“All work and no play makes Jack Phil a dull boy.” – The Shining
What do you call a Mongolian defeatist? Genghis Khan’t.
Stephen King, especially the coked-out version who doesn’t remember the entire Reagan presidency, often wrote about writing. This might have been interesting if all of those main characters in his stories weren’t writers, too. The Mrs. has felt that Steve has been a bad writer since, oh, 1992 or so. The Mrs. had been a big enough fan that she drove three hours to take part in an interview with him back in the day. I gave up on him around 2008. The Mrs. even Facebook®-told-him he was a “hack”.
I don’t often write about writing. But I write a lot. 652 posts since March, 2017, with a total word count before this post of 942,879 words. So, just like Mr. King, I’ve at least become a much more proficient typist since 1992.
Why do I spend the hours writing these posts every week?
Well, the first reason is I like to write them.
When I’ve finished a post and I’ve said absolutely everything that I want to say, and said it exactly the way that I want to say it, I feel great.
That’s a problem.
I run a weird sleep schedule because of the posts, and often finish up writing into the wee hours of the morning. On more than one morning, I finished the final touches on the post and scheduled it just as the Sun was coming up.
There have been one or two days when I went straight from the keyboard to the shower to work to back home and then directly to bed. Ugh. This (partially) explains why I generally only comment right before the new post shows up.
I’m so tired that I can only buy pizza from Papa Yawns.
But even when I finish so I’ll have a shot at getting a few hours of sleep, there comes the problem of feeling great, because there is nothing worse than going to bed at 3AM with a looming 6AM alarm when I’m so excited about what I wrote that I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve.
That makes me happy. But it also makes me as sleepy as Joe Biden before they take him out of the fridge and unzip the Hefty Glad Bag™ each morning to thaw him out.
I also write these because at least some people like to read them.
I’m not sure I’d put the effort into writing these on a regular basis if people didn’t come by. I used to journal but ended up putting that down after some ludicrous number of pages that no one will ever read. It got to be pretty repetitive after a while.
My neighbor thinks I don’t respect his boundaries, or at least he wrote that in his journal.
I know that some of you like reading these because you comment. Of course, there are those who are regulars who never comment – and that’s fine! Then there are those that only send me email. But there is a sense of real community that I’m seeing building in the comments. I consider it a win when half the comments are people talking to each other – and I try to stay out of that, mostly. It is a food fight, after all.
I write these because, on occasion, I think I’ve got something to contribute.
It’s no real surprise to anyone who reads here regularly that I’m fairly concerned with more than one set of trends related to our future. The biggest clue to that is seeing things that showed up in the past – Kipling’s Gods of the Copybook Headings (which I’ve written about before and I’ll reprint again below) seems written to describe our modern age. That may make sense – Kipling was watching from the peak of British power, and seeing the cracks forming in 1919 that would shatter less than 30 years later.
“I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize™.” – Barack Obama
I get that sense today, and get clues that we’re far from the United States – the Untied States? – that any of us knew in our youth. Just like Kipling used his genius and verse to create snapshots of the world, I try to do the same with humor and more than one bikini graph. Different times, different tools. Also, I doubt they’ll give me a Nobel Prize™ for literature unless they create one especially for me for bad puns.
Our future will be different, but I like to think that when the dust settles we don’t end up like Moscow in 1919 but the United States in 1787, the beginning of something better.
I do it because I like humor.
I have no idea why. I’ve been writing nonsense like this since I was a kid. It makes me as happy as Hunter Biden when he got the highest test score. I mean, the policeman holding the breathalyzer wasn’t amused, but . . . .
I do it because I want to leave something behind.
Yup. 942,879 words. If you read them all out loud, it would take you nearly as long as the Lord of the Rings trilogy movies. Unless you got the special extended version, which lasts 19.5 years. It may not be great, but just like the Federal Reserve® and money printing: I make up for it in volume.
Bruce Willis will play an older Frodo in the next movie. Old Hobbits Die Hard.
I do it because I want to get better.
The Mrs. challenged me on this one when I wrote my previous blog, and for the first year on this one that I wasn’t really trying. They were “fine”, she told me, but unless I was working to make them better, why should I spend all of that time and be content with “fine”?
She was right.
And it takes me a lot longer now to write a post. There’s a whole process, which, unlike Stephen King’s best work, doesn’t involve turning myself into a snowmachine but it does involve a lot of editing. The Mrs. doesn’t even think that I’m a hack, and she’d tell me.
And she’s mean. The Mrs. once (this really happened) walked by NFL® commentator Phil Simms (former quarterback) and said, exceptionally loudly so there was NO DOUBT he heard her, “Look, it’s Boomer Esaison.”
He was on camera. He paused in mid-sentence, just a half-second, but restarted and kept chugging on like a pro. But I could tell he was a little irritated. The lesson here?
If you make The Mrs. mad, you will pay. Just ask Stephen King or Phil Simms.
Ok, Boomer.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
