MemeMachineGo!

I'm a little behind on my The Right to Write exercises, actually. My friend and I have just finished the seventh, but I got stuck on the fifth and haven't finished it yet.

To get over the urge that you're writing has to be 'good enough' (to satisfy usually insatiable internal censors) which urge can rob prose of its vitality, the fifth exercise (Cameron calls them 'initiations' in the book) is to go get three tabloids, read them, pick ten stories that grab you... and then spend half an hour writing your own tabloid-style story.

And I realized... I didn't know where to find a tabloid in this town. I get my groceries at places that have Adbusters, the Utne Reader and various other periodicals on yoga, vegetarianism, Buddhism, feng shui, alternative medicine, the environment, metaphysics, politics. Not a three-headed love child in sight.

So last night I went to Safeway, Berkeley's most mainstream grocery store. Bought the Weekly World News (Aliens capture top-secret NASA moon base), the Sun (Revealed: Secrets of ancient Aztec zodiac), and the Globe (Cher's Secret Gay Confession).

The Weekly World News runs a weekly Where's Waldo style "Where's Osama" contest, in which they show a picture of a crowd "Osama was known to be in" into which they've photoshopped him and if you circle him and mail it in, you could win $10 and "serve your country."

[Originally posted to Death Upon My Shoulder; subsequently merged into MemeMachineGo!]