Blog ‹ Claire Dunnington, Writer

There are too many things that I hope happen in the world in 2018 that are depressing enough and obvious enough not to list. That said, I really need 2018 to bring me

1) a better approximation for “is not equal to” than =! (because really, that should be interpreted as a joyful shout of “EQUALS!” or “is excitement!”)

2) a past tense version of that sign. I need this both for a keyboard and also just for any written communication. “Is not equal to/does not equal” is not the same as “did not equal/was not equal to.”

Please! I’ve been good. Or decent. Though decent =! good.

(See, I really need it. I’m going to buy it in stamp form.)

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I intended to write this…I think before Halloween.

With reading, I’m something of a completionist (I think the number of books I’ve started and not finished is five or fewer, and most in the past couple of years). With writing, clearly, a procrastin…ist.

Anyway, as I was doing live-DJ yoga and thinking about mashup titles, I was also thinking about graphic design and visual puns. Their analogue re: sound is obvious–mixes–carrying on the declaration of “This thing looks like this other thing,” but with music. Sound, of course, also gives us puns.

So we’ve covered vision and hearing. Food contributes double: in terms of taste with things like herb substitutions, and visually when people do things like make mashed potatoes in the shape of cupcakes. So sight, sound, taste. What about touch and smell? All I’m coming up with are: peeled grapes as a Halloween-time petting zoo substitute for eyeballs, and durians smelling like…well, a whole heap of things that are highly unrelated to durians or any fruits.

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I do listen to (aka read) the news, as grotesque as it is these days, but I will say I prefer listening to people talk on the subway, like the pair of older women I sat next to the other night. They must have just come from a reading; one said “I’ve never understood singing–I mean, I understand why YOU would want to hear yourself sing, but why would *I* want to hear you sing?” The other shook her head and muttered, “Everyone just writes about orgasms these days. I’m tired of hearing about orgasms. They’re great–done. Write about something else.”

As we neared my stop and I stood to depart the train, I heard a snippet of conversation that ended with “So there he was, lying prostate on the floor…”

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Okay, it’s a lie. But I do love overhearing conversations like this:

Woman 1: They should make a movie out of his life story.

Woman 2: Would Troy be in it too? With all of his womanizing?

Woman 1: He is a SOCIOPATH.

Pause

Woman 2: Man, I’m going to go back to work and my fish is going to be dead.

Woman 1: You have a fish?

Woman 2: Just the one beta. You know, the kind that looks like it has a mohawk.

Woman 1: I thought you didn’t like anything breathing except humans.

Woman 2: Fish don’t breathe.

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Looking back through my (very…extensive) computer diary, which I started at age 16, I found an entry from my freshman year of college that begins, “What, March already? I’m going to wake up tomorrow and be thirty.”

OKAY THEN

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The Idiot, by Elif Batuman: Someone recommended this to me after reading my book-in-progress, though it would have been a delightful recommendation regardless. It’s my pick for my office holiday party book exchange.

A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman: Very…treacly. Too twee for me, though I understand the appeal, I guess.

Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead: Brutal and brilliant. I LOVE the conceit of a literal railroad.

Prosperous Friends, by Christine Schutt: This was quick, captivating, and totally depressing.

The Story of the Lost Child, by Elena Ferrante: I finished this, the last of the Neapolitan novels, the same evening that I watched this season’s Rick and Morty finale, so I spent the remainder of my waking hours in existential despair. I want to reread the first two, but I think The Story of a New Name remains my favorite.

Man v. Nature, by Diane Cook: My former classmate’s short story collection–I LOVED this so much.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie: I’d never read this before, but recently assigned it to my seventh-grade student. I’ve been having her track the repeated imagery having to do with transportation, outer space, and natural disasters throughout.

Shakespeare: The World as Stage, by Bill Bryson: I came around to this by the time I finished, though I found it a little thin. Bryson is a very likable narrator, but I wasn’t dying to get home and read it. Also, the type is really faint! My eyes…

Ghosts of the Tsunami, by Richard Lloyd Parry: Really amazing, though the word “amazing” feels wrong, of course.

