It's Serious.

I guess I have a real case of writer's block, if in fact what I do here qualifies as writing. I have all of these great pictures from Paris, stories waiting to be told, but I can't seem to motivate myself. I wonder if I've lost my six readers. Are you out there? Ask me some questions - that seemed to help last time.

S-O-S

I wish I could say I’m one of those people who have kept a diary or journal all their lives, but I can’t. Instead, what I am is one of those people who have talked about keeping a diary or journal all their lives, but have found it much more convenient just to watch television. As a result, although I possess a near-encyclopedic knowledge of old episodes of Late Night with David Letterman and Homicide: Life on the Street, I have no archive of my own writing that I can mine for ideas when I’m running low. I’m not yet ready to plagiarize from someone else (although that day may come) but I’d happily steal from myself right now.

What I’d like is for you to ask me some questions. I’ll answer them in the comments and maybe I’ll find some inspiration. I realize my readership is limited – I think of this as a boutique blog – so send some of your readers over here.

Yes, I am begging for ideas.

In return, allow me to present you with a list of words and phrases that annoy me. Because I’m a man of many pet peeves, this is only a partial accounting.

• That’s what I’m talking about! and its less confident cousin, I’m just sayin’. I think these phrases have urban roots and probably sounded pretty hip when they were fresh. Now that fat, suburban, white guys like me use them as we grill sausages on the back deck, they’re insufferably lame.

• You go, girl! and Don’t go there! Again, stale. White, suburban mothers are saying these things to one another as they drop their kids off at school. Both phrases should be outlawed.

• Think outside the box. For a while, I thought this silly bit of corporate-speak had faded from serious usage, and people now only used it ironically. Wrong! And it’s still stupid.

• If you will. My observation is that people pepper their speech with this phrase when they want to sound intelligent, as if they’ve just come up with a new way of expressing a certain idea. I’ve also observed that the more a person uses it, the less likely he is to have anything to say. It’s very much like how President Bush says something incredibly simplistic, then follows up with, “In other words . . .” and proceeds to say the exact same thing all over again. I believe that’s called “putting lipstick on a pig.”

• Access as a verb, as in, “How do I access the porn on my hard drive?” I realize the battle over this has long since been lost to the “it doesn’t matter how you say something as long as people know what you mean” forces. It’s even in the dictionary now, acceptable as a verb. Nevertheless, it irritates me immensely. What was so difficult about, “How do I get access to the porn on my hard drive”?

• Webinar. This one just fills me with rage.

There you have it. Thanks for listening. Now start the interrogation. I’d appreciate it if you
would think outside the box.

Well, the Moral of This Story . . .

A Texas town is for sale, exclusively on eBay. I'd write a fictional story about that, but who'd believe anyone would ever pay for a piece of that state? The other thing is, it's already been written. There's a Donald Barthelme short story called, "I Bought a Little City," and I listened to a reading of it in a New Yorker podcast on my way home from Chicago last weekend. It's an odd, wry piece, the kind of writing that a part of me feels as if I might have inside myself somewhere, although the rest of me realizes that's just wishful thinking. It's a funny story, but with a little bit of menace. Listen to it here.

I've always had it somewhere in the back of my mind that I'd like to be a writer. I never really did anything about it, and although I enjoy working on this blog, I doubt one or two silly posts per week will ever get me anywhere. I heard "I Bought a Little City," then read it, and it seemed so easy, as if I could just come home, sit down at my laptop, and knock out something just as good. I guess that's what the pros do, though -- they make it all look simple.

And that brings me to another New Yorker podcast I heard on the same trip: Richard Ford reading John Cheever's "Reunion." It's an amazing story, "economical," as they say in the podcast commentary. And talk about making it look easy.

Writing like that is inspiring and discouraging at the same time. Know what I mean? I guess I'll keep plugging away at this blog, knowing what my limits are, but allowing myself the occasional delusion.