Wendy McClure

Author and Professional Obsessive.

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Archives for November 2005

Because I'm FIVE. Or this journal is, at least.

November 22, 2005 by Wendy

Five years ago this week I first started writing journal entries and putting them online. At the time, I was posting them to some measly half-acre of free webspace I’d staked out and called “candyboots.homestead.com.” I wrote the entries in Netscape Composer. Every time I wrote a new entry I’d open up the file for the last entry and erase the text and type something new. Then I’d upload the page, again and again and again and again. It felt cumbersome and weird, like trying to play piano with a stick in your teeth.

It was about a week before Thanksgiving. I was in the midst of one of my most Weight Watchful phases and and I didn’t want to lose myself in the holidays. I wrote about going to the gym so that I would keep going to the gym. I wrote about Swiss Colony Dobosh Torte so that I could remember, for future reference, exactly what kicked my ass at Christmas dinner. I think when I wrote these entries I did so with the idea that they were just notes to myself, and I tried to make them funny for the benefit of whoever else might be reading. Which was nobody at first. Just the idea that someone else could be reading was enough.

When I first started, I didn’t disclose my last name or what city I lived in; I was just “Wendy Something-or-Other” and I lived “in the Midwest.” This was considered a perfectly sensible approach and not bugfucking paranoid at all. Usually you had a either a first name or a nickname. And either you almost never posted your own photo, or else you totally did and you had a webcam and maybe sometimes also a hinky sense of personal boundaries. You were either on Diaryland or your own domain. You were either an online journaler or a blogger, and if you were a blogger, you tended to write more about CSS standards than about your inner life.

What else was different: I lived in a studio apartment and I had dial-up access. Some of my friends were different. And this is very hard to measure, but I don’t think I felt quite as part of the world as I do now. I don’t know how much of that had to do with my body and how much is just a matter of becoming settled. I know just that there’s no sense of solitary existence when I write for this site anymore. And I think I’m glad for this, though you might have to be me to understand why. Maybe not.

Anyway, Happy Thanskgiving! That low-point pumpkin pie recipe they give out at the Weight Watchers meetings still tastes like ass. Like hell. Like licking powdered Cremora off a truck tire. Some things never change.

Filed Under: meta, personal

Time for Plan Brat!

November 17, 2005 by Wendy

Ladies! Are you sick of getting the stink-eye whenever you bring your small children to froofy coffeehouses? Tired of having to take them to some sticky McDonaldLand to turn them loose? Or maybe you keep reading about those snotty parents who seem to feel no compunction about letting their spawn run amok in grown-up places and find yourself wishing that you could act that entitled and self-righteous. Looks fun, doesn’t it?

But where can you take your kids, relax a little, and impose your own values on strangers? Forget those twee little bakeries with their overpriced scones and tin ceilings: Why not take your kids to the pharmacy at Target instead? Or Rite Aid? Or Walgreen’s? Any pharmacy, in fact, with a policy of employing pharmacists who believe children are so special, they think it’s a shame when you try to not conceive them. These nice people in white coats will be thrilled to host your rambunctious toddlers for a couple hours while you shop. Sure, they make it hard for you to get Plan B, but you can always count on them for a big dose of Plan Wheeeee!

Who says a pharmacy isn’t a kid-friendly place? Some of these pharmacists like children so much, they want you to have the ones you didn’t even mean to have! And when you think about it, pharmacies are awesome places for young children to run and play, especially behind that door marked PRIVATE (Go on in! These folks don’t care about privacy!) which leads to a wonderful land of bottles and jars to shake shake shake. Plus plenty of childproof caps to challenge them, hundreds of colorful little beadies to count, lots of new words to learn (Say it: “Meth-o-trex-ate.”) and no shortage of arthritic elderly friends to trip up. Really, it’s like a Montessori school with Muzak.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Body, Feminizzism, misc

Just a suggestion

November 11, 2005 by Wendy

Maybe you should buy a Sunday New York Times this weekend. You can buy it other weekends of course, but perhaps you really should buy it this weekend. It’s a very big paper, yes, but you could just read one section… or, you know, whatever.

Filed Under: General

The shocking truth

November 7, 2005 by Wendy

There is something I need to tell you. I mean, you’re going to find out anyway, but I thought I’d tell you first: I’m really Tyra Banks in a fat suit.

Yes, I know that all this time you thought I was just a chubby white girl. I’m sure it sheds light on a lot of things, such as my inexplicable personal happiness. Well, now you know I’m happy because, hello! I’m Tyra Banks! I have my own production company! And here you thought I was just happy because I ate all the pies!

No doubt it all makes sense now. You’ve probably wondered how I managed to ever accomplish anything, what with all the obese-person stuff I have to do every day, like shuffling sadly down the street, getting my big fat feelings hurt by store clerks, and being rejected by dull little metrosexual men. I’m glad I’m Tyra Banks and don’t have to do those things all the time. Well, except for eating KFC. I’d do THAT all the time! Ha ha!

(You know, it’s only okay to laugh because I’m Tyra Banks and I have a syndicated talk show (check your local listings!). If I was a real fat person the laughter would HURT. You know that time I made the girls on ANTM wear stiletto heels two sizes too small? Like that, but in the soul.)

I know it comes as a shock to learn that I’m Tyra Banks wearing a fat suit, but I hope it makes America aware that really, everyone afflicted by obesity has a beautiful person wearing him or her, too, and that deep down, they all feel real supermodel feelings. Who knows who you might find inside an obese person? Maybe Naomi Campbell, who’s actually quite pretty though hardly the household name I’ve become, is trapped inside an obese person’s body. Or maybe she really is obese now. I would like to state for the record, as an honorary obese person, that either way would be fine with me.

That’s all for now. Don’t miss Drag Queen Makeovers on Tuesday! Love, Tyra.

Filed Under: Body, popcult

In My Defense

November 3, 2005 by Wendy

You may have noticed, if you know me in person, the rather personal place where I tend to keep my cell phone. Depending whether or not you use euphemisms, I keep my cell phone either “close to my heart” or “stuffed in my bra like a skank dollar dancer’s haul.”

I don’t expect you to fully understand. I don’t need your approval. Just know that the proverbial Waitress Wallet has become the preferred conveyance for my phone and, occasionally, other small items such as hotel key cards and iPod minis. Somehow that is just my way.

I can’t remember exactly when my phone first made it to second base with me. I think maybe once I wore something without pockets and had to put it down my shirt. I believe at least once I stuck it there absentmindedly. It just seeemed like a handy place. It is a handy place: one that you can easily reach (well, not you you, because that would be creepy) and just a tidier place for personal storage than jeans pockets or a purse. When folded, my phone has a fantastically streamlined, slippery outer shell that allows it to hurtle through space into other dimensions; there are portals to other worlds located in my purse and under the drivers seat in my car, and my phone is always in danger of slipping through them and winding up in the hands of the White Witch of Narnia, but as long as my phone is safely hidden away in the hills, I worry much less.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: personal

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The Wilder Life on Flickr

Recent Press and Links

  • Essay: A Little House Adulthood For the American Masters documentary on Laura Ingalls Wilder, I contributed a piece to the PBS website about revisiting the Little House books.
  • Essay: The Christmas Tape (At Longreads.com) How an old audio tape of holiday music became a record of family history, unspoken rituals, and grief.
  • Q & A With Wendy McClure Publishers Weekly interview about editing, Wanderville and more.

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Where else to find Wendy

  • Candyboots Home of the Weight Watcher recipe cards
  • Malcolm Jameson Site (in progress) about my great-grandfather, a Golden Age sci-fi writer.
  • That Side of the Family My semi-secret family history blog
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