A Reference Guide To Everything I Blogged From 2010-2012

3rd Grade– A tag from when I wrote about one of my classmates in elementary school throwing up blood

90s – Can’t recall why this was used, but now that you’re here I want to say you have to be done pooping your pants at the beginning of the decade you claim to be “a child of.”

The Family –  I linked to the original version of “Nothing Compares 2 U”

A Woman Named Beth – I’d written something about a person I once knew. Her name is not Beth.

A Woman Named Megan – Ditto but her name is Megan. She played volleyball. We were 23.

A Guy – Stumped on this one.

ARP – Association of Retired People. I think my tens of readers gave this a bemused and inward ha.

Academic Coercion – This, I recall, was referring to the factory farming of short stories, their proliferation within MFA schools because of their palatability for grading.

Admonishments – Not sure who’d go searching WordPress for “admonishments.” Whoever they are, they’re not someone who likes the things I write. Which is a crucial fault in the way I market myself.

AdultFriendFinder – Not relevant to whatever I wrote about then. But I have been, and always will be, curious to meet someone who used AdultFriendFinder to meet their husband or wife

Age Of Adz – It was the best Sufjan Stevens album

Aging – The post mostly dealt with balding.

Alabama – About a time I had in the state, not with the band

Alan Rickman – No one, I knew then and do now, has been a better Sheriff of Nottingham.

Alexis Krauss – In her earlier stuff, around the time I would’ve tagged her, she sounded as if she was orgasming when she sang

Alfred Hitchcock – I had the feeling his guy wasn’t the nicest of guys. But that’s often the case with overbearing movie directors

Amazon –  They enjoyed a spike in traffic after I tagged them, I bet

American Trilogy – A trio of films by Von Trier, Dogville, Manderlay, then another one, Washington, which he either had postponed or forgotten about entirely.

American Movie – One of the great documentaries of the last 30 years. Still whenever I watch it I have a hard time believing it’s real.

Andrei Tarkovsky – The film director.

Andy Warhol – I tagged Warhol? Pop art was the collage art of its time.

Anelise Chen – It would have been in reference to this essay

Anne – See: “A Woman Named Beth”

Andie MacDowell – Her hair was and is an art all to itself.

Apocalypse – From the book of Revelation.

Appreciating Beauty – This had something to do with butts or MeInMyPlace, or both, from around early 2011

Arcade Fire – Their music was used in a sermon by a non-denominational pastor as an example of uplifting songwriting, and I thought that seemed about right

Art – See: “Admonishments”

Art Projects – From my project where I wrote a 2000 word short story for anyone who asked and typed it on a typewriter. My pathetic attempt at starting something, one of many

Arthur C. Clarke – I think, if I can remember, I mentioned him for his pairing with Kubrick for Space Odyssey. A modern equivalent might be George R. R. Martin and P.T. Anderson

Aurelie Claudel – It was a French model teaching another French model how to tie a tie.

Avant-Garde – I thought it was often a replacement for the word “immature”

B. R. Myers – Writer of The Reader’s Manifesto and critical essayist, once focusing his harshest lens on Franzen’s Freedom. I agreed with his review

BP – The company who dumped their oil in Gulf Coast. It was topical then, though I’m pretty sure most of that oil is still out there

Back Hair – I’d go on to write more about it

Back-Patting Bad Art – It was a heavy wink to the incestuous nature of literature

Balding – It was an obsession of mine around the time of this blog. Lesser so now, but only because I have less hair.

Bandoppler – A culture/thought magazine founded by my friend Jason Dodd and his crew of writers in Seattle

Bangs – Jenny Lewis’s not Lester’s

Barn – For an agrarian short story I was working on

Baseball – Why did I tag something with “Baseball?” I feel like that’s something I would’ve done at age 10, and, I guess, at age 30.

Bathing Suits – It was a Mayer Hawthorne video. It will take you to summer

Battleship Potemkin – An old movie I know nothing of but am fascinated I once wrote about it

Beard – It was about the spousal mask, not the facial hair

Bearded Drummers – No clue

Bearded Folk – Because of this Fleet Foxes song. It was like a lost Neutral Milk Hotel song, I thought

Beauty – Had something to do with butts, I’m sure

Beer – All this does is make me wonder if there was a time in my life when I drank more beer than I now remember.

Bieber – This song produced by El-P

Bert Blyleven –  I wrote a six sentence story about Blyleven being inducted into the Hall of Fame in the style of the ending of the first chapter of The Easter Parade

Bibson Geefeater – What the father character drunkenly orders for himself instead of a Gibson Beefeater in “Reunion,” the story by John Cheever

Billy Murray – Why did I spell it “Billy Murray?” Most likely it’s a typo, which is annoying, years later

Birds Without Songs – I wasn’t doing drugs then but you wouldn’t by the tags I used

Bjork – The Icelandic singer, in reference to Dancer in the Dark, which contains her best music

Blake Bailey – His book on Richard Yates reads like a novel itself. I can’t recommend it enough.

