I just got back from New York. I met with a bunch of people about Awkward Press and we had our first reading. The reading went gangbusters. I read a new story called “The New Words.” It was nice to hear an audience responding to my writing, because I rarely get feedback from large groups of people. It is a solitary life, the life of a writer. On the positive side, it makes me a deeply serious and fascinating person.

It was strange being back in New York. The weather was awful. According to my friends, New York had been going through a heatwave all winter. I was there for the one week that the weather sucked. This is an example of a message from God. It was great to see all of my friends, though. I don’t have a lot of friends in L.A. I also don’t drink as much here.

One day, Sarah and I were eating bagels at a bakery near our hotel. The hotel wasn’t really a hotel, it was an apartment building that rents out apartments as hotel rooms for $120/night. It’s the most fabulous deal in New York, but I have been sworn to secrecy by Sarah, who does not want outsiders coming in and taking this fabulous secret place away from her, like they did with Brooklyn.

While we were eating our bagels, a group of four 12-13 year old girls entered the bagelry. They rushed in the door en masse and staked a place at the table next to us. Each girl had long, blond hair, and they were dressed like they were coming home from an expensive private school. It was only 11:00 in the morning, though, so I don’t think they were coming home. They didn’t seem the type to skip school, but I don’t think we were in the midst of any major holidays. There was something in the way they rushed into the restaurant and immediately went about their business that made me feel they were under a time constraint, but I can’t imagine a school letting a bunch of 12 year old girls roam about the city at lunch. The entire experience was a study in contradictions.

The girls sat down at the table and leaned in to each other conspiratorially. The shortest girl, who I decided was the leader, removed a folded square of notebook paper from her pocket. She unfolded the paper purposefully as the others looked on in anticipation. These girls knew what they were here to do. She began to read:

“Penis Pan.”
“The Penis Puff Girls.”
“The Penis of Penzance.”

And so on and so forth, all the way down both sides of the paper, one title per line. In each case, as a clever reader might have ascertained, they had taken the name of a popular film, television show, or other cultural touchstone, and replaced one word in that title with the word “penis.” For example, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants might become The Sisterhood of the Traveling Penis. This is not actually one of the titles they came up with; I use it only as an example. Most of the titles lacked this degree of sophistication (for example, “The Penisons” and “Two and 1/2 Penises”), but I didn’t hold it against them. Everyone has to start somewhere.

After it was all done and giggled through, the leader looked up from her paper. “That was dumb,” Sarah heard her say. The other girls, who had been chattering and laughing excitedly throughout the list, reluctantly agreed. They broke apart and went to the counter to order bagels as if nothing extraordinary had happened.

The most interesting thing about the experience to me is imagining what led up to the reading. The girls had clearly complied the list together. Whether it was composed in a moment of spontaneous creativity or had taken several weeks of hard work, I don’t know. But it was clear that the list meant something important to them. Substituting the word “penis” into titles was an activity they all enjoyed together.

I picture it like this: at some point in the recent past, there had been a spark of inspiration that led one of the girls to create the first “penis” title. The other girls followed suit. They began compiling their titles, digging deep into their imaginations to create at least enough titles to fill both sides of a sheet of college-ruled notebook paper. Maybe there had even been rejects along the way. And most fascinating: eventually, someone had to decide they were finished, and then someone else had to suggest, “let’s write them all down on one sheet of paper and read them out loud.” They had walked in with purpose. They didn’t sit down and say, “hey, we’re all assembled together, let’s read that penis list”; they knew before they walked in the door that they were going to read it. I can’t say they planned it out to the letter … it’s possible that the actual location had no significance. They may have all spontaneously decided “we must read the penis list, now!” and landed on the bagel place by coincidence. Or maybe this was something that occurred regularly. Perhaps they met at the bagel place once a week to refine the list.

I will never know what led to the creation of the penis list, or what happened to it after the meeting, but it is something that has touched my life forever. Now that is one beautiful mystery.

