Pep Talk #21: Knives Out
Things to watch out for.
Someone made the mistake of mentioning Charles Bukowski in my presence, and naturally I was forced — AGAINST my will — I HATE correcting people’s opinions — to blitz them with the truth about Bukowski and his fans, who claim they love Bukowski’s poems because they’re “dark” and “not flowery or pleasant” but this only indicates that they have never read any poems by anyone else, because if they DID read poems they’d understand that in fact 90% of poems are dark and unpleasant, and what they call ‘flowery’ others would call ‘beautiful,’ ‘thoughtful,’ ‘well-designed,’ ‘precise,’ etc., and while I don’t hate Bukowski’s work (I really liked his collaborations with Robert Crumb) or Bukowski himself (I love beaten-down-delightfully-sad-world-weary types and all of their terrible human qualities), I have come to resent the fans who think, for some reason, that Bukowski is some kind of “fringe” poet when he is arguably the Taylor Swift of Poetry to the extent that he is actually rich from being a poet in the 1990s.
My friend said they “didn’t know it was that serious.” I said that’s where you’re wrong, some things are that serious, and it’s good to pay attention to serious things because what I’ve learned, in my 23 years of living, is that if you don’t take them seriously, you could very quickly find yourself in a dangerously embarrassing situation. The friend asked me to make a list of the other things that trigger my fight-or-flight, and I was happy to oblige, and even happier to share with you all, my best best friends in the whole wide world, in case you needed a reminder to keep your knives out, because you can never really know, but sometimes YOU SHOULD HAVE! You really should have known…
Fight or Flight Triggers: A List
Disclaimer: None of these things are bad by themselves, but they could potentially signal danger, especially if more than 3 are present in a single person.
- Charles Bukowski
- Aristotle/Plato
- Peaky Blinders
- No bed frame
- Protein powder not mixed into anything
- Electrolyte powder not mixed into anything
- Peanut butter out of a jar with a spoon
- No platonic female friends
- Walden by Henry David Thoreau
- Jack Kerouac (The Beats in general, but especially this guy)
- David Foster Wallace
- Proud of having string lights as representative of a ‘feminine’ side
- Pavement (band)
- Starchy button downs as casual clothing
- Lowercase texting
- Tries to convince you of their ‘supernatural’ abilities (perfect pitch, photographic memory, Sherlockian instincts, etc.)
- Overhead light usage
- Weird pants, normal outfit otherwise
- In a band
- Refers to people as “NPC”s
- Posts quotes on Instagram story
- No wallpaper/screensaver
- Twitter user
- Prone to perceiving a connection between two variables that does not exist
I’m sure I missed some… help me out in the comments or via email if you have ideas.
Other stuff I’ve been working on:
Made my handwriting into a font, you can too!
Please like and restack if you feel so inclined :) thank you!
— Phoebe Ward, Countess of the resplendent borough, that of Brooklyn, renowned for its Charms and Elegance