Is moral bankruptcy something you need to file for?

For an unsettlingly long time, I've held an unshakeable fascination for Texts from Last Night. It's a website where people can post the bizarre drunken text messages they received from their friends the night before. If these texts are all genuine, I would have to conclude that most people text in full sentences and proper punctuation even when they're texting their friends about strippers and blow, and I must say I'd be rather impressed if that turned out to be true.

Regardless of whether or not the documented texts are real, I feel that the site provides a lot of insight into the mindset of depraved students (and most anyone who works on Wall Street). Surely it must be useful for something. Last year I was fixated on the idea of somehow turning TFLN into a Cultural Theory essay for my Lit Theory class. Unfortunately, it wasn't exactly a workable idea. I feel like maybe if I were in sociology I could have made a stab at it. Still, I could not shake the idea that I could take advantage of this site. What were these texts about spring break, body shots, and waking up naked covered in glitter, good for? Could they become a novel? A thesis, maybe?

Probably not, but I've found they come in handy for relieving writer's block. For instance, if you're sat in front of your computer trying to hammer out one more poem for the poetry anthology that's due tomorrow and your mind remains a complete blank, why not take a look at TFLN, grab the first text you see, and use it as the first two lines of your poem?

I wish we had morning classes together
so we could spike our coffee,
slumping down in the back-row
of that crowded lecture hall
for Intro to Biology,
or maybe New Psychology.
Nestled within three-hundred science students,
no one would ever even notice us,
giggling to ourselves,
racing eachother
to the bottom of our paper cups;
I begin to wonder why
we wasted our days
becoming English majors;
with 12 people to a seminar
we’d never get away with it
and now I see the beauty
of the elusive science degree
and why they always ask us
who the hell would become
an English major?
they’re not snubbing us
for our bad choices.
They just understand
the importance of
day-drinking.

or...

So thats when we found her crawling
hands and knees up first street singing
‘hold me closer Tony Danza’
as loud as she could,
a vision in spandex and faux-leather,
evidence of the triumph
of gravity over spiked heels
but bravely, unceasingly, increasingly fighting
our best efforts to slow her progress,
she thought she was on Morton Hill,
trying to go back to the bars.

See how the poem juxtaposes the low-brow custom of texting with the high-brow artform of poetry to demonstrate that true art knows no class (nor subject matter)? If that isn't A+ material, I don't know what is.

edit: ooh, new challenge. START the poem with one text. End it with the text right below. For instance: "I woke up and the dog was eating spaghetti off my chest." ... "And then he tried to convert me to Islam." What has begun as a cure for writer's block has become another distraction. Shoot. Maybe I should just write a poem about aprons and call it a day.