This is real.

From psychologist Michael Welner, regarding the tape of the VA Tech killer:

“I think that’s very important for the viewing audience to understand. This is not him.These videos do not help us understand him. They distort him. He was meek. He was quiet. This is a PR tape of him trying to turn himself into a Quentin Tarantino character,” Welner said. “This is precisely why this should not be released. Parents, you should cut the pictures out of the newspaper. Do not let your children see it. Take them out of the room when these videos are shown. Because he’s paranoid and his agenda of blaming the rest of the world is unedited.”

“There’s nothing to learn from this except giving it validation. If this rambling showed up in an emergency room, my colleagues and I would listen carefully and, when we reflected that it was delusional, would go see the next patient and start the medication,” he said. “This makes it sound like he was tormented. He wasn’t.”

I totally agree. Dude should not be celebrated. All anyone is doing is making a pathetic nut job seem deeper than he really was. So that other disturbed nut jobs out there can feel as though they, too, would be vindicated by going on their murderous rampages. It is the ultimate case of Life: The Movie. Fame was more tangible to this guy than death. I don’t know what he thought he would be getting out of his sick media stunt, but he did not get it, because he is dead.

In my adult life, I have never owned a pet. My family had a dog growing up, Pepper. He was hit by a car when I was a freshman in high school. We inherited a rabbit named Cadbury a few months later. I was supposed to take care of Cadbury but it pretty much ended up being my mother’s responsibility. Cadbury had chronic diarrhea and every time we took him out of his cage he would flee from us in terror. He lived until a ripe old age out of spite and hatred for us.

Last night, Sarah brought home a dog named Daisy. She is not our dog. We are taking care of her for her owner, who is away on vacation. She is a very adorable and friendly Corgi.

Unfortunately, we are learning that even adorable and friendly dogs require some amount of attention. Our first trick last night was to figure out where she was going to sleep. She has a cage, but she does not like being in it. I can’t blame her. We left the door to her cage open and decided to let her make up her own mind about where she would spend the night.

It didn’t take her long to figure out where we were and that she had to be there, too. Although she’s a tiny dog, maybe 1 1/2 feet long, she can still take up a lot of space when stretched out on a bed that’s meant for two people. After about an hour of tossing and turning, we decided to put her in the cage.

Two fitful hours later, Daisy began howling something awful.

“I can’t listen to this,” I said to Sarah.

Sarah reluctantly got up and let her out of her cage. Overjoyed at her new found freedom, she immediately scrambled out of the living room and into our bed. She wiggled her way up to our pillows and attacked us with dogged enthusiasm.

“This dog is an asshole!” Sarah announced, in desperate need of sleep.

We all eventually fell asleep, although it was not entirely restful. That extra foot and a half is apparently crucial to my favored sleeping position. Throughout the course of the night, I would awaken and move Daisy’s legs into a better position, only to wake up a half hour later and find her sprawled out in my spot and myself teetering desperately on the edge of the mattress. I suspect that while I was sleeping she was fighting back by moving me into positions that were more comfortable for her.

Something seemed fishy to me about the fact that I was able to go to Target.com and order a Wii the other day. They just wrote me this morning to say that the order won’t go through until the beginning of January. I somehow had a sneaky suspicion that the order wasn’t going to go through.

So, I am back to square one. Ah well. It is over for now. I’ll wait until February like the rest of America.

First off, let me say that I really hate the word “blog.” I never wanted to refer to this website as a blog, even though that’s exactly what it is. They really could not have come up with a more awkward and negative sounding word to describe personal websites. Say it to yourself — blog. It just sits there like a nasty, smelly lump. After saying the word blog, you really don’t feel like talking anymore. The sky turns grey and chickadees turn into vultures.