Bloc Party – A Weekend In The City, because it was and is one of the most underrated albums of the last decade

Blowhards – Was speaking about literature communities here

Blue Sweaters – A preppy sweater I once wore to a bar and was made fun of for it by the guy who was currently, and still is, seeing my ex-girlfriend

Bohemian Europeans – See: “Admonishments”

Bon Iver – I find it hard to believe Justin Vernon lives in Eau Claire, WI. Just something I think about from time to time

Book Clubs – I was saying a certain book was a “Book Club” kind of book: bland and generic, predictable, ringing false, etc

Boost Mobile – This Aqua Teen episode. Not as disturbing as “Hand Banana”

Brad Pitt – Peaked with Legends of the Fall

Brian Moore – One of the more underrated novelists of the 20th Century

Brooks Brothers – Many great writers wore Brooks Brothers. Not sure if that’s still true. Seems a little too WASP-y now.

Brown Dresser – Good stuff. Great tag.

Bullshit – It was in relation to a writer or a think piece on the internet

Cable Television – Made me think of Cronenberg or Wallace, maybe Terry Gilliam. No one is making art about cable television’s erosion on the American Family anymore, and I can’t say I have any desire to see or read anything on it either. Seems more like a late 80s/early 90s thing.

Capitulation – I pullled excerpts of a novel I thought was finished

Car – Jesus Christ. That’s me talking.

Cars Don’t Exist – I think they do. Not sure what I basing this off of.

Cash Money – In the way the phrase is used in Disney movies in the 50s like Old Yeller, not by the rap collective of Lil Wayne, Tyga, Drake, others

Catholics – Big subject. I hope I tackled it well.

Cavemen – I often use “Cavemen” as a way to show my feelings as a person who obsesses over Twitter followers and literary notoriety against what it must have been like to worry about more basic things like a next meal or shelter

Cavewomen – See: “Cavemen”

Celebrity Crush – It was Alia Shawkat

Cell Phones – See: “Catholics”

Cerberus Shoal – A post-rock drone psychedelic bizarro folk band from the early to mid 00s. I wrote a review of one of their albums for PopMatters

Chan-wook Park – On Oldboy, one of the five best movies of the 00s.

Charlie Rose – This interview

Cheever – John

Chesty – 32/50 at jonathanleder.com in “35MM”

Chick Lit – I may have even used it as an insult, but I don’t think “Chick Lit” is a lesser genre. If anything, writers able to craft books into a genre are often more talented than writers writing ubiquitous literary fiction

Chrindie – On a subgenre of indie Christian music popular in the late 90s and early 00s.

Chris Farley – Actor. Deceased.

Christian Marriage – Something I always wanted, until I didn’t. Which gives me hope that someday I’ll stop wanting to be a writer so I can happy.

Christianese – This explains it pretty well

Christians – People who believe in the death and resurrection of a man from the Iron Age as a way of attaining eternal happiness

Christmas – The day we’ve picked as the day the man who grants eternal happiness was born

Christopher Hitchens – A man who didn’t have time for either of the previous two

Chuck Close – Artist. Admire all his work

Chuck Klosterman – Essayist. Admire his work as an essayist

Clothes – I know I was trying to be “funny,” or meta in a way that lampooned the idea of tags themselves, but then why didn’t I just not use tags? These are questions I can only ask myself now

Coen Brothers – Top five films are now Fargo, Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, Barton Fink, Inside Llewyn Davis

Coke – The caffeinated drink, not the powder for Wall Street types

Combine – The tractor used to harvest crops, not the act of taking two or more things and mixing them together into something else

Common Sense – I was being very obvious here

Community – I was early adopter of this show, but I thought it was strange how they ended their episodes with the same saccharine easy life advice they wanted to subvert

Comparative Literature – It was in reference to a real-life date I went on with someone majoring in Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota. She was from OkCupid and I wrote about it, more or less, exactly how it happened.

Counting Crows –  I have no recollection of posting any of their songs to my blog but I wouldn’t click away from a blog that did

Coveting – This, again, was in reference to a butt or bottom in some way. Or it could have been someone’s life. But almost certainly not a material thing. Not that I don’t like material things, it’s just that I like buns and other people’s lives more.

Crispin Glover – The actor. I think it could’ve been for this

Cronyism –  A partiality to long-standing friends in the lit-scene, is something I probably wrote.

Dane Cook – I said I liked him when he first came out

Danielle Luft – This video, which is NSFW. At the time I was applauding their approach to hipster nude photography. Though later they divorced and I have to wonder why. I mean, I don’t actually wonder why, the reason is obvious, but it’s sad anyway

David Bazan – I had like 12 followers at the time and he had over 10,000 and he responded to my tweet calling him out for playing Christian festivals when he wasn’t a Christian. He responded by making fun of my fiction pursuits.

