I want to be a writer but I hate reading. They say every writer is a reader first. I'm fucked.
Sometimes I enjoy reading but not if it feels productive. I enjoy reading threads on reddit about "staying the f**k home if you're sick" (it's flu season) and jokes about the writer Nikolai Gogol dying of self starvation despite his doctor trying a soap suppository. <“Hey this guy won’t eat what do we do?” “Have you tried sticking a bar of soap up his ass?”>
If I win the National Book Award, maybe I won't get sent to an internment camp if Trump goes to war with China. I don't think I could survive internment camp. I read once, in a children's book, about a Japanese grandma who cultivated dandelions while interred. They were weeds, but they were beautiful to her. I could cultivate dandelions, but I might die – of anything. I'm already on the verge of death and everything in my life so far is fine. Maybe I would explode mentally. Or maybe I would simply starve to death because I'm a picky eater. I only eat tong ho, dandelion greenns, if it's cooked in mala spicy hot pot. I doubt there is spicy hot pot in internment camp.
A tweet from @QiaochuYuan on twitter: i am learning about myself that i'm actually very ambitious in a way i've habitually downplayed. like when i try to write short stories i might be telling myself "i'm doing this to amuse my friends" but the actual goal i've set my sights on is "i am going to dethrone ted chiang"
Do you think Ted Chiang gets diarrhea? Everyone gets diarrhea sometimes. If Chinese-Americans are interred, will Ted Chiang be immune? He "only" has like nine Hugo and Nebula awards. Would there be an outrage? The great Ted Chiang, sent to tend dandelions? What about the baller tweeter Qiaochu Yuan? It would be a shame if he was sent to a camp where there were no internet. I want to see more of his tweets trying to make Claude have an orgasm.
I'm fascinated by Qiaochu. He is a real guy. This part is not fiction. He graduated from MIT and went to grad school at UC Berkeley. He dropped out and has never held a job other than tweeting, if that can be a job. Somehow these words have meaning, have connotation - "MIT", "PhD", "dropout", "tweeting" - as evocative as week-old cup noodle containers and posters of sexy anime girls. Is Qiaochu a "type of guy"? I have a little bit of Qiaochu inside me. You do too.
A mind can be an internment camp.
This whole time, I wanted some blueberries, but I couldn't get up to go to the kitchen. I considered crawling, but it felt too undignified. I stayed in bed, tasting the phantom sugary juice mixing with the taste of day-old fluffy white plaque. My tongue felt too large for my mouth. Instead of getting up, I wrote this piece. It didn't win the National Book Award.
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