Slack Times

Well, we live in slack times. Readers of this blog will know that I barely achieved yesterday half of what Trollope did daily over a writing career of half a century: write 2500 words.

Wait—it wasn’t a career. Just a pastime, a hobby that he did before breakfast, before he went off and invented the post box.

Well, I can’t say the effort exhausted me. But today I’m tired. It’s Sunday. Surely even a blogger is allowed a day of rest?

(81 words—2419 to go! Got your answer?)

Damn—it seems to have gotten into me. Besides, shouldn’t I be calling Eric? He sent me all those photos, plus the question—what to do about Franny’s poems, or rather the box full of ‘em that we compiled the day after she died, when we were ransacking—ooops, that’s clearing out—the house.

Well, well—Trollope would know what to do about that! Get up at 1:30 and spend three hours a day compiling them and publish them and shoot her into posterity—the Midwest’s Emily Dickenson! The moving story of a youngest son’s championing his late mother’s poetic oeuvre—damn, that word is getting to be a habit—in the years following her death!

OK—I’m not Trollope. The flesh and the spirit are weak. (Though I’m now at 220—hey, coming up to 10%!)

And speaking of Eric—did you know that he too is a blogger? Yeah, and a real one, that writing star of the family. Publishes for Psychology Today. And guess what? All his posts were snorefully ignored. Until the day he wrote about soldiers’ wives taking off their blouses and writing inspirational messages on their backs. (Though how they did that I don’t know….) Well, somehow the word “breast” got into the post and guess what!

It’s called SEO—search engine optimization. Post virtually went viral.

Hey, I could do that, you know!

Gentle Reader, do not read the following paragraph! (Note to editor—print in red.)

Breasts breasts breasts, cocks hard cocks—more breasts!—hey, and babes hot babes hot Latin babes, BOYS BOYS BOYS, hot Latin boys (oooh!), triple XXX action (redundancy there—oh, who cares!), oh, and duh, SEX SEX SEX, steamy Latin sex, steamy steamroom sex, panties panties panties, hot nipple action (don’t know where that  came from) and…

STOP!

Guess what! I’m now at 390—well over 10%, and all without having said a damn thing! This post is as meaningless as a Trollopian digression!

Hey, could I do that? Write a digression? Anyone doing that, nowadays? They teach it in the Master’s of Writing programs? Brian would know—he just got an MFA in creative writing.

Ahh, his was an idyllic childhood, with long, cow-pie flinging summer afternoons spent lazy in the cornfields of northern Illinois. The hours would pass slowly, as the gentle clouds wafted slowly (as opposed to all that fast wafting you see so much of) across the azure (nice, Marc!) sky. His mother, an indomitable pie-maker (shoot, will the reader think Mina is making cow pies? Oh forget it—it’s just a digression…) labored in her kitchen; his father ministered to the turkeys, always alert to the possibility of a sudden rain, and thus imminent death, as the turkeys, their mouths agape, scanned the sky in wonder at the atmospheric disturbance. (Not true, but who cares!) He wondered, this gentle and gentled son of the plains, of his life to come. Would he till the earth, as did his ancestors, bringing forth the fruit (err, soy beans?) of the land, the richness of the earth? Would he bask in the humid August nights, hearing the cicada destroy his evening rest? (Anyone still around?) Little did he know that breast breasts breasts—just checking to see, as well as doing a little optimization—that he would travel far, far (just love that repetition, as well as adding to the word count...) across the chilly Atlantic, the churning (oh, like my stomach?) Atlantic, reversing the journey his ancestors had made!  

646!

OK—so that was the trick. Happy to report that the stuff just writes itself. Really nothing to it.

Well, now I’m feeling bad. I really have delivered nothing of value, today. I’ve wasted your time. You deserved better. Take a look at these. Relax.

It’s Sunday.

Bet it’s the black guy….