Dunkin' Donuts now sucks on a whole other level.

Dunkin' Donuts sucks. On two levels:

1) Their donuts are lame. They're all cake donuts and, while I enjoy cake donuts occasionally, Krispy Kreme's yeast donuts are far superior.

2) Their freaking commercials.

 

The second level of sucking is the subject of this particular diatribe. 

They've had, off and on for the past year or so, a commercial wherein a group of people are in a generic mass-produced coffeehouse (an obvious mockery of Starbucks), standing around staring at the menu. Then they start to sing. "My mouth can't form these words/ My mouth can't say these words/ Is it French, or is it Italian?/ Perhaps, Fritalian?" 

The commercial is making fun of the silly names for some drinks and, I think more to the point, drink sizes. I will grant them this. Starbucks really should just call its sizes small, medium, and large. But they don't. And really, it's not hard to say "tall," "grande," or "venti," is it? I didn't think so. Other coffeehouses do this too, with slightly different names for sizes and drinks. But it's all pretty much the same. As I said, I grand them this: it's sort of lame. But then what happens in the commercial is this: John Goodman starts a voice-over, talking about how "normal" DD is, which, again, I can grant them. Then, though, he says "The Dunkin' Donuts Latte: you can order it in English." This is the point at which my head explodes.

Latte, you pricks, is an Italian word. You cannot order one in Inglese. Sure, you can specify the drink size in English, but the drink itself? No, you have to order that in Italian (unless of course you want to say "May I please have a medium cup of steamed, frothy milk with a shot of espresso [though that's another Italian word for which you should substitute "steam-pressed coffee"] in it?"). This bugs me so much that I actually wrote an angry e-mail to DD (which was, I might add, promptly received, read, distributed, discussed, and ignored).

I have continued my boycott on DD, which was began in response to Suckiness Level 1, but has since been expanded to include both levels of Suck.

On writing

W.E.B. DuBois spoke of double-consciousness as it relates to race. Specifically, he posited that black people are always aware of being of a bipartite soul (or at least, feeling as they are of a bipartite soul). He describes it, in The Souls of Black Folk, as the "sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity."

 

Emerson spoke of this phenomenon first, in 1843, but in a slightly different vein, and I find the DuBoisian concept a bit more apt for everyday life. But I digress. I'm going to borrow DuBois' term and apply it to writing. Authorship, really. I suppose one could consider it simply a gender-neutral version of Sandra Gilbert's concept of "anxiety of authorship" (which was itself borrowed from Harold Bloom (I'm beginning to wonder if there's any such thing as an original theory, here)), but it's more than that.

 

Bloom's anxiety of influence is the unpublished writer's desire to break free of his immediate literary forebears (think Cormac McCarthy "breaking free" of William Faulkner), finding his own voice and making his own path through the dense underbrush of the literary world. Gilbert's anxiety of authorship is mostly similar, though it deals with female authors. She said that women couldn't suffer from this particular anxiety (of influence), not having any female forebears against which to rail. So instead of struggling against their antecedents, they struggle against themselves, trying to find a voice of their own at all. Women are (were), according to Gilbert, stuck in the middle of the jungle and just trying to find a path -- any path -- to follow.

Now I've sort of digressed again (can you tell I'm enjoying my literary theory class?), but all of that actually has a point. In order to explain how my idea differs from those others that sound kind of similar, I needed to explain them. So now we can move on to the most important part of anything: me.

My idea is almost an amalgamation of double-consciousness and the anxiety of influence -- but not quite. See, a writer has a different sort of double-consciousness: following some 19th century critic whose name escape me's assertion that (and I'm paraphrasing here, obviously) every writer who aims to get published must be one of the most egotistical sons of bitches that's ever lived because he feels that, after careful review of all the great literature that has ever been published, he deserves to be put on the shelf along side them, so he has to have pride, and ego, and chutzpah. On the other hand, I can't believe that every author really feels that he is the be-all end-all of literature, so an author must, along with being egotistical, have a sense of humility, for he knows that there are some pieces of literature that can never be outdone -- at least, by him. 

The creature that emerges is both full of himself and humble. He knows he's a better writer than 99.5% of the people on the face of the planet, but he knows that he'll never measure up to the other .5%. Now, this may seem a bit lopsided, but when you consider the relative awfulness of Dean Koontz (what? He sucks. Seriously. I put him below even the unpublished masses, because he's that awful. Dan Brown lies at .00001%) at the bottom of the 99.5% and the greatness of Shakespeare at the top of the remaining .5%, the divide between where a given author feels his talents to lie on this scale compared to where he feels the greatest writer(s) of English lie is just as immense (if not more than) as the divide between the writer's own perceived talent and the bottom of the barrel. A visual aide:

Dean Koontz @0% <--(the masses)--> Author @ 99.501% <--(other authors)--> Shakespeare 100%

And so, with this dualistic egotism-humility in mind, the author sets forth to publish. But this bipartite nature of his soul forces him to be very anxious about the prospect, and to wonder if he should publish at all. If he gets rejected, he'll be relegated to the masses; published, and he is at the bottom of a new barrel. The worst part about it, though, is that he knows that he will never surpass most of the authors who have already been elevated to the canon.  It's like halving the distance between yourself and the door to your room. No matter how many times you halve the distance, you will always be infinitely far away from the door.

