Am I The Only One Who Thinks Like This?

Guest Writer

Hi! I'm a guest writer on Kori's blog! You can check out my music blog at http://www.ilikemusicblog.blogspot.com/!
I am going to tell you a story! A story about the time I fractured my skull.
It was seven years ago, during recess. I was playing tag with my best friend, Joseph. We were bored that day so we decided to come up with a new game. Now, I won't lie to you nice people, I'm a bit of a nerd. You know, Xbox, MMORPG's, and things of that nature. So was Joseph. We decided to play "Video Game Tag" (Remember, this was seven years ago. I was eight.) It's a game where you would choose a character from your favorite game, and play tag with their "Special Abilities" (For example, Samus could tag people from far away due to her arm cannon.) So we were playing our little game, Joseph was "It" and I was running as fast as I could to try and escape his fireballs (He was Mario). I looked back to see if he was behind me. Nowhere in sight. When I turned around however, I found that i was about two inches from a metal bar. Remember, I was running at full speed. SMACK. My forehead connected with the bar and i flew backwards. I blacked out. When I woke up, I found that i was in the nurses office. She told me I could go home and rest, and that's exactly what I did! Apparently it didn't do TOO much damage, because it healed within a few weeks.
So that's my story! Come check out my blog sometime, Kori just wrote on it!

Things I Am Looking Forward To.

(In Chronological Order)

1. Getting my MacBook Pro.
2. Graduation
3. My 18th Birthday.
4. Getting my tattoo.
5. Taking Back Sunday concert.                                                                     

Augsten Burroughs, Continued.

Original Passage, from Dry:
Jim is great. He's an undertaker. Actually, I suppose he's technically not an undertaker anymore. He's graduated to coffin salesman, or as he puts it, "pre-arrangements." The funeral business is rife with euphemisms. In the funeral business, nobody actually "dies." They simply "move on," as if traveling to a different time zone.
He wears vintage Hawaiian shirts, even in winter. Looking at him, you'd think he was just a norbal, blue-collar Italian guy. Like maybe he's a cop or owns a pizza place. But he's an undertaker, through and through. Last year for my birthday, he gave me two bottles. One was filled with pretty pink lotion, the other with amber fluid. Permaglow and Restorative: embalming fluids. This is the sort of conversation piece you simply can't find at Pottery Barn. I'm not so shallow as to pick my friends based on what they do for a living, but in this case I have to say it was a major selling point.

Notable Stylistic Elements:
His odd sense of humor.
He's descriptive, and somewhat sarcastic.

Context:
Describing his drinking buddy, Jim.

Imitation Passage:
His bright, optimistic grin gave the impression that he was an innocent, happy young man, chasing his dreams. That was half right. He was relatively happy, and he was chasing his life-long dreams, regardless of the limitations people tried to set. But, he wans't innocent, not really. Every other word that left his lips would make his mother cry, and his liver was suffering because of his drinking habits.
He was nice to be around, though. His laughter was contagious, and he turned everything into jokes. He wanted to write, and write what he wanted. His awkward, almost ADHD style made it hard for him to get published. He worked as a bartender at the bar on 7th Avenue, which was more than fitting for him. His drunken customers became his characters, and their drunken problems became his ideas.
He was lost. Stuck between reality and his dream land, not really knowing the difference between them. That was how he wanted to live; he wanted distractions from the fact that his dreams were still out of reach.

Augusten Burroughs, Writing Style.

Augusten Burrough's is mostly known for his memoirs, although he has a few fiction works as well. I personally have not read those, but his memoirs are some of my favorite books. He writes with a sense of dry, sarcastic humor, and is very descriptive. He speaks in his writing, as if he's personally telling you the story. He gives you details about the people involved, the scenery, his own emotions, or lack of emotions, on a situation.

Dry by Augusten Burroughs

It's Tuesday evening and I'm home. I've been home for twenty minutse and am going through the mail. When I open a bill, it freaks me out. For some reason, I have trouble writing checks. I postpone this act until the last possible moment, usually once my account has gone into collection. It's not like I can't afford the bills- I can - It's just that I panic when faced with responsibility. I am not used to rules and structure and so I have a hard time keeping my phone connected and the electricity turned on.




