished mucus]
And yet -- and yet there's always that little voice in my head, Diary, the one that says I should take up a hobby. Hum. Time Out New York, the publication that tells which body bits to use for sex, says there are free ballet classes on Saturdays. You know, dance, the art form that, while wordless, conveys an astounding wealth of human emotion, communicated entirely through extraordinary athleticism and artistry? Maybe I could ...
... aaaAAAAAaaaggghhh! No! Noooo! What am I saying! Get a hold of yourself! Life is cookies! COOKIES! Gnaahh!! What is to become of me?! Am I to go rogue and take up Mint Milanos? MALLOMARS??? How am I to go on? Life is barren. Maybe listening to a power ballad will make it better. Ahhh, YouTube, bringer of strength -- why, there's my favorite, the iconic 1971 Coke commercial with hopeful young persons singing on a hillside! That's a power ballad, right? Funny how I'm not exactly sure, just for the purposes of this diary entry.
Love,
Me

Phew! What a load off. After all that soul-searching, politics, religion, Little League, etc., isn't it just the most delicious feeling to know we will never need to identify with anything much ever again. To think we might have gone to the extremes of having a favorite book, of God forbid writing a book, when if we'd just opened the right magazine, we'd have known all along that life need not mean more than cookies and ballads and sleepy morning kung fu and sex appeal as measured by appliance proximity. Bless free subscriptions! Without them, how should we ever know the proper way to view existence? And on the back there's a coupon for a free manicure.

* Pebbles, in my case, if you were wondering. And you know you were.

** Instead, they read Time Out Pangaea.



©2009, Nicola McEldowney
The Snark Ascending

Je fais de la snarque

I've begun to master a second language, which is pretty impressive, especially when you consider I never mastered a first. This summer, I have been taking private lessons in my second language, French. This has had a profound effect on my language skills, as evidenced by the following table:


Actually, this is not quite true. The truth is I can remember plenty of words in either language at any given moment, provided I am trying at that moment to speak the other language. Naturally, the time this hits hardest is during French lessons, in which my memory routinely becomes so feeble that I am forced to communicate with my teacher entirely via accent-thingies.

HANDY-DANDY
SNARK ASCENDING GUIDE TO FRENCH ACCENT-THINGIES
(in collaboration with Berlitz)

Which means many of our conversations end up going something like this:

MY TEACHER: Bon soir.
ME: ´^´´^``.

(Translation: "This feels sticky get a load of those pecs this feels sticky this feels sticky get a load of those pecs you have two weeks to live you have two weeks to live.")

At first this bugged me, seeing as I had prided myself on a certain level of ability to go around thinking in French. This only stood to reason; after all, I have watched all 3,359 episodes of French in Action*, the esteemed French-teaching TV series which teaches the language (French) via the adventures of a young woman named Mireille, thereby sedulously communicating the academic principle that Mireille does not wear a bra. So I was pretty stumped about my linguistic issues, until one day I had an insight. It's not that I don't think in French; it's that I think in English at the same time, the result being that any given moment finds both languages warring, battle-bot-style, for linguistic supremacy inside my brain. In a perfect world, this would let up occasionally, so that I could devote my time to nice non-linguistic tasks, such as toenail maintenance, or reading the New York Times. Meanwhile English and French, exhausted from all that activity, would take a nap, or smoke cigarettes. But no. Neither language ever quits.

Fortunately this comes in handy, since I happen to work at an establishment in which many of the customers are Francophone tourists. Which has enabled me to compile the

HANDY-DANDY SNARK ASCENDING PHRASE GUIDE
FOR PEOPLE WHO THINK PARTLY IN HALF-ASSED FRENCH
AND PARTLY IN HALF-ASSED ENGLISH
AND ALSO WORK AT MY PARTICULAR WORKPLACE

(in collaboration with Purina)

You are French, eh? Hah! I spit on your accent-thingies!: Vous êtes français, é? Hàh! Je spittes sur vos thingies d'accent!

Oh. Canadian? Sorry, my mistake.: Oh. Vous êtes canadiens? Désolé, mon badde.

Then perhaps you would like to leave large wads of cash in my tip jar: Eh bien, peut-être vous voudriez laisser des grandes waddes d'argent dans mon jarre de tippes. (25% surcharge Canadian)

No tip, eh? Perhaps you would like to reconsider that decision before I unleash my army of trained wolverines for to feast on your sorry flesh: Bon soir.