David Foster Wallace – One of the times was when I quoted him as saying that life is “full of irrelevant complexity”

David Lynch – Unlike Wallace, I’m not a big Lynch fan, so it’s weird I would’ve tagged him. Could have been talking about Mulholland Drive, which is his best movie by far, the closest a movie is to a waking dream

David Remnick – Editor of The New Yorker, a magazine people once cared about

Decalogue – The film by Kieslowski. I’ve seen one or two of the installments of the ten in the mini-series, though I’m sure I feigned otherwise to make myself seem smarter than I am

Denis Johnson – Writer of Tree of Smoke and other books. Not overrated just overrated by people who read this 

Derek Jeter – Was with Scarlett Johansson, which blows my mind each time I am reminded

Die Hard – Best America action movie of the 80s

Dizzee Rascal – Best British rapper of the 00s

Don Cheadle – I’m not sure but I know I just wasted about twenty minutes of my life watching all of his work as Captain Planet. “Woodpeckers” is the clue.

Donald Barthelme – One of the more overrated writers with Barth, Pynchon, McCarthy and Murakami, others. Highlighted the problem with literature. Everyone is afraid to be critical because to dislike an important book is to out yourself as stupid.

Dreamcatcher – The 2003 movie, not the handmade object made out of a willow hoop with different yarns and feathers attached to it

Drivers Tests – Right now I’m listening to “Angeles” by Elliot Smith. Thought I’d mention something interesting for this entry

Drunk – I was drunk when I wrote a response to David Bazan making fun of me on Twitter.

Dusk – The time of day, I guess?

Ebenezer Scrooge – The Dickens character

Ecclesiastical Fiction – I once wrote a very long exposition about losing my mind based on the book of Proverbs. It was disjointed and rambling but was eventually tightened up into this

Elizabeth Gilbert – I quoted her being self-aggrandizing piece in a talk she did as Steve Jobs

Elizabeth Perkins – Because of her role in Big

Embryonic – I listed a trace outline of a novel I never finished.

It Initial retribution
Growing up Modern day police scene
Lead up to ‘The Incident in the Shower’
2nd retribution
The incident and fallout and coverup
Another retribution
Cops can’t do a thing
Move coverup
Describe the room
Herod fights back
The GANG come over and destroys the room
Growing up/family sadness
Retribution/Herod Increasing power/mindless rampage
Janice intervenes
Swat team sniper shoots him through the head
Janice walks home
Violation of her by one Herod’s targets
The end.

You can see why I never finished it

Emily Grimes – Character based on Richard Yates and one of his ex-girlfriend’s, Natalie Bowen, from the novel The Easter Parade, possibly the best novel of the 20th Century, even though Anatole Broyard didn’t like it, but that was because he was jealous of his old friend Yates

Emo Kids – What happened to the emo kids of the early 00s who listened to Dashboard Confessional with bars tattooed around their forearms? That could be the beginning of what I wrote

Emotional Realists – My branding for what some of my favorite writers evoke, true emotional tones blended with realistic outcomes within actual settings for believable and always quietly tragic characters

End Times – One of my first attempts at writing fiction, in my late 20s, was a story about Armageddon, heavily influenced by Philip K. Dick

Essays – Maybe one of the first useful tags so far in this list

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind – One of the five best movies of the 00s

Ethan Hawke – He read an audiobook version of Slaughterhouse-Five

European Beaches – I was probably dreaming about quitting my job or something else impossible

Ewan McGregor – I might have compared his character in Moulin Rouge as a penniless writer to something I wished to be

Excerpts Of Great Novels – I posted the beginnings of novels. Some examples included Stoner, A Way of Life, Like Any Other, A Personal Matter

Exgesis – Should be Exegesis not “Exgesis,” buddy

Existential Angst – This tag could have been applied to every one of my posts, and hopefully not now, but probably

Existentialism – I find to hard to grasp what I could have possibly been trying to prove

Eyebrows – Was making a point that eyebrows should be left alone

Eyes – It was a woman who had attractive eyes

Failure – Ubiquitous in my writing life

Family – I rarely talk about my family so I’m not sure what this would have been about

Faulkner – Another one of the more overrated authors of the 20th Century

Feist – I tagged her because of a cover of one of her songs by a popular Christian synth-pop band, Joy Electric, who released a covers album Favorites at Play

Ferdico Fellini – Maybe in 2010 I just had yet to hear about spell-check? Or maybe I was always in a rush? But neither are any excuse. It’s Federico, and I love his movies, or at least the idea of them

Fiction – I once posted my fiction to my blog. Looking at that sentence now, I wonder if it’s the saddest one I ever wrote

Film –  Serious film seemed to be evolving better than serious literature

Firm Ones – Boobs, but not a picture of boobs, though I am not against pictures of boobs

Fitzcarraldo – Most ambitious Herzog film, which is saying a lot.