I start adding my hotel room, tax and meals for each day. Then I see the minibar charge. The total is sixteen hundred dollars. "How is this possible?"
"What?" Greer says, turning to me.
"What the ----?"
"Augusten, what is it? What's the matter with you?"
"My minibar charges. Look," I hand her the bill.
"These aren't your charges?" She says, looking over the bill.
"Of course not. No. I only took a bottle of ----ing water."
She stops chewing her gum. "You did read the little notice on the mini bar, didn't you?"
"What little notice?" I say
Greer, ever the A student, recites the notice from memory. "For your convenience, you will be automatically billed for each item removed from your minibar."
"But all I drank was water!"
"Okay. But did you take things out and put them back?"
"They bill you for that?" I say, horrified.
"Of course. All the good European hotels do it now."
We weren't in ----ing Europe. I don't say anything.
"What did you do? Take all the liquor bottles out every day and put them back?" She laughs, like this is not something within the realm of actual possibility.
Unfortunately, it is. Because that's exactly what I did. I fondled all the bottles, constantly. Sixteen hundred dollars worth of fonlding. That's like hiring a prostitute every night for a week. And not even having a drink to break the ice.
Back in my apartment, I phone to hotel and explain the unfortunate situation.
"I'm sorry," They tell me.
"And...?" I say.
"And that's why we put the notice on the minibar door." The customer representative tells me with great smugness.
That's it. I lose it. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. For the rest of my life, there will always be a bar tab.

Augusten Burroughs

Augusten Burroughs is an author of several books, mostly memoirs, based on his strange and dysfunctional life. His mother was a lunatic, who gave him away to her psychiatrist, also a lunatic, where he was surrounded by older homosexual men, and taken out of school. He's battled alcoholism, and other emotional problems, but now lives a healthy sober life in New York City.

His sarcastic and morbid sense of humor is very prominent in his writing. His writing style is descriptive and detailed, and when reading his books, I feel like I was there, experiencing every bit of strangeness that he was. I feel his emotion and his confusion, and sometimes his books make me cry. I get attached to the characters (the different friends and boyfriends that he's had in his life), and his writing gives me the feeling that I know him personally.


Exceprt from Dry:

 The next day, I go to the gym. It's been over a month since I've worked out, and I'm depressed to see that instead of bening able to do curls with the forty-five pound weigths, I struggle with the twenties. This shouldn't matter to me. I'm not drinking is what should matter. but the fact that I've deflated depresses me and makes me want to drink. I gained one thing and lost another. Just shut the hell up, I tell myself, Get your priorities straight.
While I'm doing tricep kickbacks, my face ready to burst capillaries, a handsome guy doing squats smiles at me. Nods his head. I immediately look away, feeling very much damaged goods. Because even though I'm in public like a normal person now, I'm still removed from society. I imagine how our coffee conversation would go.
Squat man: So, tell me about yourself.
Me: Well, I just got out of rehab. And went to the first of the AA meetings I will have to attend for the rest of my life.
Squat man: Hey, that's great, man. Good for you. Listen dude, I gotta run. Nice talkin' with ya. Good luck. Ciao.
Like cubic zirconia, I only look real. I'm an imposter. The fact is, I'm not like other people. I'm like other alcoholics. Mr. Squat can probably go out, have a couple drinks, and then go home. He might even have to be talked into a third drink on a Friday night. Then, on Saturday morning, he might have a slight hangover. I, on the other hand, would have to be talked out of a thirteenth drink on a Monday. And I wouldn't wake up with a hangover. Just a certain thickness that only after rehab, only after waking up without this thickness, did I realize was a hangover. A comfortable hangover, like a pair of faded jeans or a favorite sweater with too many fur balls on it.
I go down to the locker room. In the shower, I think about how I'm a drunk that doesn't get to drink. It seems unfair. Like keeping a Chihuahua in a hamster cage.

The Buried Life