The Vegetarian, by Han Kang: Technically still reading this one. It’s the perfect subway book in that it’s slim, but because it’s short, I feel I have to take another book with me in case I finish it…so I guess that negates its merits as a subway book.

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I’ve never done very well with Novembers. It’s the darkness, the cold, and the lack of sparkly markers of time (I know–Thanksgiving–somehow it doesn’t have the same effect as Christmas lights). I tried walking around my room just muttering “hygge, hygge, hygge” as if I could summon it, but that didn’t do anything (YET).

So I’ve been playing scrabble online, reading, and whenever the temperature shifts back to the 60s, pretending that a) it’s still late summer b) climate change isn’t terrifying.

My Words With Friends opponent noted that he had almost played “steroid” for far fewer points than he gained for playing “asteroid,” and I realized I’ve never juxtaposed the two words before, or considered that they might be related. I mean–they aren’t, because asteroid is from aster and steroid is from…something else, but the possibility is interesting.

One of those hot nights back in October, I figured I would save money on electricity (and do my micro-assist against climate change!) by opening the window overnight instead of turning on the air conditioner one last time. It turns out this my version of “money-wasting things people do while trying to save money,” like driving around trying to find the cheapest gas, because the next morning I woke to find that a $13 harp string had broken due to the humidity. At least it was fourth octave and not fifth?

I think if I took a representative poll, January or February might beat November for least favorite month; people are really into Thanksgiving, and by the time February rolls around everyone is tired of snow…but I always feel better after New Year’s, pale blue instead of dark gray.

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the irony of doing an “overheard” post when my right ear has been stuffed up for two weeks.

Overheard…

on the street:

-No reason to cry, baby. There will be more fluffy stuff up ahead.

-You know what they say–when one door closes, another–another door’s gonna close.

-It’s a PHILODENDRON. That’s the name of that plant, bro. PHIL-O-DEN-DRON.

with my students:

-Solving for x is almost as good as eating a cookie…should I make that my motto?

-(while reading an English paper assignment out loud) Don’t read ahead! I want it to be dramatic.

on the train:

Guy 1: So you had breakfast with her, but you said it was brief.

Guy 2: Yeah, and–

Guy 1: Well WHY? Why was it brief??

in my apartment:

-Beard beard beard. How did you get so big?

-Activate urine!

-He appears to be highly ranked. He has a hat with a tassel on top.

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A few weeks ago I went to a yoga class with a live DJ (it was very hard to vinyasa rather than dance). I had a hard time paying attention to the poses because I was trying to remember all of the mash-ups the DJ created, and also thinking about what mash-up name I could give each creation. Such as (*denotes the ones I was fond of musically):

*”Don’t You Want a Bad Romance?” (Human League + Lady Gaga)

*”How Will I Know if I’m Dancing on my Own?” (Whitney Houston + Robyn)

“Call Me Semi-Charmed” (Carly Rae Jepsen + Third Eye Blind)

*”No Wiggity-Wiggity-Wonderwall” (Blackstreet + Oasis)

There was a nice audio/titular pun when he mixed “Dynomite” with “Under Pressure,” and then there was a weird marriage of the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s “Under the Bridge” and TLC’s “No Scrubs”–I couldn’t figure out why they were paired unless his thinking was something along the lines of “I don’t ever want to scrub…like I scrubbed that day”?

Finally, there was a mix composed of Bruno Mars’s “Locked out of Heaven” and George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” (I Carelessly Whispered in Heaven?), but that was wholly unnecessary because that Bruno Mars song already sounds like its DNA is half “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” by the Police!

Graphic designers: coming in next post.

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Immediate sidenote: I laugh every time at “May the best friend win.” What is that? It’s like a game we used to play in Latin class in high school that we (and our teacher) called “Who’s the better person?” That didn’t have anything to do with the rules or the concept, that was just the title…

I play Words With Friends with some actual friends, but mostly strangers–and I enjoy that, because it means I have more games going. Occasionally people message about the game, which is great, or to say “good morning” which is fine, but then you get things like this: