Meta-Contextual Article About Its Composition

May. 4, 2011
Jimmy Chen writes essays, criticism, and satire. He also contributes at HTMLGIANT, among other places, and ...

Tuesday, March 3, 2011, 5:45PST, San Francisco – Get off work at 5:00pm, ride bike ~4.8 miles to “Coffee Bar,” a cafe which serves dinner, located in the outer Mission at Mariposa and Bryant. Order a Lagunitas IPA and tuna melt, incurring $12.60 dollars in cost, whose subsequent denominations as change from a $20 dollar bill is one 5 and two 1 dollar bills and 40 cents, the latter paltry amount which went into the tip jar. Kindly asked barista to pour beer into a glass, which was done indignantly with fantasized spit on the part of the pourer, who likely has crushed artistic dreams. Asian-American professional-looking woman adorned with a 3.0 – 3.5 karat diamond ring seated to my right “deeply engaged” in a document which exudes “deadline.” 6 – 7 minutes into rave song playing the same melody over and over again, which turns into a jazz song on one suspects the aforementioned barista’s iPod as this sentence is being writ. Latino waiter/busboy takes my number 5 placard off the table, and in exchange, gives me an oval plate with a diagonally-bisected tuna melt and garden salad — the constituents of the latter conveniently inserted into the former, above the implicated fish mash and below the top layer of toasted wheat bread. The writer of this article is suffering from allergies, and has blown his nose into the same paper napkin 4 – 5 times, depositing more mucous than napkin was designed to handle. The setting western sun throws itself as some intimate cosmic slut onto two people before me: (1) a woman staring at a laptop, her right hand shielding the sun’s rays from her eyes, and (2) a man carefully leaning behind her, explaining something about technology or politics (one presumes); and before the writer of this article imagines the latter positioned behind the former, thrusting his glistening penis betwixt the former’s soft buttocks, he will stop short, and finish his tuna melt, elegantly spiced with the lightest notes of arugula.

6:56 p.m., Still here — Had difficulty “wrapping text” flush left around a pic of myself drinking wine as meta-contextual conceit [1]. Emailed editor/irl-bro [2] about it, and received no reply; but later on I will notice he will log into Thought Catalog’s WordPress and reticently try to wrap text, but will fail as well. This website’s coding, while “clean,” is not implicit. To be a blogger/writer today is to have to know the most elementary code (HTML/CSS), otherwise your pieces will look like crap. I’m getting old, I’m already drunk. Suddenly got really sad. I tend to do that. I think I’m bipolar, or at least mildly bipolar. Much of my online activity and affected confidence accounts for what may be considered “manic episodes”; when you don’t hear from me, I tend to be in my condominium being “existentially suicidal,” i.e., wanting to non-violently simply disappear from this meaningless and arbitrary universe. I just texted a 22-year-old female romantic interest [3] and told her I was writing a meta Thought Catalog post and for her to text something provocative, as it is my plan to incorporate a screen shot of our text, but she didn’t reply, a reticence which — if you suffer from anxiety and catastrophic thinking — may be masochistically interpreted as a commentary on her diminishing sentiment. Went on Twitter and realized everyone is sort of insane, at least the people I follow. I’m beginning to think there’s a direct correlation between mental illness and time spent online. I don’t know what to do tonight. It’s only 7:01pm and I’m pretty much done here. Gonna go home now, maybe try to finish this.

7:40 p.m., Writer’s Residence, Potrero District, San Francisco – Got home and binged on tortilla chips and salsa, tempted to take some Claritin®. The 22-year-old female ends up texting something provocatively Neo-Feminist and/or ironic glorifying domestic violence within African-American’s hip hop culture. I have since learned what the “Dougie” is — a dance conceived by Cali Swag District in their song “Teach Me How to Dougie,” [somewhat meta itself, as the title projects subsequent interest in the dance] once interpreted by Chris Brown, that a-hole who beat Rihanna, whose adroit limb manipulations invoke in our 22-year-old female the idealization of being punched, romantically, or at least as a form of ambivalent male attention. Bear in mind I only know this because I had to Google/YouTube everything, ending up doing the Dougie myself, horribly, realizing that the Dougie is hard to do. Politically and/or socioeconomically disenfranchised communities, i.e. black people, tend to heavily embrace and engage in collective activities which don’t cost any money, while affirming demographic alliance. This is why you always see black people standing on the curb behaving very similarly for hours on end. To call it loitering is too simplistic. By the way, I never told you: this entire piece was aggressively edited, revised, and completed the following morning [9:27 a.m., Writer's Employment, Parnassus Heights, San Francisco], as aurally chaperoned by my co-worker’s “test wedding” music playlist, mainly Soul, which I am not a fan of. Put simply, she is getting married in September to a man named “Jim,” and she’s working out the most optimal playlist to present to the DJ, an agenda which incurs the listening of said music, on “loop,” which I laboriously perceive behind me with notable patience. Soul music is presumptive. When we die, we die. As for what I can perceive before me, that is where you come in, comment. TC mark

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  • faustIVevr

    meta firrst

  • http://profiles.google.com/mhmandthen walter davis

    what has tao lin created

    • http://jimmychenchen.com/ Jimmy Chen

      i have been more influenced by D.F. Wallace and Nabokov, though I will admit the 'high'/'insane' syntax may be construed as somewhat Taoist

      • Fuckinchillllll

        taoist… awesome

      • AHH

        Yeah I don't find this to be 'Toaist'

  • http://madisonlangston.blogspot.com/ Madison Langston

    did I really take that long to reply?

    • http://jimmychenchen.com/ Jimmy Chen

      wow, you just implicated yourself. good luck on this thread.

  • http://brianmcelmurry.blogspot.com/ Brian McElmurry

    Loved this shit

  • ella

    loved it

  • Dmstls

    “Coffee Bar” sounds a lot like “The Grove” in SoMa. $10.40 for a tuna melt???? made of gold???????????

    • http://jimmychenchen.com/ Jimmy Chen

      'the grove' is also on fillmore and in the marina; that place sort of blows. i never said tuna melt was $10.40, unless u assume beer was $2.20, as the total bill was $12.60.

      • Dmstls

        hahaha, no i meant that the grove charges $10.40 for a tuna melt. yeah it blows, but i still go cuz they open til 11!

  • ok

    I love you Jimmy Chen.

    • http://jimmychenchen.com/ Jimmy Chen

      OK

      • ok

        Also, putting <div style=”float:left;”> and </div> around the image should wrap the text around it.

      • http://profiles.google.com/brandypass Brandy Pass

        I love you, too.

  • http://davidfishkind.com effervescence

    this article made me feel slightly less depressed about spending $20 on failed guacamole + pico de gallo ingredients which i made in my apartment between the hours of 2 and 4pm today. they tasted terrible. i ate most of both mixtures with expensive ($6 — the ones that come in the paper bag and the mexican title) tortilla chips, extremely frustrated and relentless. i'm usually good with things like this. i'm not sure if it was the tomatoes i used or what. i think it was the tomatoes i used. i think i picked out bad avocados too. i have no idea. i lied down and watched the twilight zone for a few hours. i masturbated and then later talked to my girlfriend who lives in germany through instant message. i couldn't respond i couldn't think of what to respond to when she said things. i put my head down thinking that maybe i would throw up from the bad tomatoes or avocados or pathetic milieu of the situation. i brushed my teeth few times and took out the garbage but the taste lingered in my mouth. it continues to linger as i write this comment, pausing briefly to make sure i used milieu correctly, wishing i could sleep for 36 hours. plus next week is finals week–boned!

  • Customconcern

    this reminds me of how in high school the English teacher made us write 'journal entries' in class sometimes and so most of the kids would just write journal entries about how they didn't have anything to write a journal entry about

    only difference is the vocabulary used and the 'subtle' branding via screenshot

  • LDN

    the footnotes were the best bit (though i did like it all)

  • http://fastfoodies.org Briana

    a genuinely enjoyable read. thanks, jimmy.

  • ZaneEatsWorld

    Not gonna lie. Only reason I comment on Thought Catalog is 'cause I'm trying to hook up with Dan Hoffman.

  • http://profiles.google.com/elwags Emily L. Wagner

    1) “I’m beginning to think there’s a direct correlation between mental illness and time spent online.” – Are you there, Academia? It's me, your newest PhD thesis.
    2a) Is it embarrassing that you spelled provocative wrong?
    2b) Is it more embarrassing that I developed an almost immediate TC crush on you because you spelled provocative wrong?

    • http://deejberndt.blogspot.com DJ Berndt

      Jimmy Chen has yet another TC crush.

      I love this article, good job as always Jimmy Chen.

  • http://twitter.com/kyleangeletti Kyle Angeletti

    this seems like a great way to cure writer's block. turned out pretty good too.

  • Resear

    delicious

  • Homefreehomefire

    yeah for heightening. like cicadas.

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