“WHAT I LACK IN COMPASSION I MAKE UP FOR IN LACK OF COMPASSION”: So I killed the Rat’s weekend by introducing her to Texts from Last Night (warning: addictive and definitely not family-friendly!) and at some point we got onto this thing of attributing some of the texts to well-known authors. (And Alcibiades.) These aren’t all perfect matches, but they’re fun enough that I’m sharing them…. And be forewarned, this post is no safer for work than the site itself. Cussin’, fussin’, and backslidin’ follow.

Alcibiades:

i wanted to go smoke pot, so i told my mom i was getting tutored. she asked what time i would be back, i told her learning doesn’t have a curfew

Jorge Luis Borges:

(323):
You got in a fight last night?
(818):
Yeah! Some dude in the bathroom…he was standing there and I notice he’s got the same shirt as me on so I’m like…dude you should have called me, we look like idiots…he didn’t say anything…so i got pissed and hit him…completely decimated and my hand was all bloody and covered with glass afterward…weird dude, never saw him again that night or since.
(323):
Um…Did this guy happen to look almost exactly like you?

Miguel de Cervantes:

Assholes at mcdonalds drive through wouldn’t serve us last night even though we said we were on small motorcycles that were to small for them to see and weren’t heavy enough for the sensors. We made noises and everything.

Fyodor Dostoevsky: He was a controversial figure! I voted for this one:

(971):
I have two black x marks on my hands.
(503):
Yep you got cut off last night after a stripper bent over in front of you and you screamed very loudly ‘I can see your soul from here’
(971):
damnit I wish I could remember that.

But Ratty said it wasn’t quite right. She votes for this for The Idiot specifically:

why did your cousin post “out tonight” on facebook? doesn’t he know it’s only 1 in the afternoon?
(1-732):
shhh don’t tell him. it’s cloudy out and none of his clocks work

and notes that this one echoes a chilling moment from The Brothers Karamazov!:

i am high, trapped with a bunch of skaters and asians watching a cat on lsd on youtube, the girl on the couch next to me is getting fingered, and there is lady gaga playing. god has forgetten about me

more Dostoevsky:

I need to keep friends like you around just in case hell grades on a curve.

and

You know the commpass Jack Sparrow has? The one that just points at whatever you want? Thas pretty much my moral compass.

and especially

I want to tell you about my weekend in person so I can see your look of judgement and disgust.

(Ratty noted: “it’s really no wonder we were so into Dostoevsky during our major drinking years”)

Stephen Fry (or possibly Portnoy’s Complaint):

just found my diary from when i was 14. i demand a drinking game of this.

This one isn’t quite Heloise:

She tied me up with her honor cords…

(Heloise would have made Abelard tie her up with her honor cords.)

O. Henry:

So I went on a date with this girl…and whos our waitress? My girlfriend got a second job she didn’t tell me about to afford my bday present.

Florence King (more in her When Sisterhood Was in Flower persona than her Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady one):

All I remember was yelling at him, “Its becasue of people like you that it took us so long to get to the moon!”

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE ZOMG:

my desire to fuck abstract ideas (bravery, love, popsicls,,) increases by 8bajillion% when I’m high

This could be anybody! But both Ratty and I thought of Walker Percy first:

I’m not a real person
(586):
I’m sorry, everyone knows that

This one I had a hard time with. It’s clearly someone, but neither Angela Carter nor Margaret Atwood are quite right, and I haven’t read enough Marilynne Robinson to guess her. So I’m tentatively going with Tom Perrotta:

Id like to know where dora the explorers parents are when she goes on all these crazy ass adventures

The modern Cyrano:

I spent all night sexting your girlfriend for you because you were too drunk. You’re welcome.

Philip Roth, The Counterlife:

how’s this sound. You, me a box of pink franzia and a night full of possibilities in your basemen. I’ll be me. You be you. And we’ll see where it goes

and given his line in Sabbath’s Theater about “what libraries are for”:

better yet, through the bookshelves. like an intellectual glory hole

and his sexual petulance in general:

And next time, don’t pick a fight with me when you’re naked. That’s just not fair

Jonathan Swift (in the “Celia” poems):

Decided to write a book called “girls don’t poop and other myths I wish I still believed in”

I could see Evelyn Waugh doing this in real life:

Hit a parked car with a “property of Jesus Christ” bumper sticker. Wrote out five hail mary’s and left it on the windshield.

And this screams I Am Charlotte Simmons:

The girl next to me in class is taking notes on woman’s suffrage with a girls gone wild pen.

And as an exercise for my readers: This one has to be someone! But who???

You tried to wear your Jesus costume into Family Christian stores and say it was a book signing.