And there's no need to be shy. In the context of my workplace, it wouldn't much matter what I attempted to say to the Canadian tourists, who are endlessly polite and gracious when American salespeople attempt their language, and I dare say would guide me through the conversation no matter what ("Oh! Vous spittez sur nos thingies d'accent, do vous?"). The sorriest part, in my case, is that even non-French speakers outclass me in Francophone ability, as evidenced by this recent exchange between me and my sister, who possesses only a casual** knowledge of the language, but is wont in her native tongue to answer all manner of things I say with "So what do you want, a medal?":

ME: J'ai mal à la tête.
MY SISTER (sweetly, after thinking a moment): Veux-tu un medallion?

Nonetheless, even such episodes as this one do not dishearten me in my linguistic pursuits. I am ever content to keep on "trucking," because only with the utmost perseverance can we ever hope to achieve our goals. Or, as the French say, ^^``^`´´´^`´.



* And if by chance anybody else out there has had the pleasure of this experience, won't you join me now: THESE PEOPLE SPEAK FRENCH! IN THIS COURSE, EVERYBODY SPEAKS...
** This means she and French wear T-shirts when they do lunch.



©2009, Nicola McEldowney
The Snark Ascending

Dude, Where's My Hyphen?

There comes a certain occasion for all of us – that terrifying, yet all too magical rite of passage in which, passion flooding our young senses, we lose our hyphen. Not that I wish to name names, but:



I wouldn't know about this, if not for summer vacation. This is just the kind of thing you miss out on in The City, where the urban media are way too busy shoving its sissy-ass “international unrest” and “presidential elections” down your throat to be bothered with the REAL news. The City spits on world dehyphenization affairs, and if you don’t believe me, consider the city motto.*

Of course it’s easy to understand why Wal “Now With Less Hyphens” Mart would want to repackage itself. Back in the old days, the store was a miserable, blue-aproned mega-corpse; whereas now, it’s a miserable, blue-aproned mega-corpse featuring … WHOA-BABY!!! A flagrant lack of HYPHEN!!! In my FACE!!! Somebody restrain me lest I commit BRAZEN CARNAL ACTS with MULTIPLE STORE ASSOCIATES AT ONCE!!!!!!**

So this is a very exciting development in Walmartland, but still, I have some concerns about this act of mass hyphen removal, seeing as it poses a grave threat to the nation’s hyphen resources. So where do you think all those extra hyphens go, anyway? My theory: the economic stimulus package. Clearly, the government is secretly hoarding these hyphens to give to economically strapped individuals in this time of crisis.

Q: Will this provide these individuals with financial security?
A: No.

Q: Will it provide them with jobs?
A: No.

Q: Will it do squat?
A: Yes. Or possibly we mean no. We forget how this question works.

Q: Speaking of these trying times, how about that public library in your town opening an eatery in the reference room, huh?
A: Shut your dirty, interrogative face. Everyone knows the old adage, “There’s nothing quite like going down to the local library and curling up with a good wiener.”***

Q: And speaking of the highly suspicious, how about that song lyric on the radio just now? The one that went, “Why do I see rainbows when I hold you in my arms?”
A: We believe this may suggest a thyroid problem.


It is only natural that desperate financial times should call for desperate financial measures, but in this case the solution is simple: Europe should sell off its excess verb tenses.**** Does anyone realize how many of these there are? French alone has 759 totally unnecessary tenses*****, a few of which I will illustrate here, by speaking English:

TENSE	EXAMPLE
The present	It is raining.
The past	It was raining.
The present-past	It is was raining.
The past-future-present	It was will be is raining.
The present-participle	It is raining participles.
The future-creamsicle	One day, this rain will have a creamy center.
The ablative	(closed Thursdays)
The consumptive	It (COUGH) (HACK) (SPLOIT) raining.
The pleasingly-plumptive	Ten Quarter Pounders, please.

Just imagine if they were to sell off even half their unnecessary tenses. The global economy would swell to bursting. It would conjugate in the pleasingly-plumptive.****** And France would still have plenty of tenses left over for itself. Maybe, if we asked nicely, it would even give us some of the leftovers. Then we could put them up where the Walmart hyphens used to be, like this:



Still: where, oh where, have these hyphens gone? It’s a mystery, and the weight is on our shoulders to solve it. We must, therefore, apply our mystery-solving skills. Not to brag or anything, but at the tender age of 15, I personally watched several episodes of the BBC mystery series "Campion", starring actor Peter Davison. The series illustrates many invaluable mystery-solving principles for one to assimilate, which, unfortunately, I missed because I was too busy assimilating actor Peter Davison. So actually, what I mean to say is, it’s a mystery, and the weight is on YOUR shoulders to solve it.

Which is to say, whew! All this global-ill-eradicating makes me hungry. I could go for some library food. Feel free to join me, if you like. I’ll be curious to hear your take on these matters, inasmuch as my judgment is often questionable. For example, I see rainbows when I hold you in my arms.



