Deer Eat Meat and Other Stories

I have a lot of books. This isn’t an apology or a confession; it’s just a fact. I have multiple advanced degrees in English so it’s hardly surprising, but given that much of my blogging and ranting are on pop culture topics like movies, TV, and the internet, I guess they sometimes get forgotten. There should be a word for blog-ranting: Rogging? Blanting? I’ll work on that. Anyway, my house is full of dusty tomes of literary criticism and rhetorical theory; heady volumes full of French philosophy, and of course hundreds of Star Trek and Star Wars paperbacks from the extended universe. Also, Xena: Warrior Princess and The X-Files. Shut up. Honestly, the only thing that separates these books from fan fiction is that the authors got paid to write them.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time, you know that I freaking love the internet. If you’ve known me for any amount of time, you know I also love my books. I’m literally surrounded by them. See what I did there? (Yes, that was a high brow joke.) You may also know about my bibliophilism if you’ve been to my house, but since that’s like three people, probably not. I’m kind of a reclusive loner; what some folks call a “writer.”

The point is, some of these texts (the more literary theory ones anyway) are really very useful and I do pull them off the shelf as references when I want to write about something deeper than whether or not Ripley from the Alien movie franchise was a metaphor for the Virgin Mary. Actually, that’s exactly the kind of topic I would use my literary theory books to write about. Also, when my friends randomly text me first thing in the morning to ask whether or not I know any authors who talk about cultural appropriation and the environment. Those are the kind of friends I have.

I actually love it when people ask me if I know something about something. I probably do. Not to toot my own horn, but I read a lot and I have a good memory so it’s likely I’ve come across what you’re wondering about at some point in my virtual and/or literary travels. One reason I love getting asked random questions is because I can pull a book off my shelf that I haven’t looked at in a while and remind myself of fascinating stuff that I’m interested in while sneezing uncontrollably from the dust of a thousand cat naps.

A factoid I learned recently is that white tailed deer (and possibly other species of hoofed “herbivores”) actually eat small birds when they get the chance. They’re not effective hunters; they just opportunistically munch when the birds are nesting in low-hanging branches or get caught in scientists’ nets. Deer are d!cks. This is but one example the kind of minutia I have at my fingertips. If you want to know more, I suggest you take LeVar Burton’s advice and visit your local library to “read more about it.” In addition to information on the dietary surprises of Odocoileus Virginianus, books also have useful information in them.

In summation, deer are lazy pollotarians, my classical literature is covered in cat fur because no one ever asks about Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance, and if you’re interested in post-colonization theory, I recommend everything by Gayatri Spivak.