What am I writing?

My head’s in a really neat writing place right now, but I can’t keep it on any one narrative. I spent some time honing a couple of shorts, I pondered another one but didn’t get past the title, and I screwed around with all three novels in play right now. Everything I wrote I liked, but I doubt it totalled a thousand words.

But I’m just whining. Everybody has a work day where things don’t move well. It’s just that I’m so close right now. I feel it there, tickling the back of my brain. Calliope, maybe, or one of the other muses, is going nuts right now. Can’t you hear me, jerkwad? Do you not appreciate the gift I’m offering right now? She’s shaking her head, wondering why she bothers.

I, also, am wondering why she bothers. Someone is breathing a deeper truth into my ear, but in a language I don’t understand. Something about Detroit Iron and Swiss Miss.

23 thoughts on “What am I writing?

  1. I have discovered my own weird phenomenon. Other people may have other reactions to stress — they go on a shopping spree, or they eat something decadent, or they throw a temper tantrum. I write. In particular, I write essays. Since I spend my working life teaching students to write essays, one might think I was sick of essays. But that’s not the case. Maybe because I’m so focused on essays, that’s just how my feelings come out.

    Oh, and before anyone asks, I’m talking real essays, such as John Donne wrote, not the formula where the essay has five paragraphs, and each body paragraph has 11 sentences, and the first sentence does this, and the next three do that, and so on.

    The problem with essays is figuring out what to do with them — what does the world want with my musings about “On Maturity and Teenage Drivers”?

    Meanwhile, on beta issues, right now the “You can see all the guest poems here” is overlaid upon “The blog, explained …”

  2. And now that I went to another page and came back, and the poem is your own instead of a guest poem, everything looks all right.

  3. The beta bit is about Haloscan, so the issues will crop up here on the comments page.

    I’ve seen the random WTF come out in the wrong place every now and then when using Firefox, but I haven’t figured out a pattern. It does not see to be related to which poem is showing.

  4. News from CZ (Fark 1/21)

    Man hides in Czech pizzeria

    PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) – It will be the most expensive keg of beer he’s ever had.

    A 32-year-old Czech man got himself locked up in a pizzeria in the town of Brno late Wednesday to have free access to beer overnight. When the restaurant’s staff left, he broke into a cooling box containing a keg, disconnected the pipes leading to the tap, put them in his mouth and drank as much as he could.

    The man, drunk and fast asleep, was found by cleaners in the early hours of Thursday.

    Vit Cvrcek, a police spokesman, said he will now have to pay for the beer he drank and faces up to one year in prison or a fine of about $425 Cdn for the damage he caused to the cooling box. (Brian Notes: $425 Cdn = $1.75 USD)

  5. My latest observations on the poem formatting thing — it happens when I first arrive here, but if I go briefly elsewhere, such as to the poll results or a link to an older entry that’s not on the main screen any more, when I come back, the formatting thing is all fine.

    On the other hand, if I go further away, such that when I come back, I don’t use my “back” button but rather my Bookmarks, the formatting is messed up again.

  6. After long an difficult discussions with the Gods of Blog this weekend, it has been brought to my attention that some changes need to be made here at MR&HBI. The process of choosing the MR&HBI Millennial Regent for the Gods is nearly perfect…except when the chosen don’t realize that they have been chosen. For example, an egg fryer might stumble into the thick of things and not know that they are the one the gods wish to guide us for the next millennium. There needs to be a way for them to know that they are, in fact, a Demi-God of sorts. I am not sure how to best do this, to let them know what they have been chosen for. There needs to be a way for them to accept the responsibilities as regent, or there needs to be an alternative. I don’t know if it is as simple as having a flashing “your are visitor 11003, click here to see what is now expected of you,” or not. But there needs to be a way to show them that they now have a very importent role in our Blogcomm here. Of course, there is a chance that they are not up to the task, and if they do now wish the role, then the gods have told me the previous (and not the pervious) Regent shall stay in office for another millennium. Thus insuring the blog is watched over and cared for by one of the chosen until the time another Regent for the Gods steps up to the task

  7. I like the flashing “you are visitor 11003, click here to see what is now expected of you”, it’s very Hitch Hikers Guide (all hail). What happens if the previous Regent doesn’t want to or can’t stay in office (by being dead or something inconvenient like that)? Default to the pervious I would think is then the obvious choice.

  8. Actually, fear a lot.

    I think everyone except Jer (who will say it sounds suspiciously like work) is enthusiatic about the flashing “you are visitor 11003, click here to see what is now expected of you” idea.

