“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!
When I was a kid I loved comic books. Now I am drawn to your witty meme photos that break up your witty pun-laden text. Same attraction: pictures to go with the text! It’s your secret sauce, John. Stephen King has yet to even stumble upon the formula you have perfected.
Here’s to your next million words, er, hundred bikini graphs!
Yes! But more than 100!
Oh, the research is tough.
Hey John
I read your posts to lighten my heart. There is no shortage of dire news, and the flock of black swans circles ever closer. Smiles feel good, and are hard to find. My outlook and sentiments correspond closely with yours, and it’s good to know there are kindred spirits in this crazy time. Keep writing, and I’ll keep reading. T
I’m on it! More to come. I’d like to think the best bikini is in front of me . . . .
I have been blogging since 2004 which seems like just yesterday but also seems like an eternity ago. Mostly I blog for my own entertainment, what I call working out my thoughts in public. It is a mental exercise but publishing it for everyone to see makes me work a little harder than just musing in my own head. Plus you “meet” interesting people, some the pretentious types who think they need to comment on everyone else’s blogs to tell them why they are wrong but mostly you run across good people.
Yup. That’s been my experience, too. Glad you keep coming back, Arthur.
Two things, sir.
First, the Mrs. is completely correct in saying that Stephen King is a hack. He’s just a terrible writer, and there’s no avoiding it. He could be a decent storyteller if he could just resist his compulsion to embed lefty sermons in his stories, and build ridiculous “right-wing” strawmen to vanquish politically. But he can’t, hack-hack-hack. I managed to wade completely through “The Stand,” which has the political hackery mentioned above, plus laughable technical problems. (Did you know that, if a car sits for several weeks without being driven, all four tires will be flat? Yeah, I didn’t either. Still don’t.)
Second: I greatly enjoy your work, and read every post (and view every B&B). If I were purely and totally selfish, I’d go on enjoying while you work yourself to death without saying anything. You mention going to bed at 3, with a 6 am alarm. Believe me, I’m not being holier-than-thou here; that situation is very familiar to me. I spent most of my adult life getting 4 to 6 hours per night, and generally for reasons not as good as yours. At the age of 67, however, I read a book that laid out research showing that not sleeping at least seven, and preferably eight hours per night, is not the way to live a long time. I mean, you might as well start smoking a pack a day (except that doing so would be unpleasant, and would make you smell bad).
Please, John, do not send yourself prematurely beneath the sod for the enjoyment of your readers. We could probably struggle by on two posts per week, in the interest of your longevity. Even one post, if that’s what it takes. It would be tough, and we’d be sad, but we can do it.
I feel that one of the problems with Stephen King’s novels is that he is an excellent short story author. So his novels are based on what would be a good short story or novella stretched to fill hundreds of pages. I discovered him in 1988 reading the Night Shift collection, and gave up on him within a few years after reading some of his novels.
Yup. Same here – I got Night Shift and enjoyed it. Then, after The Shining and The Stand?
No one could tell him no.
Not my plan! Tonight I’ll get at least 7 metric hours.
(I really have been trying to get it sorted out a bit closer to normal human hours.)
I often recite The Copybook Headings to myself while walking with my dog. In my opinion it does indeed show once again that history may not rhyme but does repeat since it seems to me that we are now in the same situation as was Kipling when he wrote that magnificent poem.
Many contemporary commentators towards the end of the Roman Empire noted many of the same problems Kipling (and now Tucker) are pointing out. I sigh whenever I see some starry-eyed youngster saying, “what we REALLY need to do to fix things is…”
I used to bother trying to explain to them that those in charge know what should be done to fix things… but they won’t because problems are profitable, which is why those in charge created those problems in the first place.
Tacitus:
“The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.”
“They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger… they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor… They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace.”
“Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.”
“Step by step they were led to things which dispose to vice, the lounge, the bath, the elegant banquet. All this in their ignorance they called civilisation, when it was but a part of their servitude.”
10/10. Such insight into our world, yet from 2,000 years in the past. I could do a post on each of these.
What were these “copybooks”? And why did they have gods in their Headings? I feel like I’ve missed out on some detail of English education not to know what he’s referring to here. (Great poem, of course.)
It really does. Such a fine writer.
“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”
Or Venezuela. I, like many of us say mostly to ourselves we need to fix this but do nothing for obvious reasons. I recently in my reading and thought feel there is only two ways that will fix this. Christian revival or civil war. The first would get us to 1787 as that is how this country was founded. I also after getting about half way through “The Fourth Turning” have added to my thinking how this country and the world will look.
I suspect that the Venezuela phase, if it happens, comes before the dust has settled.
I doubt Christian revival can do anything with these violence-lovers antifas types, radicalTurd world feminists, racialists blaming only Whites, transgenderism pushers, intersectionality soldiers, unredeemable corrupt politicians and the rest of the lot. I think 95 % of them are simply lost forever and suffer from mental and cultural defects. They would need to go thru heavy-duty deprogramming that would last a long time and that could work for some Whites but the Others and the Juju, nah no way. Just lost. Too far gone.
They chose to separate themselves from America. They chose to deny America. They chose to act as traitors to America. They are Communists in mind and spirit. Can’t fix that except for a few.
That leaves Civil war with a big clean-up. Then you can get after into Christian revival.
Glad you write for us plebes.
I read your puns to my wife and she just rolls her eyes at me. Her sense of humor is different than mine.
I have had a blog since 2010, but haven’t posted anything on it since 2016 when I got lazy/ got busy working. I was just mostly reblogging anyway.
Now that I’m retired, I’ve been thinking about starting back up again. Time will tell.
Well, do if it calls you. Otherwise? Just enjoy life!
I don’t like Stephen King either, but my whole family and really enjoys your writing, especially the puns. Thanks.
Whot Mr. Turtle said.
Thank you! I liked him, but it was a long, long time ago.
“Also, I doubt they’ll give me a Nobel Prize™ for literature unless they create one especially for me for bad puns.”
You could always enter the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which includes a Vile Puns category. I’m pleased that Jay Dardenne, who represented me in the Louisiana State Senate at the time, won this category in 2005 for this entry:
“Falcon was her name and she was quite the bird of prey, sashaying past her adolescent admirers from one anchor store to another, past the kiosks where earrings longed to lie upon her lobes and sunglasses hoped to nestle on her nose, seemingly the beginning of a beautiful friendship with whomsoever caught the eye of the mall tease, Falcon.”
Nice!
Does it come with a trophy????
I get where you are coming from That John Wilder.
I’d write even if no one was reading.
It’s a kind of therapy.
It also helps to keep me from going postal.
^^^This! Write(or talk) makes you work your thoughts to put them in a linear (so to speak) fashion. How will you “explain” it to other if you can´t explain it to yourself? Writing is about self-awareness. Two quotes of Richard Feynman:
“If you can’t explain something to a first year student, then you haven’t really understood”
“The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.”
Yup. But I miss sleep.
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.
Illustrators have a similar problem. Or at least this illustrator does. It is better than the alternative which is endless fiddling until the alarm fires because it’s not… Quite… Ah! I need to scrap it all and start over!!!
Ha! Yup. I trick myself into sleep. Which involves reciting lists. Works pretty well.
A simple reader, older and meek, who visits but once in a week. Verily, I dig what you have to say, but bikini graphs are for what I pray. Ohio Guy:)
Ha! More to come!
My contribution to Western Civilization. I’ll live with that.