Flaming Lips – Though controversial, their video with Erykah Badu for “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” is one of the great pieces of art

Flannery O’ Connor – I quoted her speaking about another writer, “The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get”

Flaubert – Writer of Madame Bovary, one of great novels ever written

Florida – Where Cops is filmed, I believe

Flowers – The reproductive structure in a plant, in reference to a story mimicking real life where, whenever I’d given them to someone, was a marker of the end of a relationship, not the beginning of one

Four Eyes – A picture of an exorbitantly attractive young woman wearing large round glasses opposite Abramović for The Artist Is Present performance

Fox News – The cable news channel

Foxy Women – It’s sometimes strange to look back at ourselves and try and identify with the person we once were, is what this makes me think

Franz Kafka – I was identifying with his desire to burn all of his unpublished writings before he died

Franzen – Jonathan. Tried to read each of his books. Each time the writing closed the book for me. I said in my post then, “It’s over 500 pages, but I have to imagine it’s light as a feather” in regards to its emotional weight, not the prose, which I’m sure is serviceable but draining

Free Books – The library

French Braids – Could have been within an earlier form of this long thing

French New Wave – The film movement

Fresh Air – The NPR program

Fucking And Mind Fucking – I actually like this tag

Fün People – I have no idea. There’s a hardcore band from Argentina called Fun People but they don’t have an umlaut over their name, and I’d never heard for them until I started writing this post

Gabe Delahaye – Writer, formerly of Videogum

Genetics – I feel for anyone who was looking for actual information on genetics and arrived at my blog

Geometry – See: “Genetics”

George Bush – I’m really not political so I’m not sure what I would’ve said. How distant he seems now, just painting all day long, probably drunk on some warm Texan ranch. It must be a tranquil life, one he is much more suited to.

Gigli – I don’t bemoan Affleck for making this movie. He and Lopez were both huge stars then and her ass would have convinced myself, and many others, to make movies worse than Gigli.

Glad-handing – I used this incorrectly by referring to a situation in which someone was praised for insincere phony work when it really means to greet someone insincerely. This is why I’m not successful. I like to think it’s because of a great conspiracy against me, but it’s not

Gnostic – I’ve always liked the idea of a secret spiritual knowledge. I think in the post I called myself a “Gnostic Hedonist.”  Feeling good in the here and the hereafter

God – A major player in my blog posts. I’m sure He’s happy to get the love

Goober – A nickname for what a woman I once knew from Alabama called a penis

Good Christian Men – Part of one of the stories involving the woman who called a penis a goober

Good Radio – I listened to Christian talk radio, so I’m not sure what this would be. I can’t stand any sort of “alt radio” as it is as payola-driven as corporate radio, but with more old white men ponytails

Good Writer – I could have only been talking about a select few people

Grace Krilanovich – Attractive author of The Orange Eats Creeps

Greasy Back Alley Handshakes – Was talking about the lit scene here

Gwyneth – Don’t quite understand the vitriol people save for her. Seems like it’d be better spent. Not saying I’m a big fan of Goop, I just don’t get the hate

Hit it Or Quit It – The zine by Jessica Hopper

Hands – Not the Jewel song, I don’t think, but just in case

Harmony Korine – Writer of Kids

Harry Dean Staton –  Should be Harry Dean Stanton. Also, I think I meant Dean Stockwell

Heart Of Darkness – Should have been Hearts of Darkness, the great documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now

Hebrew – I once upon a time wanted to get a tattoo, in Hebrew, that said “ONCE FOR ALL” referring to the sacrifice Jesus made for all people. One can be glad for indecisiveness every so often

Here Lies Stinky – This story by Caitlin Horrocks

High School – I don’t normally try to recall that time in my life, so I’m not sure

Hipsters – This is now like saying “People”

Hoity-Toity Suggestions – I think it was this list, which seemed like a good idea in theory but the books were not as enriching as I’d hoped.

Hope For The Masses – In reference to an out of print dead author who wrote elegantly, or a certain pair of buns

Hopelessly Sad – I was sad

Hot Christian Women – I think it was Gungor

Housing Bubble – Are we still worried about this? Is that how the housing bubble will burst again? When we forget about it?

HTML Giant – I used to read it religiously but became oppressively bothered by it so I stopped. Not in its content, but in the way it seemed to praise the worst writers

Humpin’ – It wasn’t me doing the humpin’

Husbands and Wives – The Woody Allen movie, in my top ten, but not top five which consists of Manhattan, Stardust Memories, Hannah and Her Sisters, Love and Death, Vicky Cristina Barcelona or maybe Annie Hall

Hypocrites – I was a sad boy again, it seems

Ingmar Bergman – Listed the best three Bergman films: Scenes from a Marriage, Cries and Whispers, and Fanny and Alexander

Inspiration – Talking about a big behind in some way

Internet – This would be like tagging “Chalkboard” at the bottom of a chalkboard after writing notes on a chalkboard

Internet Dating – All I have to say about internet dating now is that it is awful, and I’m sorry we ever came up with it

Internet Zeitgeist – Don’t know what this could’ve been, it changes most every day

Interpol – The band not the police agency. Not sure which song but I’ve always liked this one

Irish Women – Best accents on the earth, hands down. If that was point I was making then, I don’t know. But it’s a good point nonetheless

J.D. Salinger – The Buddhist author

J.F. Powers – The Catholic author

Jack Daniels – The post had nothing to do with Jack Daniels. I was just drinking it at the time.

Jacques – The high-art erotic magazine that, for all intents and purposes, ended when the founder and his model wife got divorced.

Jacques Tati – The French filmmaker who I talk about a lot but know little about

James Cameron – Maker of Titanic and Avatar, two high-grossing movies you probably heard about it even without my blog

Jars Of Clay – Not sure why I mentioned them but they’re underrated. They are.

