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“Memoirs.”
By briantologist | January 23, 2005
… And then there was the time I took the Creative Writing class.
It was during the fall semester of my final senior year that, perusing our esteemed university’s course catalog, I thought to myself, “Buddy, it is high fricken time you took a creative writing course.” It was more of a formality than anything else, at that point; I’d already decided at that point in my life that the only thing standing between me and a brilliant career as a fictioneer was this one class, and that swarms of praise would follow me from the moment I turned in my first assignment. It was time, in short, to start getting famous.
At least I’m pretty sure that’s what I was thinking. At the very least I was thinking I needed another upper-division English course so I could graduate the coming May.
Joining me in this endeavor was my dear friend Agent Foxxy Boxing. As memory serves, we were friendly acquaintances when we enrolled, having been in a bunch of other English Lit classes together. But it was during the smoke breaks of this class, spent at first in muted disbelief, later in chortling asides, and finally in wheezing, weeping, silently gut-busting peals of laughter at the Christ-awful submissions of our classmates, that our friendship was forged. One simple, undeniable bond brought us together: Mockery of those around us. Sometimes, when you go to Sarah’s web site, and the title bar reads “First a Hater, Then a Writer”? That’s funny because it’s totally true. Say what you will about its psychological underpinnings, but the vast majority of my friendships — ones I would not trade for anything — are built on the same. As Dookie put it nearly a decade ago, shortly after he and I became friends, “I mainly just make fun of people, and then hang around with whoever laughs.”
In the coming days, Sarah and I will try our damndest to re-create the sense of awe we, and the three or four other rational members of our class, felt upon first reading lines like, “You may think that this is the worst thing that can happen but you are wrong.” Join us, won’t you?
Topics: Baffled Mutterings | 11 Comments »
January 23rd, 2005 at 12:52 pm
dookie’s friendship qualifications are the most direct and perfect i’ve read in a while.
i regret now not having taken fiction writing classes, having thought at the time that poetry writing classes would be the way to go. from one class, i have “i feel the throbbing of my stigmata” as one of the best lines never.
this does sound like an exciting journey in time, and i hope you treat it like an archaeological dig, sifting very carefully so as not to miss a single detail.
also, points for “fictioneer”. don’t hurt your back with all that swashbuckling writing, though. avast!
January 23rd, 2005 at 2:10 pm
“my final senior year” … heh
I’ll totally join you. (Or, should I say y’all?)
January 23rd, 2005 at 9:40 pm
A cup of coffee, a computer and the comedy stylings of B.B. and S.B.
I cant think of anything better.
Well, maybe takin on the run… yo!
January 24th, 2005 at 11:32 am
What do we have to do to join you?
January 24th, 2005 at 6:32 pm
SURRENDER, JAMIE!
January 24th, 2005 at 9:15 pm
Is this the one that had that crazy guy in it that had a plate in his head and came to ALL of the art dept. Halloween parties dressed as a vampire and then wrote a story about how he wanted to have sex with Amber’s corpse?
If so, then lead on. If not, well, lead on anyway. I’m right there with you.
January 24th, 2005 at 9:59 pm
Holy shit. That sounds awfully familiar.I mean, the plate in his head bit; I’m pretty sure I’d remember if he’d turned in a story about having sex with anybody’s corpse. I mean, there’s bad fiction, and then there’s necrophiliac fiction.
January 25th, 2005 at 9:43 am
Which guy with the plate in his head? It seems like there was more than one.
January 25th, 2005 at 11:28 pm
His name was Drew. And at one point, he was EVERYWHERE, like the ventriloquist guy. Only actually creepier.
January 26th, 2005 at 6:22 pm
Oh god, ventriloquist ice cream guy! I was telling Josh Newman about him last night! Him, nd My Son Jim, the rough-voiced Asian cafeteria lady. Chee-up? Dee-up?
January 27th, 2005 at 3:17 pm
‘YOU WAN CHEEP AN DEEP, SWEEHART??’
*bwahahahahaha*