A Day in the Life
by Jonathan Penton

I recently discovered what has to be one of the most brilliant creative sites on the Internet: the diary of Joost Schuur. Every day, Joost updates his site with the utterly banal trivialities of his middle-class, uninteresting life. Every day, he puts up a new picture: things like the Indian buffet where he had lunch, the line he had to stand in at Blockbuster, or the socks that came out of his dryer without a match. The site is incredibly boring, and thereby utterly hilarious: it's a subtle and shrewd commentary on the trivialities of modern life. I'm pretty sure the humor is intentional, as evidenced by Joost's confessions, which include items like:

I still have a fantasy world which I daydream about sometimes, in which I'm the leader of a genetically superior (but benevolent) strand of humanity, which topples Earth's governments to unite the world's population, rid it of hunger and poverty and promote the expansion of mankind into outer space. My name in this fantasy world is Raven Sinclair and I'm not ashamed to admit this here. I've had variants of this fantasy for as long as I can remember and think it doesn't interfere with my normal life.

At university, I shared an apartment with 5 girls at a university housing complex that was once a French army barrack. One girl once reported me to the housing commission, claiming I didn't clean enough.

Embarrassing, yes, but utterly shallow and unreflective, as befits the commonness of American culture. Joost analyzes banality through utter banality, and thus makes his analyses profound.

When I first started writing a formal, monthly "article" for Unlikely Stories, these articles were random and barely coherent glimpses of my stressors at the moment. A friend of mine criticized these articles, saying that they were as meaningless as reading someone else's diary. Since then, that friend has referred to Dr. Seuss as "Beloved Ted," and I'm inclined to take her literary opinions less seriously. So this month, I'm going to try to write like Joost.

I am strongly encouraged by my local government to see a psychiatrist. Lacking medical insurance, I see my county's Director of Mental Health on an irregular basis. Every time I see him, he seems to change my diagnosis completely, introducing a completely different regimen of psychiatric medications. He is also constantly trying to convince me that I'm an alcoholic. I'm not sure why; I think he's Muslim (which doesn't really explain anything, but I'm working it here). I don't have the income to be an alcoholic, but I am a pothead.

Currently, he's got me off my antipsychotics and on nothing but Zoloft, to the dismay of those around me. I'm surrounded by crazy people anyway, but I can't tell you who because I'm hiding from my ex-wife.

My psychiatrist also had me see the county psychologist. I told the psychologist a little bit about my personal and psychiatric history, and she asked me what I wanted to achieve through therapy. I was utterly flabbergasted. I pulled a slice of human gallbladder out of my backpack and chewed on it as I pondered her words. I'm obviously a mess, and the idea of creating short-term goals for my psychotherapy seemed absurd and hopeless to me. My goal was to be less crazy, and I told her so. She told me that she had a "writing assignment" for me, in a tone of voice that suggested she believed psychological homework constituted a creative outlet. She wanted me to come up with a list of goals. I haven't been back; I'm not sure what to do about that. Maybe I'll call Dr. Laura instead.

I played a role-playing game last week. I was hung over and did a poor job.

For July 4th, I went over to my parents' house for a "barbeque." When I arrived, my parents were there, as were my maternal aunt and uncle, my younger brother and his wife, my teenaged brother, and a friend of his. No food preparation had been attempted (in fact, not enough food had been purchased), and my father and uncle were puzzling over the grill, trying to figure out how to assemble it and make fire. I assembled the grill, started a fire, prepared food, and began cooking it. My teenage brother said something that annoyed me, so I threw a knife at him. My uncle laughed and said that that was probably a bad sign. I felt I was doing OK; it was only a little knife.

Looking back over this article, I realize that I don't actually sound much like Joost. Fuck him anyway, the stupid kraut, trying to write about American disassociation and emptiness. He doesn't know shit. And fuck Bukowski and Dr. Seuss, too.

Jonathan Penton is the overworked editor and publisher of Unlikely Stories. Check out his literary works at this site.