Thursday, November 22, 2007

FAQs

1. Why do the things in someone else's supermarket shopping cart invariably seem more adventurous and sophisticated than yours?

2. Does Progresso Chicken Soup with Escarole count for nothing at all?

3. Why does someone else's prose invariably seem more pellucid than yours?

4. Why are dictionary definitions so unrelentingly serious?

5. Are there any funny definitions in dictionaries?

6. Why does everyone else's prose seem funnier than yours?

7. If George W. Bush lied about Iraq, did William Butler Yeats lie about Byzantium?

8. Is there ever anything in your market basket that truly embarrasses you?

9. What is the one thing you tend to forget every time you go shopping?

10. What is the one item from your past you wonder about trying again every time you pass it in the supermarket aisle?

11. If no one were looking, would you slip in a bag of Camp Fire marshmallows, or would you hold out for Franco-American beef ravioli?

12. What one item do you select that invariably elicits a look from the cashier?

13. What syntactical rule gives you pause every time you use it in a manuscript?

14. Do you really have to use so many metaphors?

15. How often do the wheels stick on the shopping cart you have chosen?

16. Is there a correlation between your prose style and the wheels on shopping carts you have chosen?

17. What is the one major secret you have discovered about shopping in large markets?

18. What is the one major secret you have discovered about writing prose?

19. Do either of these secrets enhance your shopping or writing experiences?

20. Has the supermarket's continuous refusal to charge you for apricots you have eaten in the produce department in any way slowed down your consumption of apricots in the produce department?

21. Did your teen-years job as a box boy in a supermarket traumatize you in later years?

22. What about when Lauren Bacall gave you a fifty-cent tip at McDaniel's Shop'n Save Market in Beverly Hills?

23. Do you consider supermarkets to be decadent?

24. Do you ever miss the pickle barrel at Weiner's Market at Sixth and Fairfax?

25. Do you sometimes interrupt writing chores to eat?

26. Do you sometimes interrupt eating chores to write?

27. Have you ever awakened after a night of fitful dreams to discover that you have turned into an insect?

28. How many times did you say you stood trial for something you had written?

29. Have you ever been truly pissed off at a whale?

2 comments:

R.L. Bourges said...

shelly: I'm having the airport experience. The one where, having grown tired of waiting for the call-up, you are tired of the waiting line and looking forward to board, so that you may look forward to sitting, so you can look forward to....

Since I finally have a dial tone on my phone, I now look forward to my internet connection, so that I can sit at my desk and read your posts S L O W L Y and think them over.

pellucid, yes. and funnier. Everybody's both of those (except for Ayn Rand, of course, unless even Ayn must have a funny angle somewhere - but pellucid, certainly not.)

Back to Adminlandia.

Smiler said...

I wonder what that says about me that I usually find my cart filled with much more interesting/nutritious food, whereas my prose... just seems like something I threw together at the last minute (which is what it usually is if you don't count the endless revisions that come afterward). I guess it's all to do with what kind of neighborhood you do your groceries and your writing in.