My Dog’s Face Smells Like Corn Chips

I am trying to stop exaggerating. I don’t think I exaggerate in the sense of lying–although I do enjoy a good hyperbolic anecdote–that’s not really what I’m talking about. What I mean is that my go-to list of daily adjectives are all at the utter extremes of expression. Something was not “tiring” for me, it was “harrowing.” Something was not “cool,” it was “amazing.” I am never “surprised” but “astounded” or “stunned.” I think speaking at the limits of language in this way has a dulling effect. How will I convey my feelings if I ever actually do go through something harrowing? How can I say that falling off the bridge in my car and then being trapped in my car underwater and then breaking a window and swimming out through the broken window into the radioactive Willamette river and making it to shore where a bunch of screaming bystanders drag me out of the muck and wrap me in blankets was “harrowing” when just the other day I used this word to describe the fact that I had meetings with students all day and didn’t get a chance to eat lunch? It is the boy-crying-wolf effect of linguistic hyperbole that is starting to disturb me. I am realizing it is really hard to cut down on these adjectives. Speaking only realistically and honestly is very boring to me. My dissertation adviser is always telling me to cut down on the hyperbolic adverbs and it is hard. I just re-read the conclusion to my dissertation and it is chock full of “utterly”s and “explosively”s and “spectacularly”s. This is not a pamphlet describing the World’s Fair, this is supposed to be a sober scholarly exploration of some boring thing nobody cares about but me. Act accordingly!

So, I will say that my day yesterday was tiring and that I felt somewhat unable to perform scintillating dinner conversation that evening, but that generally I was fine.

It is mildly difficult–not harrowing–to have meetings at every moment of the day. Talking to people about their research projects over and over again you start losing your train of thought and making them nervous. By my final meeting I was doing things like beating my forehead repeatedly with my fist and saying “I JUST looked this up, I JUST looked this up,” or going off on weird tangents related to the previous student and having nothing to do with the current student. “Oh wait, you’re writing about mountain climbing, I was thinking about the robot from Metropolis, sorry”

Today I have gotten a lot checked off my to-do list! And now I spend the rest of the day planning performance remarks. Not too shabby. For dinner I am having broccoli rabe and a sweet potato.

I need to get back into caring for my body appropriately. Yesterday I didn’t eat a single thing all day and then at 6 p.m. I ate an enormous plate of fettucine alfredo and drank two glasses of wine and felt horrible. These are the actions of a person lacking balance.

How do you get your dog to stop barking at people who are moving in strange ways? The snoopy is fascinated by skateboards, bicycles, strollers, wheelchairs, and the other day he ran barking and leaping after a child riding a tiny motorcycle and I had to chase him yelling “HE WON’T BITE YOU” at the kid, who, to its credit, just kept motoring along like no big deal. I waited for an insane parent to come punch me in the face but luckily they must have missed what happened. DO NOT fuck with these modern parents, let me tell you. They will murder you in your sleep. Exaggeration! OR IS IT

Now it is time to blast 20th century music in the living room and take furious notes. My instrument is my pen. Remember the old man’s friend who once saw that someone had defaced the chiropractor marquee, changing its message from “LET ME STRAIGHTEN YOUR SPINE” to “LET ME STRAIGHTEN YOUR PENIS?” I really think that nameless vandal was divinely inspired.

Do you sometimes feel like rollerblading would be a really enjoyable way to exercise but you would never do it because of how lame you’d look? Me neither, asking for a friend