Bloggy McBlog Blog

New York, NY — One of the candidates for president recently asked that people not protest and disrupt the upcoming political meetings. I have to agree with him or her. I know it may be upsetting to you that I will not run for president, or even vice president, but it is the case. PLEASE DO NOT DISRUPT EVERYTHING IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY WITH YOUR PROTESTS!!! THAT IS NOT THE WAY TO MAKE ME LIKE YOU!!!
Everyone wants their betters to think well of them. When I was younger and had betters I wanted them to like me too. Sometimes they did. Sometimes they didn’t. When they didn’t I know it was because of stuff they were going through at home, like the passing of a parent or loved one or a messy divorce. I remember one teacher who I liked a lot until I heard her mentioning to another teacher in the hall that someone with the same name as me should probably be institutionalized. Later I found out that her cat had died several years earlier, so that explained a lot.
Here are some things you can do to make people like you, your betters or your worsers:
1) Upgrade them from coach to business class.
2) Don’t CANCEL CHECKS you have written to them JUST BECAUSE THE FIRST BOX WAS EMPTY!!! It might just be a mistake and another BOX WILL PROBABLY ARRIVE SOON!!!
3) Everyone likes cocoanuts.
4) Have sex with them, ONLY IF they find you attractive. If they find you repulsive, don’t have sex with them. It will have the same effect.
5) Take them to the movies, but let them pick the movie. You can pick the snacks. Though everyone likes popcorn. And cocoanuts (see #3).
6) Watch a lot of TV. The commercials will give you lots of ideas of nice things you can do for people. Things you can send them. Cards you can buy with nice things already written in them so you don’t really have to do anything.
7) If you are very fat, please do not go to the mall. The aisles are very narrow. People can’t get past you. It would be a nice thing for those people if you staid home. You shouldn’t be eating the food at the mall anyway. Never insist that someone should have to go get a “real” job JUST TO MAKE MONEY TO HELP TAKE CARE OF THEIR FAMILY!!! Some people have better things to do and it is nicer for those people, if they have a great work to work on, not to be reminded that you might be a little “disappointed” about how things are going, or how many borders you have to take in, or home many times you have to give blood or ANY OF THOSE THINGS WHICH YOU SHOULD DO OUT OF THE GOODNESS OF YOUR HEART!!!
9) Most people like to be reminded that things could always be worse.

New York, NY — I was sitting at my desk, piled high with research materials, telegrams from well wishers and supeneas, eating my favorite lunch, pizza con le pizze piccole in cima esso, the speciality of a newly opened pizzeria owned by a man from Delaware, when I realized a fundamental literary truth. Jokes with monkeys in them are just funnier than jokes with birds, especially pigeons. Jokes with elephants are good too. Bears and rabbits are good, but only together. Dogs are funny if they can talk. Horses aren’t funny. I made a chart. Someday I will show this chart to other people and it will REVOLUTIONIZE COMEDY THE WAY I HAVE REVOLUTIONIZED THE INTERNETS. People will know what kinds of animals to put in their jokes. They will not make the sort of mistakes they have made in the past. Allow me to illustrate my point.

Joke #1: How can you tell if there have been elephants in your refrigerator? Their footprints in the butter.
Joke #2: How can you tell if there have been rats in your refrigerator? Their footprints in the butter.

You see the difference? The first is an amusing joke you could share with a good friend over a grape soda or a cognac after dinner, chortle for a few moments together and then go back to your hum drum lives a little happier, the load on your metaphorical shoulders a little lighter. The second is just a horrible thing that sometimes actually happens.
Rats aren’t funny. Not normal rats. Damp rats are even less funny. But damp radioactive rats can be funny, but only in movies. For instance it would be funny to have a pretty young girl being chased through a sewer by a pack of damp radioactive rats. One of them leaps and tears her shirt off. She runs up some stairs and burst through a door and she’s running through a soup kitchen full of drunken homeless men and nuns with her woman parts bouncing up and down, followed by hundreds of damp radioactive rats. The nuns scream and run, the homeless men, most of whom are played in the movie by former child actors from TV, assume the rats are just hallucinations brought on by drinking Sterno mixed with Pinesol and Diet Sierra Mist. They shrug off advancing wall of wet rodents, ignoring the frantic buzzing of a geiger counter left behind by the mother superior. Then they rats are upon them, rending their flesh and giving them cancer all at once. But there is this pretty girl jiggling around half naked, so everyone laughs.
Steve Martin once said that comedy was the art of making people laugh without making them… something.. something… He was probably right.
People talk about comedy a lot. More than they should really.

New York, NY — The incredible pressure of my position in the internets is starting to get to me again. Even with my hiatus I am already exhausted. Blogging is not for the weak. It is not something that CAN BE DONE BY PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT STRONG. It is the most demanding job a person can have working ABOVE THE GROUND. Being a salt miner may be worse physically, I’m not sure. But think of the solitude and the time to reflect you would have thousands of feet below the Earth’s surface gathering salt ore to be taken to the salt refinery by a trained donkey who has long ago lost his site, so that he can only find his way through that one dark dark mine that he is used to, so when the mine is all used up, all the salt is gone from it, they have to KILL THE POOR DONKEY. It is really very sad. But you would have all the time in the world to think about the fate of the donkey if you were a miner down there, with your headlight on your hard headhat. Your pick jauntily thrown over one shoulder. It’s too loud to talk to anyone, with all the jack hammers and the donkey’s braying and they stumble around in their blindness. You would just think and ponder. Do donkey’s have souls? You would ask yourself.
But I HAVE NO TIME FOR PONDERING. I can think about the fate of the poor poor donkey, though I am not a cruel person. I must continue blogging. There is not time to stop. Bloggers can never stop. They can never slow down. The world needs them. And I more than most, since I am the KING OF THE BLOGGERS.

Nothing.

New York, NY — There are things that I could tell you, if only I could. Dark dark secrets. You find things out when you’re in my position. People trust you, they confide, they invite you to join in their secret organizations. For instance, did you know that a blue laser, reflected off a polished platinum mirror left on the moon by the Apollo 14 astronauts can be used to make the face of the Blessed Virgin Mary appear in ALMOST ANY OILY SUBSTANCE on the face of the entire planet? I’ve said too much already. That guy will never cut my hair again.
And it’s not just random BVMs either. Scientists are using TECHNOLOGY to make things appear all the time. Ever see anything out of the corner of your eye, like a shadowy figure or a blue Toyota or something, and then you turn and look and it’s not there. How do you explain that? Did you know that the retinas of your eyes are SENSITIVE TO WAVES OF LIGHT? And laser beams are MADE OF LIGHT? It stands to reason then that scientists are using mind control lasers on us all the time.
Also, MY CAPS LOCK KEY IS BROKEN! I have to take my computer in to the Apple Store and have them take a look at it. They tell me they don’t fix this kind of Kaypro, but I don’t really go there for the repairs. I’m there to observe humanity at it’s most hip. I’m there to look at willowy young women with identical horizontal tattoos peaking over the backs of their low-rise jeans. I’m there to see Japanese co-eds with their Hello Kitty this and their Hello Kitty that and their dark smoldering almond-shaped eyes. I’m there to study the fashionable New York moms who let their kids play computer games while they gossip over coffee. I think there are men in the store as well. This is where I learn about the world, about people. At least people with expensive computers.
Also, the Apple Geniuses pretty much have to talk to you, no matter what. At least for a while.
Not far from the Apple Store in New York is the Scholastic Store. They have pretty much all the Clifford the Big Red Dog books.
It gives me no pleasure to know all these secrets. What good do they do me? Before I knew the secrets I was a happier man. I thought that if I lined my hat with tinfoil I’d be OK, but now I know the truth. Tinfoil doesn’t help. You’d have to basically wear a colander on your head, with silicon nubbins shoved into all the little holes. And that would just look awful. So I don’t bother. You can suit yourself.
Another secret I’ve regretted learning is that Mel Gibson is an anti-semitic Australian. That didn’t make me any happier. Now I’ve burdened you with it too. I know it seems like a lot, but just imagine, that’s just one of dozens of secrets that I know. And I have to deal with that burden every minute of every day.
It’s one of the sacrifices I have to make for little Scotty, lying in the hospital, with nothing to keep him going but my posts and waiting for the next Archie Double Digest to come out.
I visited him the other day. The children’s ward is such a sad place. “Scotty,” I said. “Is there anything I can do for you?” “Yeah, mister, can you write a post just for me?” “Oh, Scotty, I could do that. I could write something just for you. Something so special, it would make you laugh and cry all at once. It might even help you get well again. But I can’t do that. My public is counting on me. What I do is for the world. It can’t just be for you or for me or for any one or two people. Not even seven or eight people. Has to be a lot of people. I think over a dozen at least.” Scotty tried to act brave but I could tell he was sad. “That’s OK, mister,” he said. “That’s OK, I understand.”
I hope he does understand, because I’m not sure I do. I’m not sure I really understand, but I just keep going. I have to. Because I am Bloggy McBlog Blog. King of the Bloggers.

New York, NY — I got a couple of hours of sleep last night. I forced myself away from the keyboard and collapsed in a heap by the kitty liter just as I was starting to scoop it. Somehow in the middle of the night I got myself into my pajamas, flossed my teeth and got into bed. The pace had been getting to me. I look around my desk now at the empty coffee cups, the pizza rinds, the Reece’s peanut butter cup packages and I wonder what I’ve gotten myself in to. The tremor in my hands subsides somewhat as I type this entry.
I don’t know if I could go on if I hadn’t gotten an e-mail from an old friend of mine, Lorgna McAnn, now Sister Lorgna. She was writing from Borneo where she is a missionary. I quote her in part:

“…Things are hard here in the jungle. The Orangutans disrupt the services, stealing the communion wafers and eating them with little pieces of banana on top. Worse yet, sometimes they are the only ones who come to the services at all. They are generally fairly polite, besides stealing the wafers, but Father Duggins gets surly and apparently the Vatican has specifically excluded Orangutans from the church… There is very little pasta here, and when you do get some, it’s overcooked… But I think about what you’re doing and it makes my load seem light. God be with you, my son.”

It’s things like that that keep me going. My sudden fame has one great advantage. I hear from old friends whom I haven’t heard from in years. Sister Lorgna was one. And last night I had a dream about my high school sweetheart and my grandparents. I haven’t heard from her in years, and they’re dead. In the dream she was wearing a wedding dress and sitting in the back of the school library crying. My grandfather was wearing a tuxedo and my grandmother was in a house coat. My girlfriend asked my grandmother what she’d been doing and she said, “Oh, I passed away.” “Passed away, as in deceased?” “Yes.” “Oh, well, that’s nice.”
I’m not so sure it is. But who am I to argue?
Later in the same dream I see a bicyclist almost get hit by a hybrid car going the wrong way down a one-way street.
I just brewed a fresh pot of coffee. I don’t even know whether it’s light outside or not. I have only one thing on my mind, that’s continuing the work. I know it’ll be worth it. I know if I keep going, eventually I’ll break through to the other side. The phone will ring and it’ll be Steve Jobs and he’ll say something like, “You’re doing a great job, I’m sending you a check.” Something like that.
In the meantime, I blog.