The anxiety my author feels is not the anxiety of Bloom or Gilbert, really. My author's anxiety stems, not from trying to break free of a seemingly oppressive/confining literary father (or mother (or lack thereof)), but from just trying to force his way into the same league as his literary forefathers. He hasn't even thought about breaking away from them yet; I guess this stage precedes Bloom's anxiety of influence in our literary psyche the same way that Lacan's Imaginary Order comes before the Real Order in our regular psyche. Without the influence of the forebears, the unpublished author has absolutely no chance of making it into the canon, so he can't think about breaking away until he's milked it for all its worth.

The little engine that could (blog).

OK. I know I've said this before, but you're all going to have to just trust me this time.

I am going to update this stupid thing on a semi-regular basis. I mean, I really think I have a lot to say, and though it's all completely useless and utterly trite, I nevertheless feel that it should be shared, so that the rest of the online community (i.e. the 2 or 3 people that read this on a regular basis (although having Facebook import new posts might up my readership to a good 6 or 7)) can bask in my drollery.

Promise.

The South is where it's at, bitches. Literarily speaking, anyway.

Seriously, guys. The South is the place to be if you're a literary American writer (as opposed to a pulp-fiction American writer, or some kind of weirdo foreign writer). Here's a really short list of Southern writers, many of whom have been said to be the greatest writers of whatever style it is in which they write (and a couple are said to be the country's greatest writers ever): 

Mark Twain, Flannery O'Connor, Kate Chopin, Cormac McCarthy, William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Harper Lee, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston.

Beat that, you damn yankees.

Semester THIS, you jerkbags!

I don't even know what that means, but it sounded cool.

So anyway, my semester is over! Hurray! It's a bittersweet thing, really. I enjoy school a lot, especially a semester like this, which has netted me a few new friends and a girlfriend (w00t). Also, good grades and excellent learning experience! OK, so only two good grades so far, but I expect 3 more excellent grades to be posted shortly. If I get a B, I will not be happy. :|

No, sir. Not at all happy. We'll see, though. I mean, my group WAS almost 30 minutes late to our presentation for class, but the prof didn't seem mad about it, so I'm thinking not much was taken off, especially since our presentation was so full of win as to be overflowing. I mean, seriously, they're going to have to call Stanley Steemer to get all the win out of the carpet, it's so saturated. Gross.

What did you just call me?

So my Spanish friend was talking to me in Spanish, and since I -- like any good American -- don't know Spanish, I was using the translator that comes in Dashboard to make sure it said what I thought it said before replying.

...Anyway. She said: "Espero que tuviste un buen dia, Ben", which I thought (correctly) to mean "I hope you had a good day, Ben".

However! When I plugged it into my translator, this is what it said: "I hope you had good day, Horseradish tree". ...Exsqueeze me? Horseradish tree? You must be joking, I thought to myself. So I typed "Ben" into the Spanish side, and, lo and behold, it translates to "Horseradish tree".

The following is a fun progression:

Ben --> "Horseradish tree"
Horseradish tree --> "árbol del rábano picante"
árbol del rábano picante --> "tree of the sharp radish"
tree of the sharp radish --> "árbol del rábano sostenido"
árbol del rábano sostenido --> "tree of the maintained radish"
tree of the maintained radish --> "árbol del rábano mantenido"

And from there it's pretty much the same thing. I just thought it was funny. I just don't see how the hell "Ben" means "Horseradish tree". Can someone please explain the etymology of that, please? Thanks.

I wonder what the stars look like from over there....

Lately I've been getting very restless.

I've been doing what I'm doing now for too long, and it's starting to weigh on me. Work, school, work, school, work school...repeat ad nauseam. I've been in school -- on and off -- for well, about 6 years. I've got two more to go. Don't get me wrong, I love school! Learning is really, really fun, and I enjoy it immensely. Work: well, I've been doing that for about 6 years too. Same damn thing every time I go in.

That's, like, 26% of my life so far that I've spent in school (well, college) and working the same job. The college has been pretty much the same as well -- UNCC feels a lot like CPCC did, with a few notable upgrades. Anyway, that's too long to have been doing the same thing.

Actually, it's just too long to be doing it in the same place.

Which is why I've been thinking lately about studying abroad next year. Somewhere in the UK, most likely Glasgow, Scotland. It would be such a welcome change! I could get out on my own a little, have some freedom, meet new people, see new things, have a new experience. It's the kind of thing you get to do once in a lifetime, and it'll probably be a life-changing experience, which itself requires a bit life-change. But I really think it'd be worth it. It would be extremely awesome, immersing myself in a new culture (but thankfully not a new language!) for 9 months.

And really, this place is starting to bug me. I've been in the same general area my entire life, and I need a change of scenery. Also, my mom is bugging me. I love her, but living with her absolutely infuriating sometimes.

Yeah...I need to get away for a while. Unwind. It'll be nice to not work for that long. I've been working ever since I've been in college, and it too is taking its toll.

Well, I'll think on it some. But I really want to do it.