The Difference Between Pepsi and Coke
By David Lehman
Can't swim; uses credit cards and pills to combat
intolerable feelings of inadequacy;
Won't admit his dread of boredom, chief impulse behind
numerous marital infidelities;
Looks fat in jeans, mouths clichés with confidence,
breaks mother's plates in fights;
Buys when the market is too high, and panics during
the inevitable descent;
Still, Pop can always tell the subtle difference
between Pepsi and Coke,
Has defined the darkness of red at dawn, memorized
the splash of poppies along
Deserted railway tracks, and opposed the war in Vietnam
months before the students,
Years before the politicians and press; give him
a minute with a road map
And he will solve the mystery of bloodshot eyes;
transport him to mountaintop
And watch him calculate the heaviness and height
of the local heavens;
Needs no prompting to give money to his kids; speaks
French fluently, and tourist German;
Sings Schubert in the shower; plays pinball in Paris;
knows the new maid steals, and forgives her.
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I have no good explanation for where I was yesterday. I was around, doing stuff with my kids, writing, folding laundry. Watched a third season episode of Dawson's Creek and was horrified to discover that this time around, in addition to changing a number of songs from the episodic soundtracks, they had changed the theme song. Sheesh, how much could the rights to "I Don't Want To Wait" have cost? Today my younger son gets his first set of braces. This ought to be an...interesting...afternoon.
1. What color ink pen do you like best?
Plain, ordinary black or blue. Though in my Norton Critical copy of Paradise Lost I have notes from college in purple and from grad school in green -- not that it matters, as I can tell from the nature of the comments what Maureen Quilligan said and what Marshall Grossman said. But it's interesting, rereading it, to see how my handwriting and notation style and focus changes between 1985 and 1990.
2. Do you prefer plain paper or paper with lines (notebook paper)?
I prefer a computer screen. But when I'm writing on paper, I prefer unlined. I doodle and run arrows to move things around and draw my own heavy lines between ideas.
3. What's better: books from the library, or reading online?
Online saves me having to make the trip, and it's a lot easier to take excerpts and make notes, but there are a hell of a lot of books in the library not in the public domain that just aren't available online.
4. Which would you rather get, e-mail or snail mail?
The vast majority of the time, e-mail, which is easier to reread and answer and doesn't get lost in a pile of papers. From a couple of people, though, having actual paper to fetishize really does something for me.
5. Do you have a paper weight on your desk?
Several, but they're all decorative, not holding actual papers.
Freudian meme, gacked from
| Freudian Inventory Results |
| Genital (56%) you appear to be stuck between destructive and constructive outlooks. Latency (73%) you may be using learning as an escape from living. Phallic (66%) you appear to have issues with controlling your sexual desires and possibly fidelity. Anal (30%) you appear to be overly lacking in self control and organization, and have a compulsive need to defy authority. Oral (66%) you appear to be overly passive and dependent, wanting things to be given to you instead of working for them. |
personality tests by similarminds.com
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