* “We Spit on World Dehyphenization Affairs.”
** DISCLAIMER: The Snark Ascending does NOT endorse carnal acts with Walmart store associates. However, bonus points apply if you make it with the Associate of the Month.
*** This has its charm, but you may incur a fine.
**** Duh.
***** Source: Muscle Fitness.
****** Hee! “Conjugate.”



©2009, Nicola McEldowney
The Snark Ascending

The Snarchives 6/13/2008: You Wanna Piece of Me?

Lest you think I lead a humdrum workaday life devoid of action sequences, I will have you know that this past week, in a dramatic act of mediocre parallel parking, I passed the test to receive my driver’s license. Not to brag or anything, but in the state of Maine this is a highly honorific honor, reserved only for the state’s best and brightest, bearing in mind that an estimated 96.5% of those in this category are technically squirrels.*

No doubt you assume this is cause for revelry, and are consumed by the burning need to send me large wads of cash. Thank you. But before I accept them, I should like to point out that I am currently het up** over the whole organ donation thing. I agreed to it because I felt the call that compels every individual, sooner or later, to act in the name of the highest moral obligation to which mankind can respond, namely, it was really easy. All you had to do was tick a box, next to which it said something like this:

X Yes, I am interested in donating my organs, and while you’re at it, please send me more information about Buns of Steel.***

So of course I ticked the box, in the heat of the moment, because it looked really good. Everything looks really good if all you have to do is tick a box. Same goes for anything accompanied by a smiley emoticon. God knows what would happen if we – mere mortals – encountered both in one place. Consider the possibilities:

X Yes, I agree to tongue-bathe the nearest DMV agent’s cat at his/her earliest convenience. :)

It was only as I headed over to get my picture taken that I started to feel like a total doofwad. Maybe it was just the DMV’s particular brand of Insta-Blemish photography (“Now With 75% More Pockmarks!”), but I think it ran deeper than that. I don’t know what it was, but something inside me suddenly huckled tight to the realization that these were MY organs, MINE, accompanied by the need to bellow, “NO! MY ORGANS! MINE!!!”****

This is not to suggest I am against donating your organs. On the contrary: I’m more than happy to donate YOUR organs. It’s mine I want to keep. I like them, and take them almost everywhere I go, such as restrooms, England, IHOP, etc. On the other hand, I can see how, in certain situations, it might be nice to have the option of instantaneously expelling one’s vital organs, especially if this could be effected by a cool trigger-word, such as “COWABUNGA!!!” This could come in handy, in a pinch:

CAPTAIN’S VOICE: Folks, from the flight deck, due to weather conditions, instead of La Guardia, we will be landing in Raleigh-Durham. We apologize for th…
YOU: COWABUNGA!!!!!

I guess this wouldn’t weigh so heavily on my mind if not for my new place of higher learning, esteemed Bolumbia University, and the initiative recently implemented by its president Nick “Baddabing” Baddaboom, cracking down on us transfer students. Oh, sure, they still accept transfer students, but according to the stipulations of President Baddaboom’s initiative, each of us must contribute to the university, prior to matriculation, “a vital organ of youse choice” [sic*****]. Fortunately, the approved list thus far includes phlegm.

All this talk of Bolumbia brings me to the subject of my recent readers’ poll, and the following acknowledgement that the poll was, in fact, totally useless, seeing as I just now decided to place myself in a school that wasn’t even one of the choices:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:
ALL THE STUFF I JUST SAID … SO THERE.

On the bright side, those of you respondents anticipating the burden of a live-in supermarket manager will be pleased to know I now have an alternate use for the members of The Store’s management team. Yes, at first blush it may seem a senseless waste of life, I agree******, but it warms my heart to know that one of the people they help might be you, and if God forbid such dire straits should come to pass, you will be better off with managerial organs than without them, though you might at any time experience a sudden, raging thirst to page for clean-up in aisle six. Me, I will be out engaging in action sequences, so whatever you do, just don’t page me. Not if you know what’s good for youse.






*In some cases licenses may also be awarded to, in the words of the Maine driver’s manual, “certain varieties of moss.”
**This is a temporary fix. It is because I am currently facing toward Bangor. Later I will face toward Boston, at which point I will be het down.
***Of course they will expect you to donate these, too.
****This is a great conversation-starter at parties, once the shrimp cocktail is gone and there is nothing else to do. Try it! You’ll be amazed how fast a conversation will start!
*****Latin, meaning “sic.”
******Honestly? I can’t get too worked up. All those dweebs ever did was price Hamburger Helper.


©2008, Nicola McEldowney
The Snark Ascending