The Queen of Cheese Rides Again

[dr_pretentious]

Saturday I'll finally go to the Dodge Poetry Festival. The festival is as far as you can possibly get from my house without leaving New Jersey--three hours drive round trip--and the thought of doing that every day, four days in a row, was a bit much. So I bailed on my old poetry cronies Thursday and Friday, and stuck instead to my usual tutoring schedule, with all the usual students. The students whose parents pay me, the dears. Which leads us to the spousal gaffe and running gag of the evening.

Dan and I went with some of our grad school friends to see The Science of Sleep, which was completely charming. Over dinner, I lamented that I hadn't managed to get to the poetry festival yet. And then...

DAN:
Sarah's been paid hundreds of dollars not to go to the Dodge this year.

RICK:
Sarah, I didn't think you were that bad a poet!

ME:
Well, that's what I get for founding International Bad Poetry Day.

KRISTEN:
You could wander the venue, declaiming the Queen of Cheese poem, and tell everyone they hadn't paid you enough to keep you away all four days.

SAM:
You could declaim it nonstop, like those monks who engage in continuous prayer. Hail Mary, Queen of Cheese...



Some time later, conversation turned to the new Starbucks that opened near my house yesterday. For their grand opening, they were giving away free everything, and gift cards.


ME:
Of course I went. They were paying me to drink free mochas.

ERICA:
Wow, combine that with your little Dodge Festival blackmail, and you're set for life.

ME:
Maybe I should take up not growing soybeans in the backyard. Does the Department of Agriculture still pay people for that? There's a wide variety of crops I could refrain from cultivating.

WAITER:
Does anyone want dessert?

ME:
I couldn't possibly eat another bite.

DAN:
Maybe...

ME:
D'you think they'd pay me to not eat dessert?

KRISTEN:
You'd have to dress much worse to get them to pay you not to eat at this restaurant.

ME:
Maybe I could get them to pay me to refrain from blogging about dessert.





Only dessert was good, so I didn't pursue that little business venture. If the Department of Agriculture paid me to not grow soybeans, I'm sure the thought of growing soybeans would haunt my dreams--oh, the lure of the forbidden! And no power on earth is going to keep me from the poetry festival tomorrow, Queen of Cheese or no Queen of Cheese. It's a good thing I'm in demand as a tutor, or what would we have to live on but all these Starbucks gift cards?

Comments

[vgnwtch.livejournal.com]

Think anyone would pay me to refrain from making inane comments on your LJ?

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

If anyone proposed to pay you to stop commenting, I'd have to get into a bidding war with them, because I'm always glad to hear from you. I keep noticing that the Atlantic is too wide.

So I think this is the reply your application would elicit:

Dear Ms. Vgnwtch,

We find that your refraining from inanity does not meet our needs at this time.

[vgnwtch.livejournal.com]

THWARTED!!

Oh well, in that case you get all the inanity you could ever want - for FREE!

... But WAIT! There's MORE! Yes, that's right! MORE INANITY can be YOURS if you call this number RIGHT NOW...!






Offer only valid on weekdays and nights with a y in them; on computers; on LJ; transatlantically; restrictions may apply.

[citabria]

The Starbucks opened yesterday? And I missed it? Waaaah!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

It is still there, you know.

I tried doing some teaching prep there yesterday and found that, with a drive-through window and two doors sans vestibule, that structure gets some fierce cross-drafts. Don't bother taking off your coat. It'll be impossible to write there in a month or two.

[citabria]

It is, but there's something special about being there on opening day. Ah, well.

And on a completely different topic entirely, I finally got back to Bob and Atho and loved it! There were a few legal-related things I'm going to go back and tag for you (and a few other comments), then I'll actually get it back to you. Soon, really.

Also -- I'm not quite sure how you managed it, being a non-lawyer and not generally conversant in these things, but there were a few law-related lines that had me laughing out loud! :)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

My father and sister are lawyers, so I've picked up a few things over the dinner table. I think I do okay at writing characters who happen to be lawyers, and about lives structured by the profession of law, but writing about the practice of law itself is not something I feel I can do without picking a few expert brains.

