Toward Camelot by the service road.

Since I have suggested it twice in comments and people seem to like the idea, I now propose it formally, a solution to two experiences we might like not to have: one, February, when it rains, or is excessively hot, or is in some other way invariably unsatisfactory! a month from which we would like to be distracted until circumstances improve! and two, this illusion that DREAMWIDTH IS FOR SERIOUS, which...no, I am here to assure you that we have been entirely full of shit on this website since the dawn of same.

BUT! you say, Sara, everyone here is OLD and also ERUDITE AS FUCK and sometimes it is ALL A BIT MUCH.

Good news:



I will agree to believe that you are also in your forties (or greater!) if you will agree to come have some fun. How do you think we all got to be OLD and also ERUDITE AS FUCK? By running our fool mouths for years at a time.

In the spirit of pretending we're still relevant, I present you with a challenge for the month of February! You have until then to get ready, unless of course you would like to start now, which is ALSO A THING YOU CAN DO because this is the internet and I don't make the rules.

The challenge goes like this: you should write some things! In the month of February! And they should be absofuckinglutely pointless. Ideally they will also be funny.

But Sara! you say, you are OLD and also ERUDITE AS FUCK, so this is easy for you! How will I know what to write about?

WELL. I AM GLAD YOU ASKED.

I MADE A LIST.

This list is drawn from a variety of sources, all of which are guaranteed OLD and/or ERUDITE AS FUCK, and often both. As a person with two (2) college degrees, a copyediting credential, two professional certifications, an expired Oregon food handler's permit, an equally-expired Wilderness First Aid certification, AND a union card, I am clearly qualified for this task. Also a bit gassy from some leftover cake they had up by the reception desk this afternoon that I've come to realize was a mistake.

I have surveyed the ENTIRE INTERNET in a TOTALLY DETAILED AND OBJECTIVE WAY and selected A VARIETY OF THEMES for you from CLASSICAL TEXTS (by which I mean I got home from work, put on my PJs, clicked on four links, and flipped through a magazine I found under my nightstand). These OLD and/or ERUDITE AS FUCK texts are kore's capslocky post that I read this morning; Tristan Tzara's Dada Manifesto; Tim Berners Lee's late 90s FAQ for kids about the World Wide Web; Andre Breton's Manifesto of Surrealism; and the November "Books and Writing" issue of High Country News.

There could be a Column A and a Column B, and you could pick one from each; or there could be a randomizer; or there could be any number of things. But there aren't. What do you think this is, Facebook? What you get is semicolons and carriage returns. Because I am OLD. And also ERUDITE AS FUCK. So there are no rules, there are suggestions, and I will look forward to seeing what you do with them. Feel free to leave links in the comments here, or not. Maybe you will get a prize if you respond to a lot of these things, and maybe you won't! No rules! No kings! No empires! Information wants to be free. Have fun storming the castle.

There are 56 items on the list, which is enough that you may have UP TO TWO PER DAY for the entire MONTH. It's a short month. You can do this.


deadly snakes
the dialectic
venomous spiders
chanterelles
kale
laughing derisively
boots
the drawers of the brain
Jeremy Bentham's head
wilderness
benign joys
cats
high energy physics
fulminate
packets
coffee
accordions
eigenvectors
land stewardship
the sorrows of conjugal life
false novels
monotonous primitivism
sandwiches
the hares of the angels
misfortune
the investment of intellectual capital
railroads
the infernal gamut
eyeliner
HyperText Transfer Protocol
motion
adding things on to it for practical reasons
television
inside a whale
man
taxes
understand each other
shoes
nonchalance
the waking state
profound indifference
original underwear
ignore the description
monkeywrenching
problems of secondary interest
a fork
my love of shocking the reader
degree of immediate absurdity
a bad priest
your moral boundaries
the inexhaustible nature of the murmur
the first white paper of chance
John Wesley Powell
concrete
otters
more as soothing anodyne than actual art