Jaw Of The Gods – When I googled it this video came up, which I recommend if you like “mirin”

Jeans – I said that my thing with jeans is that my thighs are too thick for the jeans that taper at the ankles so I have to wear the big ankle jeans, which means I’m about 10 years behind, but that’s my life

Jeff Magnum – It was this performance

Jeffrey Brown – The cartoonist

Jeffrey Ellinger – Truly, a new level of meta-stupidity

Jesus – Not like “Jesus” but a more academic “Jesus”

Jheri Curl – All I can think about here is Coming to America, which is a great film

Jim Norris – This is a fictional character I made up, AND I tagged it

Joanna Smith Rakoff – It was this which I found nauseating and more sexist than any man could ever be

John Cheever – I love a lot of his writing so it could’ve been any number of things but most likely this quote,” My definition of a good editor is a man I think charming, who sends me large checks, praises my work, my physical beauty, and my sexual prowess, and who has a stranglehold on the publisher and the bank.”

John Edward Williams – Writer of Stoner, which recently became a best-seller in Europe

John Gardner – I said I don’t like any of his novels. They follow none of the rules, or even the ideas, he sets out in his beautiful guides to writing fiction. The best of which is On Becoming a Novelist

Joshua Harris – A Christian who writes about how teens should abstain from sex. He has several books about it.

Julia Frauche – The other half of this

Karl Lagerfeld – My WordPress blog is gone now but I would like to know why I tagged Karl Lagerfeld. I guess there are just mysteries in life.

Katherine – A Christian from Alabama who got around having sex before marriage by taking the head of a man’s penis and rubbing it on her clitoris as the man entered her with his digits. I was one of the men.

Kele – Lead singer of Bloc Party. Released an underrated solo album

Kevin Wilson – It seemed to me that the amount of good to bad in writing against the amount of good to bad in other forms of art was so much higher.

Keys – Open doors? My best guess

Kingdom Come – Not the movie with LL Cool J

Klaus Kinski – Herzog’s muse

Knife – Not the band.

Kubrik – It’s spelled Kubrick, you stupid fuck, and his best movie is The Shining then 2001 then the first part of Full Metal Jacket

Kurosawa – To be honest, I’ve only ever seen Ran

Kurt Vonnegut –  He knew the difference between good and bad writing, which is something a lot of writers don’t know. And his work is best for those just looking to get into reading and writing. I’d give my teenage son a Vonnegut book, not a Yates one.

Ladyhawke– The film with Matthew Broderick and Michelle Pfeiffer

Lambos – Lamborghini

Lamplight – This was when I was still considering making my blog a mix of my thoughts and the pictures I took. This one included a picture with lamplight, but it was actually a streetlight, so, a failure

Lauren – I’ve never fallen for someone named Lauren, so I don’t know why her name was used.

Leather – If I were a bear I’d wear a lot of leather. That’s just something you should know

Left Behind – If there was one crowd-sourced project I would back it’d be to fund whichever Christian film company made the two Left Behind movies

Leo Tolstoy – This quote from Family Happiness, “I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books , music, love for one’s neighbor – such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps – what more can the heart of a man desire?”

Light – These kinds of tags are annoying, thus, I am annoying

Links – I once collected interesting links

Lists – This is my best

Literary Agents – Are they still a thing?

Liv Ullmann – Bergman’s muse

Lolita – A technically impressive, if tiring, reading experience

Long Lost Aunt – See: “Light”

Louisville Slugger – Part of a bad fiction story I wrote and posted to my blog. And I actually wondered then why I wasn’t more famous

Love – See “Long Lost Aunt”

Lovers Of Salvation – Original title of a novel. Almost everything from the first version is gone. If anything ever happens I’ll consider writing it my MFA experience

Maeve Brennan – Underrated short story writer and all-around stylish Irish woman

Mafia – I was referring to the literary mafia

Mafioso – Whoever the leader of that mafia would be

Magnetic Fields – One of my favorite band of all-time, before NPR kinda stunk them up

Maria Falconetti – From The Passion of Joan of Arc, a captivating presense/face/performance

Mariel Hemingway – From Manhattan, the same

Mark Borchardt – Over the years I’ve checked up, awaiting the release of his full-length film. According to IMDB, Scare Me is set to release this year. But that happens every year. Still hoping, though. I genuinely believe the man has an eye for capturing the essence of things, as evidenced by the few shots from Northwestern shown in American Movie

Mark Driscoll – Psychopath, bully. The Worst

Marriage – For someone who’s never been married, I talk about it quite a lot.

