Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Whitman, McDonalds, and dreams of blackmail...

Today is Walt Whitman's birthday. He sold a house to self-publish "Leaves of Grass" in 1855. Over 30 years later and after 9 revisions and subsequent publishings, the Society for the Suppression of Vice called it immoral and it began to sell.

Whitman used the money to buy a cottage where he lived for the rest of his life.

2 points:

The Society for the Suppression of Vice--think of the blackmailing potential of that club...mm, so juicy I could spread it on bread and eat it as a sandwich.

He sold a house, and eventually, got a cottage.

Yet more proof that poetry doesn't pay.


--randomly-- I thought the ads for McDonald's Asian salad looked kind of...delish. So I went on their website, looked up all the nutritional ins-and-outs, and got really, really excited about lunch today.

Then I went to McDonald's.

The salad was pretty darn tasty. The refusal of a cup for tap water, the long line, the dirty floor, the bum who twice asked me for money after spending over $6 on a combo meal, the man who sang God Bless America next to me, and the different man with a soiled crotch area who was hauled away by police after screaming about his picture ID was not.

Short-term solution: take the salad back to my office.

Long-term solution-- leave the damn city.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well isn't that the fun of the city? When y'all get to that cabin in the woods you're gonna miss Mr. Soiled Patriotic Pants.