i am a party animal. dont get me wrong, i dont party a whole lot, and im not an animal in the traditional sense of the word. but none of this stops me from being a party animal. i get up, then i get down. i get funky, then i get off. then i get back on. i have fangs, and i chew with my teeth bared, and sometimes the funk doesnt stop until i stop the funk. other times the funk never even starts, cause im outside on the patio howling at the moon, because i am a party animal, and when you come and howl with me, youll be a party animal, too.
there was a time in my life, before i had adopted the mantle of party animal, that i would have been humiliated to drive around in a bicolor car. then i passed through the time when i would have sought a bicolor car just because that motherfucker had two colors, and two colors is barely enough to contain the animal inside my party animal self. now i have reached the point where a bicolor car sounds perfectly reasonable because it's cheaper that way, and why bother painting the car when you could spend that money on a case of scotch and a funnel? you can see where im coming from here.
today i spoke with a student in my office for a full thirty minutes, and she didnt cry once. not a single tear. i may be losing my touch, but it's easier this way. party animals dont like people to cry so much as we like people screaming while someone squirts them with scotch and someone else lights a bonfire. none of that happened with my student, but she did leave with a better understanding of how to properly organize a paper, and while that's not a very party animal thing to find joy in, it is nonetheless a joyful thing. because im only a party animal by night--by day im a meek, mild-mannered English teacher. and when people look at me during the day, they sigh and wonder how i can tolerate living such a dull life. it's then that i begin circling them in a menacing, wolf-like way and invoke Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut as i retort, "If you only knew. If you only knew what goes through the mind of mild-mannered English teachers, you would never sleep another night of your life."
Note: Noah Webster was not a party animal. in fact, some would describe him as the opposite of a party animal, the kind of man who would hold regular seminars to educate his own children on the proper way to be efficient. efficiency was a goal unto itself for Webster, a kind of cult that he and his friends finally turned into a full-fledged religion by making it the aim of good Christians everywhere. he was so devoted to efficiency, lavished so much attention upon it, that he turned against his own language. unlike G. B. Shaw, who took a knife to punctuation, Webster took his knife to spelling. one does not pronounce the "u" in "colour," he reasoned, and so one should not waste time writing it. this minutiae was exactly the extent to which Webster carried his obsession with efficiency. if no use could be found for them within a word, all unwary u's were obliterated from the English language. Brits and other English-speaking people have never forgiven us for what Webster did to their language. i have never forgiven him for what he did to our psyches. next time someone flies by you on the highway, chatting on their cel phone with one hand and eating a Big Mac with the other, think of Webster. he is, of course, the very same man who penned the first American dictionary, who helped pass the Fugitive Slave Act that required Northerners to aid Southern land owners in recapturing escaped slaves, who pissed Thoreau and Emerson off more than anyone else could.
me? im a party animal. and on Friday the 13th, Good Friday, the last day one can have oral examinations if one hopes to graduate in the spring with an M.A. from Iowa State University, i will take off my collar, spit out this muzzle, and begin one long, concerted howl at the moon. the scotch will flow like water. and the funk, once going, will never, ever stop.
posted by Paully at 7:55 PM link/comments
