December 12
Beer never harshes my buzz. Beer loves me. (Please note: I am aware that Zima is technically not beer, but thanks for looking out..)
People, people. My journal entry of the other day was not about inventing words or phrases. It was not all about me saying "I AM THE INVENTOR OF 'HARSHING MY BUZZ'! BOW DOWN BEFORE ME! ASK PERMISSION BEFORE YOU USE IT!"(for more about this, see note) No, no. Not even a little. It was about the over usage of a word that annoys the living shit out of me, coming from anyone but Pamie, WHERE I HEARD IT USED FIRST. Get it? I do not recall my ever saying that I was the lucky, gifted thinker upper of "harshing my buzz". I don't think I even said "That Pamie is smart, yo! She invented the comma yo!". I will go back and change her being the "originator" of the comma yo if that's what causing people such obvious distress. I will call her the pioneer user. Is that better? Will that make you all refocus on what I was writing about: How horrible, hateful, and irritating the comma yo is to me? Let's take another look at what I mean:
Today, I went out with my friends, yo. We went down to the bar and got wasted, yo. It was
fucking COOL, yo!
My point is not to give credit where credit is not due. It is not to begrudge you, who may have been a yo-er from way back when your claim to yo. It is and always was that comma yo is done to death. Perhaps I am not as hipsterish as the rest of you, but the first time I saw comma yo was on Pamie's page (see first paragraph). It is definitely interesting to me to see how huffy everyone's gotten about the idea of owning a phrase. I would like to be able to say that the journaling community is not teeny and inbred, that we don't all share thoughts and opinions with each other. That everything we ever come up with is sheer brilliance, that we are all deeefuckinglightfully funny all the time. That "borrowing" doesn't go on. It does. This is not my rant on intellectual property. If we were really all this bent about "I own that!" and "I said it first" the little copyrights we all have on our front pages would actually mean something and we'd all be after eachother for infringement, wouldn't we? What I said was merely an opinion. We all have them. We all, as writers, have a right to voice them.The mail I got about this was incredibly funny. Nobody actually really seemed to disagree with the over usage of comma yo. People only cared about pointing out that they used "harsh your buzz" before me. You did! You were first! I am chastised! That's great. Yo still makes me want to fucking kill myself. You can not argue that point away from me.
*Note: From an email I sent out today:
" Because I am ashamed at not having my buzz actually harshed in the 1970s, because I am deeply sorry that I, myself, was not the person who pulled the joint from my lips, turning to my square, unhip friend who was doing SOMETHING to upset me, and say "man...you have to stop...you're....uh....harshing my buzz, here...wow, that sounded pretty cool...harshing my buzz.." I am working on an entire new set of slang to satisfy everyone, so that someday, when people are arguing over whether or not a journal can be responsible for a saying being brought back into the Universal Slang Vernacular--despite the
fact that they did NOT ORIGINALLY COIN THE PHRASE--someone will send me an email reading remarkably like yours, ending with "You weren't the first person to say that!" and I will be able to reply, "Ah, but I was..."
The Issue. The Conclusion:
You all may disagree. You may be horrified and outraged and angry and pissed and want to kick my ass and tell me how arrogant I am, and to that I reply: Settle down, slapnuts. Words are words.
("I've been saying "settle down slapnuts" since 1964, you know!")
And for the record:
I do not use the word "assmonkey" to describe anyone, ever. The exception to my non-assmonkey usage was the time Nicole believed that the Beastie Boys were saying "Ass monkey! That funky monkey!" and not the actual, proper words "Brass monkey, that funky monkey". Other than that, nope. Assmonkey never. Thank you, drive through.
Everything Else:
Tomorrow my grandmother has an appointment to meet with the Cardiothoracic surgeon about her impending bypass(es: I believe she needs 6). I took the day off to go with. This is, I guess, just to find out the particulars. When. How. What to expect (this is her 2nd, I think the fact that she kind of already knows what to expect is tripping her up). And that brings me to a poem I wrote years ago, about her first bypass: (feel free to skip to the end if you're not about 9 year old poems)
1.
you are closest to me now
because i have realized your mortality.
at 17 i visited you in the hospital
with tubes down your throat
i slept on waiting room chairs
& watched someone turn the lights off
in the Empire State Building
2.
i wanted you to be my hero
someone i could rely on with religious fervor.
the morning of your operation
i waited for the anesthesia to take affect
& when it did
you reached up to me
with dilated eyes
blood piss filtered out onto the floor
they wheeled you away though
you & i were both crying
3.
at 17 i knew enough to know
that you were probably going to die
i knew that grandparents did die
4.
i remember walking
hours passing
coffee cigarettes were not yet
a habit too young to drink beer legally
i waited for you & someone called my name.
5.
burn victims, cancer patients,
AIDS babies live on the 8th floor
with my grandmother in operating room #5
i donated blood waiting for your surgeon to
bring me the news like on tv:
"i'm terribly sorry, we did all we could"
instead i see you-
nurses, doctors coffee in hand
& blood
6.
you did not die that day
& in the critical coronary care unit
bloated face oxygen mask
&blood
i knew i would live past 17
So, did you send me mail today? Did I not answer you? Why, that's because I deleted everything in my inbox accidentally. I am a choad. Resend, please.
My machine just crashed, and I lost everything I wrote after the preceding paragraph. I sat here for a full minute trying to remember what exactly it was that I'd written, but since I can't remember, I'll just say that it was fabulous and wonderful. No, seriously. It was. And I don't just say that because I've been drinking beer. For me to start making shit up, I have to have at least a few glasses of wine.
yesterday | home | email | tomorrow
Heh, I'd forgotten all about this song until today.
Cavo and Nene on the mike -- you're gonna like it
check out the presence on stage -- we gotta hype it
you gotta treat your feet to the beat -- you start dancing
create it and innovate it -- you're on a mission
96 degrees in the shade -- you feel the pressure
reggae in your jeggae today -- you're feeling betterwhat is it, what is it, yo? ragamuffin hiphop
what is it, what is it, yo? ragamuffin hiphop
tell me why, tell me why? because we're doing it
tell me why, tell me why? because we're doing it
From Unity 2's first (and I believe only) album, titled, funnily enough "What Is It, YO?!"