I Had Every Potato

Twitter Sonnet #232

Open eyebrows choke on a glasses frame.
Extinct female noses pointed inward.
Sometimes fetching are glasses on a dame.
These findings were withheld by Bob Woodward.
Hasty notes congealed into newspaper.
Truth stretched on the silly putty version.
iPads slip from the hand of a leper.
Touch screens cater to oily emersion.
Snail slime badly highlights Kindle's key text.
Vending machines unstick for The Secret.
Potatoes rise for the barbeque hex.
No one can copyright the lone egret.
Rum changed for oil inebriates trucks.
Deep space observers are randomised ducks.

Just checked my claims status and found my health insurance turned my four hundred dollar clinic bill into a sixty seven dollar clinic bill. That was a pleasant surprise. Paying sixty dollars a month actually counted for something. Maybe I'll even be able to afford the stroke I'll probably have after all the fucking salt I had for lunch at Mickey D's to-day. Getting an oil change necessitated another visit to the Wal-Mart at lunch time. Their french fries are almost pixie sticks of salt. I'm assuming the yellow potato matter had some nutritional value.

I had some vending machine potato chips last night during school--I got two bags, actually, since I've noticed that whenever I buy something from a machine and I think at it, "I just know it's going to get stuck," the item invariably gets stuck, so I had to buy two. I had to, because I was just too hungry. Just hours earlier I'd vaguely planned on moving my normal dinner time to 9pm, forgetting my Thursday classes end at 10pm.

My anthropology teacher, Mr. Blood, had all the students write their names on the whiteboard last night and he took polaroids of all of us standing in front of our names. I wonder if he's jerking off to the male students or the female students. He said he was doing it because he had another learning disability (in addition to the one that gives him trouble spelling) that prevents him from remembering students' names easily. Maybe I have the same disability, because it seems to me it must be hard remembering the names of thirty students for a once a week class when you're presumably teaching other classes as well.

But . . . at least now he won't forget our names. "People like it when you remember their names, right?" he asked, and I immediately wondered how true that is. It's something I've heard before, but I honestly can't see myself caring.

While talking about language, he mentioned the voices of the Jawas in Star Wars are actually several recordings of different African languages played simultaneously, sped up, and played backwards. He asked the class how many of us had seen the original Star Wars and two people raised their hands, one of whom was me.

Two people.



After class, I had a mountain of mashed potatoes, carrots, and a veggie burger while watching Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. It's hard to generate new feelings about that movie--I haven't watched it in a couple years, but I watched it so many times in high school I can still speak lines along with the film. My perspective on Laura Palmer's character has somewhat broadened, though. Watching as a mopey, dramatic teenager, she's easy to identify with, but now I'm fascinated by how unrelated her different scenes feel to one another. I realised, in terms of what they say about her character, the only thing that unites them is the distance Laura has from a single, consistent personality. She really feels shut off, which makes sense, and also mirrors the story about Bob wanting her body for his next host. One could see the abuse he inflicts upon her as dismantling her existing identity.

I was thinking about who Judy might be--the Judy that David Bowie's character mentions and who's mentioned again by the monkey near the end of the film. Googling for information, I see she was originally meant to be Josie Packard's sister in an earlier version of the script but, of course, I'm always looking for Vertigo references and I wondered if it might be a reference to Judy Barton, the true identity of Kim Novak's character in Vertigo.

It's not as crazy a theory as it might sound, as it's an established fact that Laura Palmer's cousin, Madeleine Ferguson, is named after Madeleine Elster and Scottie Ferguson from Vertigo.

But regardless of whether or not it's meant to be a Vertigo reference, I like looking at it as one. Bowie says, "I'm not gonna talk about Judy, in fact we're not gonna talk about Judy at all, we're gonna keep her out of it." When the monkey mentions Judy, it's after Mike and the Man From Another Place get their garmonbozia (pain and sorrow) from Bob, which I tend to interpret as getting in touch with repressed feelings. The monkey might then represent an aspect of the human psyche beneath layers of psychological mechanisms--a more innocent, animal part of the human mind. That's the part that would mention the Judy that Bowie said couldn't be talked about, the real person underneath Madeleine Elster. If we're to take Judy as a reference to Laura herself, as this blogger does, it could refer to the real Laura buried under the different identities she contrived for herself to cope.

I find the drug deal scene funnier every time I see it.