Since I'm doing so much other cut n paste today, I decided to do go all out. The following is a bunch of random stuff, written at various points over the last few months. Basically, every time I wrote something that amused me, but didn't quite fit into whatever I happened to be talking about at the moment, I put it into a special file. Maybe every few months or so, I'll run an entry of nothing but these rejected scraps.

***

"James Bong is a master of disguise." It's funny because it's true. Every single time Rigid says it, I crack up. James Bong is about three feet tall, I think, and he can hide absolutely anywhere. It's uncanny. He wears a lampshade sometimes, and he looks Just like a lamp!

***

I'm not totally sure of the etiquette here. Is it cool if I just come right out and say "Hey! Go sign my new guestbook!" That seems really tacky. I shouldn't have to point it out. It's there. If you want to sign it, you will.

I was thinking for a while about writing a long elaborate entry about The Day I Made a Guestbook. But then I realized that wouldn't detract from the tackiness, and would also be incredibly boring. Everyone who reads this could probably do it too. "Yeah, I cut n' pasted some HTML today. You may kiss my hand."

Then I tried being silly. "Madly I typed! And oh, the tension! The sweat pooled off of my cramped fingers! What, for the love of God, was my Zip Code?"

***

So, I suddenly had this real audience, composed of real people. And in my fevered brain, their numbers were swelling daily. Surely, They would tell someone! Maybe it wouldn't be on purpose, but eventually, it would get back to someone I didn't particularly want in here. It was just a matter of time.

I did a lot of thinking during those weeks. Eventually, I decided it didn't really matter. I was, after all, writing in a public forum. I wanted readers. I wanted thousands of people screaming my name, and praising me effusively, and forming cults around me, and maybe even draping me with their sweaty underthings. Only the nice ones, of course. I suppose eventually I could have hired someone, a "Vice Secretary of Sweaty Underthings" to go through all of it for me, and make sure only the disease-free and not too smelly ones actually touched me. But I digress

***

Here, there is no on-site laundry. Laundry here involves lugging my overfull basket down a staircase barely as wide as the basket and out to my car, and then driving to the laundromat. I have a lot of issues with this.

1)I don't want to talk to you. I brought a book. The last time I went, I was reading The Alienist. This guy comes up to me, and asks me if it's about aliens. I blinked.

"Well, I'm only about 30 pages into it, but so far, I think it's more about a psychiatrist at the turn of century."

When I got home, I asked D. if he knew that psychiatrists used to be called alienists. He hadn't known that either, so maybe Guy wasn't a complete moron. But I knew it. From my point of view, I was sitting there, really getting into this book, absorbing the atmosphere, reading about carriages and Teddy Roosevelt and 1890's New York, and this doofus comes up and starts babbling about aliens.

***

It was an American Psycho Christmas. I picked up the DVD and the book. I'd been obsessed with the movie for about a month. I must have seen in five times in a three week span.

I started reading the book the other day. I'm about 3/4 through it right now. It's very bizarre. You know how whenever there's a movie made of a book, and you read the book in a class, you then get to watch the movie and spend a period discussing the subtle differences? Well, the comparison/contrast for this puppy could go on for an entire semester.

Paul Allen just got killed maybe 20 pages ago. Everything happens in a different order. It's totally screwy.

Some people and elements are condensed for the movie, and some were left out entirely. He just had the "Pumpkin, you're dating a tumbling tumbling dickweed" conversation with the wrong person.

I can see why all this happened, stylistically. It's easier to follow the plot if there are less main characters involved. It's just messing with my head.

So much was left out, though! I loved the way all the interchangeable yuppies react to each other in the book. They have long conversations about bottled water and suspenders and where to be seen this week. Everyone is mistaken for someone else at some point. There's a little of that in the movie, but I would have liked to see more.

The book is also far more graphic. There's bodies all over the place, in plain sight, in his apartment. He wears someone's head on his cock for a little while. He removes eyeballs and mutilates bodies.

Granted, a lot of boring stuff was taken out too. He always lists exactly what he and every single person he sees is wearing. Yeah, it's satire. Yeah, it shows exactly how obsessive and insane he is. But it starts to wear a little thin.

It's also better stylistically, that his friends know nothing about his private life. They shouldn't be saying things like "Are you talking about Ted Bundy again, Bateman?" He shouldn't go to a Halloween party dressed like a mass murderer. It wasn't clever that he had real and fake blood all over himself. It was trite. It was going too far. I'm glad that stuff like that was cut.

I also really appreciate what the director did with the music reviews. In the book, they just sort of happen. Out of nowhere, there's suddenly a chapter about Phil Collins. It was nothing short of genius for the director to have Bateman always start talking about pop music just before he does something really fucked up.

previous--next