The source word from which blog is taken — weblog — is nicer sounding, but a little cold. A computer engineer would create a weblog. “Journal” doesn’t fit the bill either. Online journals are often filled with too much information. I don’t like to open up a friend’s blog and read about how depressed he’s feeling or how he’s been constipated for the last three weeks.

That’s point one: gotta find a name that is not “blog.” Point two is: what am I doing here? The original purpose of putting together this new website was so that I could update it easily. My last website was all hard-coded, and it was a pain in the ass to do anything. Word Press allows me to log on from anywhere in the world and add new things to my site. As a writer, of course, I like writing, and it’s nice to have someplace to put my writing that feels at least slightly more productive than squirreling it away on my hard drive.

But there’s no real theme, which is a problem, especially if I ever hope to grab someone outside of my extended circle of friends. Com$tock’s site has a great theme: science and video games. My theme is “things I find interesting.” And they aren’t even well-hidden things … do you see those sites on the right hand side of the page here? Those are the sites I go to. Boingboing, Salon, Neatorama and HuffPo are pretty much fueling my entire knowledge of all things interesting. You could just bypass the middleman and read those sites yourself, if you were so inclined.

Yet, once you get started, it’s difficult to stop, and once you stop, it’s impossible to get started again. Sarah and I had a blog when we first moved to LA. We stopped. Now, it is sadly lying there in the Blogspot universe like a drunken cow who cannot raise itself back on its feet. For months, people would say, “when are you going to update your blog?” And then you get into the whole trap of having to start each post with an apology for not writing earlier … this is a trap into which I am determined to not fall again. So like it or not, audience or no, I will continue to update this site. It could be something as inconsequential as this post, something that you will get to the end of and say, “why did I take the time to read that?” Or it could be something so monumentally hysterical and life changing that you will shower me with praise and email me off to all your closest friends. The only way to know for sure is to read every damn word I write.

Is that too much information? I don’t even really know anymore. My life has become my blog (for lack of a better term). If all goes according to plan, my entire identity will soon be moved online, and my body will be propped up in a corner somewhere, collecting dust. If you want to interact with me, just visit jeffreydinsmore.com.

Oh, gadgets. How do you infuse yourselves in my brain, rendering me incapable of any other thoughts? The Nintendo Wii-lust is strong right now, my friends. Particularly since I insist on torturing myself by continually refreshing the Amazon forums, which is filled with parents freaking out about their inability to get the material goods that will finally make their children like them.

Here’s what I’ve learned from the savvy moms and dads of America: Wal-Mart and CompUSA have plenty of product, but if you’re going to buy from them, you have to buy the Wiis as part of a bundle with 6 other products. Which brings your total from $250 to $600. Not my preferred route. Some customers have had success ordering the bundle and then canceling everything except the system. If you want to engage in these kind of high-level shenanigans, you be my guest. Me, I’m using it as an opportunity to develop self-control. The other news is that 2 million units are to be shipped to the US before Christmas. The debate rages as to whether that’s a lot or not many.

Sarah played it in New York and said it was “fun.” She went on a week-long vacation, and the only thing I was interested in hearing about was her video gaming experience. That’s how bad it’s gotten. But I must be calm. I must take deep breaths and tell myself, “it’s going to be okay.”

Damn you, Nintendo. Why can’t you be like any other product and just be available for consumers to purchase?

I’m watching David Letterman right now, which I haven’t done in many moons. I grew up with the impression that Letterman was the cutting-edge of comedy. It’s odd to watch the show and realize that what was once cutting-edge is now the norm, almost corny. Do the kids of today watch Letterman the way that I watched Carson, as an old guy who my parents might like but who didn’t really speak to me?

Another thought, which I read somewhere else before: it is interesting that the way to show appreciation for a good joke is no longer laughter, but applause. It’s not enough to think a joke is funny, you have to act as if it’s the BEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO YOU.

Com$tock has the shocking story of the half-dog/half-cat hybrid that is guaranteed to be a prime stocking stuffer this Christmas.