To McSweeney's, With Love

The following is from a Saturday email to a friend (who oft looks uncannily like Gilbert Blythe and others times--less oft but more recently--like a rebel beach bum without a cause), himself a master blogster: www.sweetlemon24.blogspot.com

(Note: I'm desiring enough to be a regular blogster that I'm going to steal from my own emails. Maybe just this once. Maybe again, too. I know--I never write, I never call, I never leave a message.)



Let's be honest. There's a good chance you've considered all of the following things. But I just had a moment, lying almost flat on my back in my bed in my room, with my head propped up on two pillows and chin resting on my chest, laptop on my lap, which was formed by my knees being propped and bent so-and-so (are you with me?), laughing. I laughed aloud, more than once, more than once.

So, consider.

http://www.ericdsnider.com/blog.php

(which I found from following your link to stupidramblings to his link to Eric Snider's blog)--the entry for Oct. 7 and its attendant link to

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/30CraigRobertson.html .

Which is especially funny because today, when brainstorming with a friend for his Halloween costume, I came across the same website, different entry, and laughed and laughed. (Maybe I just laughed once.)

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/1999/10/31halloween.html

This entry I found because we typed in "halloween costume ideas" or something, and the first three or four pages were (a) silly and (b) the first three or four pages. (In other words, if he'd pulled a costume idea from these pages, and someone else in the ward had also googled for costume ideas and had seen his idea, then it would be a let-down, a disappointment, not a triumph.) So I picked a random high number in the page links (like 9 or something) and la la, McSweeney's.

Heavens, I'm sick. (Literally so.) Which is why I'm convalescing (and lying in bed) on a Saturday afternoon. Let's also ascribe said sickness to my lack of (a) coherence and (b) punch.

Ergo

A short story about the word "ergo."

Ergo is a word I like. I began to use it some time ago but didn't seem to notice much of a response from listeners and would-be listeners. This was okay with me in a singing-to-myself sort of way. One evening last summer, two or three hours into an LSAT prep session at Meridian High, I sat stretched out on an old blue couch in the German classroom where we met, and I said to my teacher (Brent Dunn, family friend and acelsat himself) with an entire class of would-be LSAT-takers as would-be listeners, "Something something something, ergo..." And when I was finished with my comment, Jeff, my would-be friend and erstwhile ride, leaned over to me and whispered distinctly and with an advisorial air: "Don't use 'ergo.' It's antiquated." I almost laughlaughed right then. But I didn't because he'd leaned so close to me, I would have laughed in his face.

I can neither describe nor explain how much I want to hold that sentence in my hands and show it to people. So sometimes I say it to myself as I lie down at night. I try to whisper it like Jeff did. "Don't use 'ergo.' It's antiquated."