When I teach writing students, I often tell them that nobody will love their work if some people don’t also hate it. They always look stunned, even terrified, as if I’ve just told them they’ll never meet their soul mate unless they also make a mortal enemy of someone.
I don’t have a goal, which frees me up to be creative because there’s nothing I’m trying to attain.
I did not want to live the unenjoyable life.
My twelve-year-old: All the atoms in that stop sign are moving. Right now, moving. So, you know, I don’t think there’s any such thing as potential energy. It’s all kinetic, all the time.
Me: Okay, you’re the dad now.
‘Besides,’ said Mr. Norrell, ‘I really have no desire to write reviews of other people’s books. Modern publications upon magic are the most pernicious things in the world, full of misinformation and wrong opinions.’
‘Then, sir, you may say so. The ruder you are, the more the editors will be delighted.’
‘But it is my own opinions which I wish to make better known, not other people’s.’
‘Ah, but sir,’ said Lascelles, ‘it is precisely by passing judgements upon other people’s work and pointing out their errors that readers can be made to understand your own opinions better. It is the easiest thing in the world to turn a review to one’s one ends. One only need mention the book once or twice and for the rest of the article one may develop one’s theme just as one chuses. It is, I assure you, what every body else does.’
I especially like finding one, early in the semester, left lying around a classroom (if there’s a sneaker tread across the front page, all the better). It’s always more fun to read something you’re not supposed to, isn’t it?
This isn’t a snarky pleasure, I swear. I just like thinking about what the professor must be like, what it’s like to be in this class, what happened in the past to shape the course (like someone recently wrote, most policies in asyllabus are responses to past problems).
I’m not sure what all this little habit says about me–and I’m not sure I want to look in that dark corner–but I’m pretty sure what it says about syllabi: that, ultimately, they are character-driven stories.
Whenever I make a new meal, I have to read the recipe over and over until I can visualize the process. What will my set-up look like? How many prep bowls, and what’s going in them? In my head, the recipe becomes a series of images—essentially, a comic.
Which made me think: Why not make a cookbook as a comic? It would be great for visual learners, and might even be sensible design for the rest of us.
As you can clearly see, my handwriting ain’t great, and my drawing is laughable, but hey, it’s a prototype, right? Plus, I know that I’m not the right guy to make this project. I’m not a real cook or an artist. I’m just sticking this baton out into the universe with the hope that someone else will grab it and run with it.
Credit where credit is due. This recipe is a riff on the red sauce recipe from THE FOOD LAB by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt.
Thanks, too, to @thenearsightedmonkey and her idea of “little comics everywhere.”
Cornflakes are shaped like shields
to deflect the milk.
The harder you pour, the bigger the splash.
Dr. Kellogg’s design:
If you’re cleaning the countertop,
you ain’t masturbating.
By the time you wring out the washcloth,
the flakes are soft as leaves
at the bottom of a winter pond.
Your spoon destroys them.
Also by design:
A friendly reminder of your own decay
providing 100% of the recommended daily amount of disappointment
which tastes like riboflavin.
One more way for the good doctor to wilt your morning wood.
Well, you’ll show him.
Pour slow, spoon fast.
Set your coffee mug on the porch rail,
let it burn a clean hole in the snow.
When you’re done, toss the silt in the yard,
slop the squirrels.
Your bowl is a shield,
made to break, but never to break down.
Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.