Thanks for lending me your brain. I'm really looking forward to your comments. Maybe we can make that the excuse to get together for dinner with you, some Tuesday in a half-moon week?

[happy-dr-friend.livejournal.com]

At first I read the comment on Starbucks as "A Starbucks opened IN my house yesterday..." That seemed a little excessive even given your coffee consumption.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Dan has occasionally proposed buying an espresso machine, on the theory that it's the coffee I go there for. But really, that would defeat much of the purpose. My house is a place I have to clean. Anywhere I look in my house, there is some task that needs to be done that is not writing, and if I don't do those tasks, they probably won't get done. Making coffee there would (A) generate more stuff for me to clean, and (B) fuel cleaning, not writing. I write at Starbucks because it's a clean, well-lighted place where someone else does the scrubbing and light-bulb changing. For most male writers who have wives, I suppose in that sense Starbucks would be indistinguishable from home, but for a woman, that's all the difference in the world.

At home, I have that classic isolation problem writers have, but at Starbucks, there are numerous other live humans in the room. I can interact with some of them if I feel like it, but it's easy to disengage from interacting with any or all of them if I don't feel like it. If I disappear into my manuscript for hours at a time, nobody cares as long as I tip.

Now, if opening a Starbuck in my home entailed having a staff of cheerful baristas (or maybe the plural should be baristae?) to run around my kitchen scrubbing things, that would be another matter entirely.

[happy-dr-friend.livejournal.com]

Now, if opening a Starbuck in my home entailed having a staff of cheerful baristas (or maybe the plural should be baristae?) to run around my kitchen scrubbing things, that would be another matter entirely.

Now we know what you're going to do with the excess money when you're a famous author outselling JK Rowling.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

The day I outsell J.K. Rowling... Maybe if she swore off fiction altogether and insisted on writing only in verse forms ill-suited to English--in accentual asclepiads or some wacky shit like that--I could outsell her. As long as she's writing prose, I'm pretty sure she'll have one up on me.

[happy-dr-friend.livejournal.com]

Maybe if you sent her some info on bad poetry day she'd be inspired...

[rianders.livejournal.com]

Hey Dr_Pretentious,

I think my exlclamation with eyebrow raised was, "They paid you not to go?!" Then the whole conversation went out of control. Which I can't claim responsibility for. :-)

--Rick

[garybart.livejournal.com]

I think my exlclamation with eyebrow raised was, "They paid you not to go?!" Then the whole conversation went out of control. Which I can't claim responsibility for. :-)

Rick, stop being so modest. You know very well that you are responsible for *everything*.

[jaime-sama.livejournal.com]

On the other hand... obviously Sarah might find it hard to transcribe dialog without polishing it up a bit for added punch. :D

[(Anonymous)]

Just picking nits. I just wouldn't ever put Sarah and bad poet in the same sentence. Queen of Cheese and Sarah go nicely together.

[jaime-sama.livejournal.com]

:D

I miss you guys so much.

Luckily, we are thinking thoughts about next weekend.

[garybart.livejournal.com]

Yep. Hey, we may even have a new car by then. (If not, it'll have to be a trip by train.)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

We've got some stuff going on Sunday, but Saturday should be good. The usual First Saturday party?

[garybart.livejournal.com]

Well, it's starting earlier -- 5pm -- and ending earlier. But otherwise, yes, the usual!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I considered not using anybody's actual name in the dialogue above, but then I thought you two really should have been there, and might be that much more amused by putting the lines in their proper voices.

[jaime-sama.livejournal.com]

might be that much more amused by putting the lines in their proper voices

so true. :)

Speaking of Science and Sleep....

[kistha.livejournal.com]

Did you catch this entry?

http://kistha.livejournal.com/55798.html

Re: Speaking of Science and Sleep....

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I did catch that, and it's very, very strange.

The film title is a weird choice, since there's no science in there whatsoever. The imagery, though, the way Gondry renders dream logic--that's gorgeous.

Re: Speaking of Science and Sleep....

[kistha.livejournal.com]

Isn't it though?

Haven't seen the movie, but I haven't been keeping up on the movie thing lately. Mostly catching up on TV everyone else saw 5 years ago.