Mars Hill – The corporation of churches in Seattle run by Mark Driscoll, a lying psycho, though I think people go there because of the tag directly above

Massengill Commercials – This was inspired by someone’s Twitter avatar, which is, interestingly enough, similar to another popular Thought Catalog’s current Twitter avatar. I won’t name names but I will link this 

Mean Streets – Twenty years before Goodfellas and Casino there was Mean Streets

Melancholy – I still think of the third best Von Trier movie when I see that word capitalized

Melville House – The publishing house from the first episode of Girls

Men With Beautiful Hair – I’m sure I was just writing about people I was jealous of, and still am

Menomonee Falls – Not sure why I tagged the town where American Movie is set, but there you go

Metaphysics – See: “Existentialism”

MFA  – I was arguing, in some way, about why it is such a worthless degree, at least when it comes to writing

Michael Steele – It was this

Mick Jagger – In regards to being originally cast as the lead in Fitzcarraldo

Minnesota State Fair – This, which makes me laugh and swoon always

Models – At the time it would’ve been MeInMyPlace, though now it’d be Creative Rehab. A man must grow

Money Pit – I was talking about owning a car, not the classic fixer-upper film with Tom Hanks

Months Of Editing Novels – Make it years

Mormons – Whatever was true then, it is just as true now

Ms. Cool Sunglasses – A take on a phrase once popular at Videogum, a now defunct blog which was a sanctuary of clean water common sense in the garbage pool that is the internet

Mushrooms – Never done them but don’t want to. Sorry hipster lit, I’ll never be relevant enough 4 U

My Fiction – I feel like if you tag your fiction with the tag “My Fiction” it’s guaranteed to be terrible

NEMO – Why is it capitalized?

NSFW – Because of a butt

Narcissism – I was saying someone else was being narcissistic, which is funny

Nature – Important stuff. Important tag

Necessary Evils In Teaching Writing – It was this quote from Vonnegut that goes, “teaching creative writing offers solace to writers who are down on their luck”

Nepotism – When it comes to writing and publishing

Nerd Stuff – Not sure, but I like RTS and RPG video games so it could’ve something with Empire Earth or Morrowind, my two favorites

New Testament –  Making some kind of argument of why it made no sense

Newswriters – I once worked for Pitchfork as a newswriter, I was mentioning that, and making a point of how Pitchfork often forgets about bands they once so gladly promoted, because once a newer and shinier band comes around they disregard the former, even when they’re getting better and better. Case in point, Tapes N Tapes

Nikos Kazantzakis – Writer of The Last Temptation of Christ

Nina Rota – Like in this song

Nose – Huh?

Nothing New Under The Sun – An phrase from Ecclesiastes

Novelist Love  – A number of attractive novelists I could have been mentioning

Novels – My own

Old Flames – See: “Novels”

Old Hard Drives – Full of bad writing

Old Yeller – My dad’s favorite movie and one of my own

Oui – Before Richard Kern there was Oui

Page 99 Test – It’s a thing

Paris Review – I like their Art of Fiction interviews, I do like that. This one is good

Parisian Women – I didn’t know about Adèle Exarchopoulos then, but I would’ve mentioned her

Passion Of The Christ – Harvey Keitel as Judas is still one of the best things in cinema

Paul Verhoeven – Director of the criminally underrated Showgirls

Pears – A delicious fruit, up there with peaches and plums, as Joanna Newsom already knows

Penny Marshal – Director of great films like Big and A League of Their Own

Perfection – Was talking about butts

Philip K. Dick – Writer of some books that got weirder as he got older, and better, which is reassuring

Photos – Even if people do use this tag to search for photos, I can’t imagine the photos they find are very good

Pining – For a bottom, I’d guess once more

Pitchfork – The music criticism website. Sometimes right, but often too afraid of being wrong

Platonic – The ideal

Playboy – This magazine still exists, somehow

Podcast – Where a comedian goes to complain about being a comedian

Politics – As pointless to believe in them as it is to tag them on a blog

Portland – A less mature and less interesting younger sibling to Seattle

Pouty Lips – Paz de la Huerta, this is NSFW

Price Of Gas – It was rising at the time to historic levels. Seemed like a topical thing to discuss, even though I rarely discussed topical things

Prince – The musical artist who is impossible to link to because his music doesn’t exist on the internet

Protein Supplements – I think this had something to do with a story but who’s to say, really, I could have just been getting really jacked at the time

Public Drinking – It was this which I still will watch from time to time because it’s charming and French

Public Transportation – See: “Public Drinking”

Publisher – I don’t have one

Purity – It was in relation to Joshua Harris

Pussy – I think I was calling myself one, not referencing an actual vagina

Questions – It was a serious of questions I had for myself. Not worth reciting them here.

Radiohead – Well-known band

Rankings – Of authors, or butts. Have had the idea, for a long time, of combining the two into a great list

Ravi Zacharias – The Christian apologist. One of the more level-heading, more clear-speaking pundits

Raymond Carver – My favorite remains “Gazebo”

Rebecca St. James – Was born Rebecca Jean Smallbone

Recently Reading – A series I abandoned. Could’ve been interesting if I would’ve had the time, patience, or will to keep it up. Though one could say that for just about anything

Red Lipstick – Can’t recall whose this was but it seems to me that red lipstick is most popular among more meaty female hipsters

Red Wine – A delicious healthy drink

Religion – A way to cope with dying

Resentment – I was probably talking about not getting published in some journal or another

Revel Magazine – I’ve never head of this magazine in my life but I googled it and it exists which means that pretty much everything exists that is going to exist

Relevant – For the sons and daughters of those who read Christianity Today

Rich and Famous – Not the lifestyles of, but that I would be rich and famous someday after accepting an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay of A Tragic Honesty: The Life Of Richard Yates

Richard Donner – Director of the original Superman

Richard Ford – Best novel is The Sportswriter, everything else by him is fine enough

Richard Kelly – Created Donnie Darko, but also Southland Tales somehow

Richard Yates – Best novelist of the 20th Century

Rick Ross –  Rapper. Keeper of a beard.

