I just got a note from a medical student in New York named Natalie. It seems as though my town, the very town from which I write to you tonight, was just named home of the most phallic building in the world.
Now, perhaps you can all appreciate why my confidence is so low…
I was stuck at work like Id been lassoed with worm-like sperms chords.*
And I still ended up bringing home a lot of work from the office tonight. So, there wasnt much time to Blog. I am sorry.
Actually, thats not entirely true. It wasnt just the work that kept me from blogging. There was also the season debut of 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter (I had to see how they would explain the presence of John Ridder’s ghost) and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
I also checked my email.
Mr. Smallwood is back from his vacation in New Hampshire, where he tried to track down the elusive JD Salinger. He wrote a terrific letter and I wanted to post it here tonight, but then I thought that Id try instead to fit it into the new issue Crimewave somehow. Were out of space, but maybe Ill relinquish one of the pages that I was holding for the Iggy Pop interview, which Virgin hasnt come through with.
Mr. Smallwood did, however, include something else though, something that I am willing to share, something that I would never put in my magazine. Actually, Im not going to subject you to the entire thing, but heres a clip:
Constipation is a feature of multiple sclerosis in 43-53% of cases,1,2 and is often due to paradoxical contraction of the puborectalis during defecation.3,4 The contraction results in anal outlet obstruction and repeated straining during attempted defaecation. The absence of lower motor neurone involvement, combined with the presence of normal fibre density in the external anal sphincter, and normal terminal motor latencies of the pudendal nerve, would suggest that the paradoxical puborectalis contraction is due to a corticospinal lesion.3 We are not aware of any other reports of constipation as the presenting complaint of multiple sclerosis.
Methinks Mr. Smallwood is trying to scare me into thinking that I have MS, something I already spend too much time worrying about. That isnt nice.
What was nice, however, was his belated entry to the What Would George Bush be Doing Today if He Werent Born a Bush contest.
Barium Enema Technician
I know it came in late, but if no one objects, Id like to send Mr. Smallwood the gift wed set aside for the runner-up, the used latex glove that I found in front of my house.
(* That marks my fifth use of the phrase today.)
The Bush administration denies British reports that theyre negotiating an exile deal with Saddam and theyre obscuring evidence of global warming too This isnt exactly news, but I had a dream last night about a TV show like Monk that was about a prostitute with OCD. I think it must have come to me because of that latex glove I found in the driveway yesterday Finally a new conspiracy theory: The Arab news reports on the Zionist role in the Kennedy assassination Linette, I think Im going to go take a stroll through the park before going up to bed And speaking of anonymous sex, heres a good piece on the sex life of the giant squid. Heres a little clip:
Scientists were intrigued when they found the first ever mated female with her skin still intact. Along the length of the female’s arms were small holes, beneath which were a number of worm-like sperm chords radiating outwards.
Male giant squid have been found to have a long, muscular penis, which is unusual as the males of most other squid species use an arm to pass sperm packets from themselves to the female.
Scientists believe that the male squid literally injects his sperm into the female’s skin during mating.
“The two of them mount beak to beak, so you’ve got arms and tentacles flying everywhere,” Dr O’Shea said.
“The male is co-ordinating this enormous penis, and he’s implanting spermadaphores into the female’s arms
“He uses the penis like a plunger or a huge hypodermic needle, and he’s physically stabbing the female’s arms.”
I want to use the phrase, Worm-like sperm chords tomorrow. Lets all make it a point to work that into a conversation.
Yesterday, I was procrastinating. I just couldnt get started on my magazine writing, so I decided to throw myself into the web. A few minutes into my mindless wandering around, a phrase popped into my head Christian modeling. It came from nowhere, like a lightening bolt. I went to Google and put it in, just to see what would come up. As it was scouring the web, I started imagining having business cards made up: Mark Maynard, Christian Model. I liked the ring of it. (It was much more classy that my other business card idea: Mark Maynard, impregnating americas teens since 1974. Linette hates that one.)
