Raronauer’ed

If women read more than men—and that’s not a hypothetical, it’s a fact—why is every female writer so afraid of creating “chick lit”? Why do books need a male audience for cultural approval?

Everyone thinks Moby-Dick begins “Call me Ishmael,” but everyone is an idiot. It actually begins like this:

ETYMOLOGY
(Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School)
The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.
ETYMOLOGY
“While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by what name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue leaving out, through ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh the signification of the word, you deliver that which is not true.” —HACKLUYT
“WHALE. … Sw. and Dan. HVAL. This animal is named from roundness or rolling; for in Dan. HVALT is arched or vaulted.” —WEBSTER’S DICTIONARY
“WHALE. … It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. WALLEN; A.S. WALW-IAN, to roll, to wallow.” —RICHARDSON’S DICTIONARY
תנים (TaNiYM), Hebrew.
XnTos (kpTos), Greek.
CETUS, Latin.
WHÆL, Anglo-Saxon.
HVALT, Danish.
WAL, Dutch.
HWAL, Swedish.
WHALE, Icelandic.
WHALE, English.
BALEINE, French.
BALLENA, Spanish.
PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, Fegee.
PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, Erromangoan.

So what does whale in Danish have to do with Ahab’s hunt for Moby-Dick?

Throughout the book, Ahab’s obsession with Moby-Dick is rivaled by Melville’s own monomania to describe the essence of the whale. In the end, both are impossible pursuits. Moby-Dick destroys the Pequod and Melville learns that there are a million ways to hint at “whale” but no word, hundred thousand words, to capture its meaning.

This is the existential struggle of communication. So lately, I’ve decided to embrace the futility of language by using emoticons.

I usually hate when people use colons, semi-colons and parentheses to describe their feelings. But sometimes, the meaningless of “:)” is its value. Recently, a friend of mine lost a family friend. Her death was unexpected and, as is usually the case, unfair. Speaking to another friend about this over IM I wrote, “Death is :(”

Of course “:(” is a terrible description of death, but no worse than sad. Death is so much more than either expression, but “:(” at least hints at the much larger and indefinable emotional experience. And in that ambiguity lays some meaning. Or something like that, ;)

When I was in college, we read a story about 12 brides who were wed on the same night. The next day, their marriage sheets were taken out and displayed. Eleven were stained with blood and one was white.

All the students in my class immediately assumed the twelfth bride had previously given it up, while all the other women were virgins. But our teacher pointed out there was a host of possibilities about why that the bride’s sheet was white. The husband could have been impotent. She could have refused him. She could have been raped before her marriage. Anything could have happened on that white sheet, while only one thing happened on the bloody ones.

And this brings me back to The Hills. Though Spencer Pratt is a famously bad English student, he understands the importance of the open-ended narrative. Sure, creating a sex tape is a specific sexual act. But the idea of a sex tape raises a more interesting question: What’s on that tape? Anything from hand holding to furry role playing could be on it. A rumor of a sex tape is much more intriguing than a rumor that Lauren is into erotic asphyxiation.

It’s times like this I’m glad I majored in English.

Who reads The New Yorker?

White people!

Last night, I had a dream starring Spencer Pratt, the villain of The Hills. He and I were kicking at my Aunt’s house for Passover—who knew Spencer was Jewish in my subconscious? In reality life, Spencer allegedly spread a rumor that Lauren, another character/ person on The Hills, made a sex tape with her boyfriend. While I had Spencer’s attention in my dream, I asked him the question that’s always bugged me in my waking life: What’s so bad about creating a sex tape? I understand that if the tape were actually released, it would be humiliating and possibly career ending. But just the act of creating one—surely there are more offensive sexual acts. This is a digital age. People film everything. If I were going to start a rumor about Lauren’s sex life, making a sex tape seems a little tame.

While I’m on the gossip sex beat, ABC News released a statement/wrote a story that Miley Cyrus was “embarrassed” by her upcoming photo spread in Vanity Fair. The pictures were too sexy for the Disney teen sensation. And who benefits from Miley Cyrus being accidentally jailbait? And who owns ABC? I’ll give you a hint: Begins with a D and rhymes with Qisney.

Lest you think my id is all trash, in the second part of my dream, Jhumpa Lahiri boarded a plane I was on and the whole cabin cheered for her. JL was also in my dream last week. My subconscious is such a name dropper.

Image: Pablo Picasso, The Dream

This is the third time in the past month I’ve read about Keith Gessen’s pick-up football game in Prospect Park. Meanwhile, a totally underground and awesome kickball game in McCarren Park Pool gets no publicity.

The omni-tattooted Travis Barker once said, “I tattooed my body so I couldn’t fall back on anything. I purposely did that so I couldn’t get a normal job and live a normal life. I did it so I had to play music.”

Along with the aging process, there’s a problem with this plan: What if Travis Barker couldn’t play music? (I’m not going to debate the merits of Barker’s percussion skills; the fact is Barker has made a career out of drumming.)

When people ask me what I do for a living, I have to say I’m a writer. I don’t do anything else. But I feel like I have all of the tattoos and none of the gold records. That noun implies something I’m not ready to back up. I’m a terrible copy editor and according to standardized testing, in the bottom 11 percent of the spelling population. And I want to define myself by the same noun as the Greats? Please.

There’s a ton of people who have no business following their dreams and would do better to call themselves by the second occupation after the slash. These people may be frauds, but at least they’re courageous ones. In a way, half of being an artist is calling yourself one. Unfortunately, the other half is even harder.

The other day, I bought mayonnaise to make tuna salad. Turns out, I don’t like tuna salad. But what am I going to do with all this mayonnaise? The only solution is to buy more food that goes with mayonnaise. But what am I going to do with the extra eggs?

I would throw a private party at Lexington Candy Shop. Spiked egg creams and cheeseburgers all around!