mr-onion's Diaryland Diary

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Plagiarizing The Pillow Book

This past week, while riding the Serial Killer bus home after work I spotted a George Lucas look-a-like out the bus window.

I thought to myself "this bodes as something ominous, though I'm not sure if it bodes for something kickass like Return of the Jedi, or bodes suckity, like all of the Star Wars prequels so far". How can I tell?

I can always tell if my birthday will be kickass by the song on the clock radio that wakes me up on my birthday. Almost every single birthday I can remember of my adulthood, Neil Diamond waking me up on my birthday has been a fabulous sign of shiny things to come.

This year I woke up to "Kung Fu Fighting" on the radio and pondered to myself:

What the Fuck?

Which caused that YawnFest that was my birthday this year.

Anyway, I am completely at a loss for inspiration lately, but I learned something invaluable from that old 10th century Japanese text, "The Pillow Book" that was slowly fermented over time to become that stinking Ewan MacGregor movie of the same name.

Sei Shonagon was a Royal Concubine in 10th century Japan, and to tell the truth it must be pretty tedious waiting around all day for the Emporer to be in the mood to get it on; she turned to writing as an outlet for all of her thoughts, but the thing is, she mostly wrote in lists Admittedly her lists were quite shallow and puerile, having rarely ever left the Imperial Palace, she was left with a tiny particle of the world to write about, such as:

Things Which Are Not Attractive

Things Which Make Me Hate Men

Prettiest Flowers In The Royal Garden

...and so forth

Since flicking through that book, writing lists has been like Drano for my clogged mind.

Lists I have done so far in my paper journal include:

1) Things That Looked Edible

2) Reasons Friends Have Given For Dumping Somebody

3) Deformities of Ex-Boyfriends

4) Scary Former Room Mates

5) The Name of Every Bar I've Ever Drunk In

Pretty deep stuff as you can see....but it really gets the brain whirring. And all my brain can think of right now is Marlboros, Gauloise Blonde and DuMauriers. Ach! Malheureusement, I am at my sister's house in TrailerParkTown for the weekend where everything enjoyable is verboten (no swearin', no drinkin', no smokin', no coffee drinkin').

I might just get a lot of diary entries out of the trauma to come this weekend with the family. I'm gonna nip into the kitchen for a bit and scour her cupboards for a jar of instant coffee.

12:29 p.m. - 2004-08-07

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