I honestly didnt suspect that anything would come up, but it did. Quite a few things came up, the most interesting of which was Models for Christ dotcom. One day, when theres more time, Id like to do a little research into this group and Christian modeling in general. I wonder what sets a Christian modeling school apart from a regular one. Perhaps instead of saying, Make love to the camera, they say, Be pious before your Lord. Maybe Im being really mean and cynical, but my guess is that saying Christain models is the same as saying ugly models.
I wonder if theres a tie to Clowning for Christ. How many —- for Christ groups are there anyway? Someone should compile a list. I bet there a Bikers for Christ. I wonder if theres a Public School Nutritionists for Christ or a Part Time Office Workers for Christ.
If you know of any —- for Christ groups, let me know.
My friend Don is demanding. He always wants to spend time with me. (By always I mean once every few months.) He wants me to be more of a friend to him than I think I am capable of. Ive never had this problem before, where someone wants to see me more. I have no frame of reference. As a result, I treat his overtures with a certain amount of suspicion In spite of that, we do, on occasion, go out and have a good time with one another.
The last time I saw Don, he was in the middle of some kind of insane diet where he was only drinking a concoction of water mixed with lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper. He apparently lived on the stuff for over two weeks. Hed drink four or five bottles of this magic elixir a day and thats all that entered his body. By the time Id seen him, almost two weeks into it, his eyes had become tiny, yellow rocks. They were dull and glassy. He looked like a stuffed animal. And his tongue had become covered in a kind of yellow shag. At his insistence, I looked into his mouth and saw what appeared to be thousands of tiny yellow pinworms burrowing out of his tongue. When I asked him whether or not this was safe, he made it a point of telling me that Howard Sterns sidekick, Robin Quivers, had done it and lost over 20 pounds. Well, I said, I guess you really did your research.
Much to my surprise, he didnt die.
He asked me out tonight, and I said, Yes. Citizen Kane was playing at the Michigan Theater, so I thought that might be something cool to do. Ive never seen it on the big screen, but Ive always wanted to. I mentioned it to Don and he immediately shot it down with an, Ive seen Citizen Kane before. Yes, everyones seen it before, but this is on the big screen, Don. He wasnt buying it. He wanted to see something else, something like American Wedding, the third in the American Pie trilogy. So, guess what we ended up seeing?
Yup, I missed a chance to see Citizen Kan on the big screen in a huge, old movie house with a live organist to watch American wedding at a nondescript second-run cineplex in a decrepit shopping mall. Im such a fucking pussy, but I didnt feel like fighting about it.
(Citizen Kane didnt warrant even one sequel. There was nothing more to be said With American Pie, however, there was so much more to be explored, so many more baked goods for the main character to plow his penis into Who am I to say what makes one a classic and not another?)
I actually didnt hate American Wedding that much. I was concerned going into it that, not having seen either of the two earlier works, that I might be at an intellectual disadvantage. That turned out not to be the case though. Actually, I was a quick study when it came to unraveling the motivations of the characters and such. Oh, and guess what? Theres an extended bit on ball shaving, an old favorite here at MarkMaynard.com. (The protagonist shaves his balls and, instead of flushing his pubic hair down the toilet or tossing it into a garbage can, he tosses it out a window, where it then gets sucked into the hotel kitchen through a window fan. Close your eyes now and imagine a lovely, white wedding cake covered in ball hair.)
And to think, I almost had to sit through Citizen Kane.
It was fun. Don and I just sat in the audience and kept drawing comparisons to Citizen Kane.
Its an homage.
The best thing about it was the fact that grandmother, a woman of close to 80 years of age, was just telling me a few days ago that she and one of her friends had decided to go to the movies. They got to the theater and decided to see American Wedding because it sounded nice and wholesome. By the time they found out that it wasnt especially patriotic or wholesome, they wanted to get up and leave, but they were too embarrassed. They sat there for the whole movie As I sat there tonight, watching the film, it was fun thinking of my grandmother and her friend and what they must have been whispering to one another. (The film starts with the main female character crawling under a table in a restaurant and blowing her boyfriend Another seen features an unaware mother massaging her neck with a chain of beads the size of coconuts that had previously been inside another characters ass.)
So, I had fun with Don. I would have liked to have seen Citizen Kane, but this was good too.
When it comes to ball shaving theres no comparison. American Wedding kicks the ass of Citizen Kane.
