Selected Unpublished Blog Posts of a Mexican Panda Express Employee, 63/100

Read Muumuu House's most recent publication, Selected Unpublished Blog Posts of a Mexican Panda Express Employee, a poetry collection by Megan Boyle. I was really excited to read it, being a fan of her blog (tomhankssuperfan.blogspot.com/), twitter, and ThoughtCatalog articles (including the classic Top Ten Things to Imagine Happening to Nicolas Cage as He's on His Way to a Dentist Appointment he has Postponed for Three Years).

The first word that comes to mind in regard to this collection is "funny." The second is "honest." The third is possibly "relatable" and/or "internet."

Boyle's collection is an amalgamation of chronological blog posts and poems, describing her daily actions, thoughts -- pre-meditated and stream of consciousness -- confessions, memories, and self-reflection. It brought to mind that Jean-Philippe Toussaint quote I posted yesterday:

literature focused on the insignificant, on the banal, on the mundane, the "not interesting," the "not edifying," on lulls in time, on marginal events, which are usually excluded from literature and are not dealt with in books

and from the same interview

The problem with the idea of the "minimalist novel" is that it's very simplistic. The term "minimalist" calls to mind the infinitely small, whereas "infinitesimal" evokes the infinitely large as much as the infinitely small: it contains the two extremes that should always be found...

Boyle's collection contains the infinitely large and the infinitely small. Large ideas like the difficulty of human connection, small actions like eating noodles and "surfing the web."

But can I stop waxing literary and say that I really really really really really enjoyed reading this book?

Here are some passages:

i could never be a sports writer, unless my assignment was to write 'sports sports sports sports sports' for three pages

i want to delete everything from someone's computer except a giant microsoft paint picture of a dick that takes forever to load

am i consciously trying to think interesting thoughts because i think i'm going to write this down later? am i actually interesting or do i just want to construct a view myself as 'interesting' so i can feel like i shouldn't die? 'interesting' seems mostly dependent on other people's perceptions, less on mine, maybe. or more like my idea of what will 'interest' others. if other people didn't exist i wouldn't worry if i was interesting or not

i keep thinking about updating my blog, twitter, and facebook with 'AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH,' then leaving the internet indefinitely

it feels like i could die in 50 years or tomorrow and the world would be relatively the same place

there would still be trees and people loving each other and killing each other

i feel insane and maybe on the verge of some kind of breakdown right now, like i'm not even sure what the internet is right now, i feel like i've taken a lot of pills but i've just had hummus, pita bread, an apple, some oreos, coffee, water, and birth control

i would like to matter to every person in the world

i would like every person in the world to matter to me

neither of those things will ever happen

i strongly feel that everything is and always will be okay while walking from subway to my apartment, holding a sandwich and a diet coke, usually around 9PM, seeing maybe two other people on the street and very few cars

when i close my apartment door and turn on the lights something changes in my stomach and i think 'shouldn't there be something else, something is missing'