THE JO-TEL … illegal blog downfield

#24

This plate exists at my new apartment:

[Dear Readers,

I have delayed this post for about one month because I keep postponing figuring out how to transfer the photo that I took of the plate that is the subject of this post, which is somehow contained on my new camera, to my computer. I just have a block against the whole process. Like the time when I had a block against calling FasTrak and changing my billing information to reflect my new ATM card. Eventually I ran out of money in my FasTrak account and started accruing awesome 35 dollar tickets every time I crossed a toll bridge. Which was everyday. Same with transferring the picture of this plate. But there will be no more delay! Values need to be transvalued! Suffice it to say that the plate is blue and around the circumference it says: “Good-Chear - Friendliness - Hope - Family”

Sincerely,
Shark]

As a threshold matter, “good cheer” should not be hyphenated unless, of course your talking about the good-cheer mobile. But more generally, it must be a really simple mind that is buoyed by these facile slogans. I mean, are there suburbanites out there for whom reading “Friendliness” on a plate makes them feel happier, more brightened by the glow of friends? Are there grandmothers that read “Hope” on dishware and look more optimistically towards their bleak future? Personally, I would be much more benefited by the laughter elicited by a plate that said “Hate - Death - Vengeance - Nothing”. I would buy that plate.

#25

How bad do cold fries taste? If you are like me, you’ve had that moment of lax experimentation where you tell your server at the over-priced urban comfort-food yuppie troph to box up your Yuca Chicken Sandwhich AND the fries as well. What the hell. You take the box home and put it in your refrigerator. You open it the next day and eat the chicken sandwich and it is good, but then you make your second mistake and decide to try one of the fries, thinking “It might be good– the sandwich was good cold!” But, obviously, cold fries are unendibly disgusting. Just don’t take fries to go from a restaurant: it’s not productive.

#26

It’s cool when a name for something becomes so common-place that you don’t even evaluate the merits of the name itself anymore. For instance, the name for the band consisting of Freddie Mercury, Brian May, John Deacon, and Roger Taylor, between the years of 1970 and 1991, is Queen. Now, that’s a pretty funny name for a band of dudes. Okay, maybe Freddie Mercury had the whole bisexual Brechtian excesses thing going pretty strongly, but still: high school boys all over American find it impossibly cool like listen to a rock band called … Queen. But that is the impetus of this little rant: I had hardly ever thought about how weird it is that a heavy metalish rockband has remained cool despite being called Queen. I mean, when’s the last time you realized that The Great Gatsby is a terrible name for a novel, not to mention a novel considered perhaps the best American novel of last century? Fitzgerald certainly must not have been totally happy with it, since the working title remains on the inside cover. But the book’s greatness has been so ingrained that we don’t even question to merits of its title– its label– anymore. It would be like saying the word “tree” sucks and that trees should be called something like “trongs”. On the other side of the spectrum, there are great titles that we no longer appreciate for the same reason. For instance, The Grapes of Wrath is a pretty poetic title that doesn’t really have a linear meaning. It conjures thoughts of the “fruit of labor” and “blood-red wrath” and “sweet toil”. It’s beautifully elusive and evocative. But for millions of high school kids it is just the name for a physically heavy and boring book about farmers. I don’t know how to end this post.

-Shark