Ricky Gervais – The Office, Extras, even through the Golden Globes and some of his strident atheistic stuff. But then there’s Derek…

Roadhouse – Not the best movie of the 80s, but one of them

Roadies – I don’t know.

Roadside Monument – Played a pretty unique brainy of math-rock. One of the more daring Christian bands from the 90s

Romantic Love – From Sherman’s March, one of the best documentaries of the last 30 years, “For a long time I’ve had this notion that love was possible. I mean romantic love, you know, two people falling deeply in love with each other and somehow managing to stay together for more than two weeks. But time after time it seems that a woman would get involved with me and want some sort of commitment and I would decide that it wasn’t right, or vice versa, and no matter how passionate things were at beginning there was never an equilibrium and nothing ever seemed to last”

Ron Livingston – Actor. Office Space

Ross McElwee – Filmmaker. See: “Romantic Love”

Rumbles In Jungles – See: “Rick Ross”

So Long See You Tomorrow – The novel by William Maxwell, longtime editor of The New Yorker. Most of his fiction is dry, but this one is good

Salivating – Over a book, not a butt

Scenes From A Marriage – One of the great Bergman films

Scribd – Where I used to put all of my writing

Seasons Of Singleness – A term Joshua Harris invented to denote a time in a Christian’s life set apart for being single. A fancy way of saying “I’m taking a break from men (or women) right now”

Seattle – Lots of parades and rain and fleece

Serious Art – Was making fun of a blog post on HTML Giant that was laughably full of itself

Serious Music Criticism – Could have been talking about Amy Grant, for all I remember. Why not

Sex – I said it was a misnomer to say that men think about it more than women. Men think about acquiring sex more than they desire, as Julianne Moore once said, “the physical act of love.”

Shakespeare – Sonnet writer

Sherman’s March – A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love in the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation

Shiga – I feel like this is a misspelling

Sholem Aleichem – Russian writer

Short Stories – I once posted them to my blog. Still do. I will kill myself one day

Showgirls –  Understand how exciting it was for a 15 year-old to see Jessie undressed. Life-changing

Siddhartha – The Gautama

Silkworm – This song

Sin – The evil that makes its way into the world by way of man

Slavoj Zizek –  I liked the way he talked. An empathic lisp

Sloane Crosley – Very shiny hair

Small Scope – See: “Joanna Smith Rakoff”

Small Town Worries – An early title of a novel I never finished. In my defense, it was unfinishable

South Dakota – One of the top five windiest states in the union, if you didn’t know

Spokane – A city in eastern Washington. Part of a short story I wrote for my friends one Sunday morning. I can email you a copy

Sports – Haha, cool tag

Springtime – A season

Stanley Kubrik – Why did I insist on spelling his name wrong?

Stephen King – I was talking about he was upset about how The Shining came out, which is insane

Stephen Malkmus – This profile by Chuck Klosterman

Stephin Merritt – Grumpy songwriter who, for a time, was better than just about any other songwriter. I had listed my ten favorite non-69 Love Songs love songs

Steven Spielberg – Director. More money than God

Stockholm – It was a picture of three Swedish women from Last Night’s Party. I tagged it so they would see it and fall in love? Not sure, but they were stunning. I said that everyone should move to Sweden, and they should

Stuff Magazine – Remember that? It was like a Maxim rip-off. Is it still a thing?

Suffering – Oh, the lamentations and trials of being Jeffrey Ellinger!

Sufjan Stevens – Even though he said “amazeballs” on his Tumblr once, he still seems like an alright guy to me

Sunrise – The silent film

Sweden – See: “Stockholm”

Swimming Pools – Like in Cheever’s story “The Swimmer”

Swiss Family Robinson – One of the all-time great films. The end scene, where they fight off the pirates, was always a thrill when it came on Disney Sunday Night Movies

Takashi Miike – Director of Audition and Ichi the Killer. I hope everything is okay with his brain

Tale Of Two Cities – See: “Michael Steele”

Tanlines – It was this picture. NSFW

Tao Lin – Writer of bad novels. Sorry, they just are

Tapes ‘n Tapes – It’s funny to me how much hype and attention they got after their first album, which is forgettable, and how much everyone ignored them by the time they got to their last album, which is their best. This is how the world works

Tech Corporations – Another tag that annoys the shit out of me when I see it now

Techno – See: “Tech Corporations”

Television Personalities – It was this song

Terry – Character from a fictional story I wrote. Influential tag

Terry Gilliam – Always a bit overreaching, but there’s something admirable about that

That Giddy Feeling – See: “Techno”

The Art Of Seduction – It had something to do with The Game, which seems to have lost popularity, though I had friends who did the stuff they tell you to do in that book and they did find significant others that way.

The Best – It wasn’t really

The Big Lebowski – The third best Coen Brothers film

The Birchman Home For Boys – The fictional group home from a short story I wrote for a group of friends. See: “Spokane”

The Blues – See: “Suffering”

The Booksmith – The book store in San Francisco

The Doors – An emo lead singer before the term existed

The Easter Parade – Arguably the best novel of the 20th Century

The One With Curls And Hearts On Her Bottom – She was in this

The Glass Mountain – A short story by Donald Barthelme

The Grand Illusion – The Renoir film

The Message – A bad version of the Bible, which is saying something

The Millions of Questions – I had a bunch of questions for someone I’d met on OkCupid who had subsequently let me go. See: “Suffering” “The Blues”

The New Yorker – Full of bourgeois intellectualism. Often lacking in feeling as well as context of the larger society which surrounds it

The Pale King – Novel by David Foster Wallace, great essayist/thinker, overrated novelist. A tortured soul who was much too smart for his own good

The Stranger – The Camus book, though I knew little to nothing about Camus or this novel

The Swimmer – A Cheever masterpiece

The Vagaries Of Life – See: “Suffering” “The Blues “The Millions of Questions”

Theodore Dreyer – The Danish film director

Timothy Treadwell – The protagonist of Herzog’s Grizzly Man. Fascinating but troubled individual

Tobias Wolff – Very good, maybe great, writer of novels and short stories. Bald man

Todd and Jen – See: “Tech Corporations”

Tony Wilson – Portrayed by Steve Coogan in the very good film 24 Hour Party People

Top Gun – Did you know someone was tweeting this entire movie frame by frame until Paramount shut it down. Life is weird. Twitter is weirder

Transformer – Having the best transformers in the mid 80s denoted a boy with a wealthy family

Truman Capote – Writer of In Cold Blood

Turning 30 – I did. Cool stuff.

UW – Wonder why their creative writing department didn’t reach out to me

Ula Brown – Host of this video series

Undergraduates – See “Todd and Jen”

Updike – A talented writer who never fails to not move me with any of his writing

Vacuum – See “Undergraduates”

Vaguely European Women – Honestly, I have no idea. This list is starting to wear me down

Val Kilmer – Actor. Willow, other films

Vampires – I posted this

Vehicle Registration – See: “Vacuum”

Very Fit Model – It was this NSFW

Very Skinny Jeans – It was the same as above

Videodrome –  A weird good movie.

Videos – See: “Vehicle Registration”

Vladimir Nabokov – Virtuosic writer, who, like Updike, never fails to not move me

Von Trapp – The Family

Walter Matthau – A wonderful actor, particularly in Bad News Bears

Wandering Hands – See: “Videos”

War And Peace – Never read it nor will I ever, I suspect

Wasted Lives – See: “Wandering Hands.” Side note, I’m actually shocked at the amount of pointless tags I once used

Wayne Cohen – Is buddies with Miley Cyrus now, which seems right. I don’t mean that in a denigrating way. Truly, it seems about right

Werner Herzog – Strange man with German voice

Wes Anderson – Grand Budapest is his twee masterpiece but I was talking about Royal Tenenbaums then

West River – It was in regards to the way South Dakota is divided. East River is the “city” side of the state. West is the more untamed part, the part you saw on Dances with Wolves.

Wet – The magazine

When Pointing One Finger Three Fingers Are Pointing Back – See: “Wasted Lives”

Where Is My Mind – A song at the end of Fight Club

White – See: “When Pointing One Finger Three Fingers Are Pointing Back”

White Guy Soul – I posted a Jamie Lidell song, if my failing mind remembers correctly

Will Ferrell – Mostly known for his work as Robert Goulet

William Maxwell – Writer

William Trevor – Better writer

Wings – Chicken?

Women – A group of people who are not men, except when they are.

Women Vs Men – It would turn into my most commented on Thought Catalog article 

Women With Freckles – Are often attractive. This time it was her NSFW

Wood Nymphs – Although this one is once again useless, I kind of like this tag, or at least the idea of a wood nymph

Woods – Not the band. Just woods, with trees

Woody Allen – I said Stardust Memories is his 2nd best film

Woolgathering – It was basically all my blog was

Work – I think I was actually talking about my job. But still See: “White”

Worlds Colliding – Not sure which worlds and who they belonged to but See: “Work”

Would You Rather? – I’ve been told I’m good at this game, but everyone thinks they’re good at this game

Writers – Are the worst. That’s not what I said then, but I should have

Yeasayer – It was this. It’s good

Yeezy – I was talking about Kanye West

Young Adult Singles Groups – The saddest succession of words I’ve ever seen

Youth – It’s beautiful but See: “Work”

 Zach Galifianakis – It was one of the early ferns, maybe Cera or Kimmel

Zoltar – The machine in Big that makes Tom Hanks younger

Zooey Deschanel – I was in love after Elf. It later faded, like everything