    However, in the event we get an egg frier, we definitely need a different method for selecting the stand in MOH. pL’s suggestion that the current MOH stay in office is quite simply fraught with danger. We have all seen how quickly the power of being MOH corrupts the office holder. Even Mr7K recognized the peril and started the tradition of a term limit of no more than one millenium in a row.

    Consequently, for the sake of variety at MR&HBI and for the sake of any remaining shreds of sanity of the MOH, we need to continue observing the term limits rule. Otherwise, one an only imagine that soon the “gods” will “tell” pL that he should be dictator (I mean MOH) for life.

    We could have a rule that no current or pervious MOHs can be stand in MOHs.

    Selection methods for SIMOH could include:

    a.) choosing whoever’s poem came up in the rotation during the fateful visit (which could be more work for Jer to work out the synchronization),

    b.) appointment by Jer,

    c.) or simply doing without an MOH for that millenium.

    Others may have better suggestions still. It wouldn’t be hard to come up with a better plan than marching steadily toward monarchy.

  9. The flashing sign has a big technical hitch. Sitemeter sends an image back to me — there’s no way for me to write code that can respond to the number. I’ve sent a suggestion to them that the alt tag or the title of the image includes the number, but don’t hold your breath.

  10. There is yet another terrible hitch to the idea of sending a flashing message — I don’t suffer from it at home, as I use Mozilla, but at work, where IE is the norm, about every four minutes I get an obnoxious blinking message telling me I have won something. Unless our new MOH is using some sort of screening, or is using Mozilla, the message that she or he is our new MOH will be totally lost among the clutter. There is no way to distinguish our message from those thousands of others for whom clicking the button to acknowledge winning unleashes a barrage of advertising.

    No matter how inadvertent our new MOH is, we do not want to scare her or him away with a frightening come-on. Maybe there’s a low-key to let the new MOH know of her or his new office if we can find out her or his email address, but otherwise, I can’t see an easy way to inform her or him.

    OTOH, how much harm was done during the very brief tenure of the last anonymous egg-fryer from AOL? Thomas Jefferson said, “That government governs best which governs least.” Perhaps we need the occasional spell of no government at all.

  11. Well Jefferson also believed that if we Americans didn’t have a revolution (not necessarily violent, but a revolution of thought) every 20years, their idea of government had failed. 20 years later, after Jefferson left the office, his secretary of state, James Madison took office. Hardly a revolution (unless, or course, you consider the burning of the white house and capitol buildings as “revolutionary”) Also in Madison’s term, the third political party, the Federalists, disappeared; leaving us with the two party system of “democracy.” At least we had Dolly, and her cookies.

    Here, it is hard for us to have cookies, at least the kind one eats, and even harder to have a viable political system of elections – other than the one we have now, which is a Mixture of luck, divine providence, and too much free time at work. At least here at Muddled these different factors have given us strong leadership…strong enough that we endured an egg fryer, who never knew of his role in our BlogComm without too much internal damage. After an erratic tenure by our pervious MOH, Muddled factors came together, and pL was instated. By differing accounts, dumb luck, early closing bars, and “gods” were somehow all involved, and we now have a “Regent” guiding us forward. After this…can the blog survive another leaderless millennium? Are we prepared to be rudderless for so long?

    The question arises…just how do we decide, if it is indeed us deciding such things, and not these “gods,” who will hold the power of SIMOH (SIMRFTG) if the chosen does not wish to be chosen?

    The current haiku is an interesting choice…but how do we know which one it was? Most likely, it will be Jerry’s Haiku. This is too strong a concentration of power to keep the delicate balance once dreamed of by Thomas Jefferson. That would be more like the Coup d’etat we had 5 years ago than the fragile democracy that failed so many years ago (like I say, at least we got the cookies).

    I, for one, am inclined to agree with the Current MRFTG, and say that if the next “chosen” Regent can’t be identified and brought to task, than we should stay with the leadership we currently have, which, as far as governing, is close to Jefferson’s Ideal of “Governing Least” in that it has done damn little “Governing,’ although it has defiantly been in the vein of ‘Beer’ and ‘Satire’ and ‘Beer.’

  12. ^^who is that masked scholar? ^^

    Anyway, it’s fascinating how like real life this MOH thing has become. We have the people who are really interested in the office debating the rules of office, just like nobody runs for U.S. prez without being really really interested in the job. We have pipe-chewing, scholarly analysis, just like the legions of university profs who weigh in on every political turn-of-events in the real world. We have average citizens who don’t notice the difference between an egg fryer and an MOH who “ran” for the office. We just want our blog taxes to go down, and how come my comments are supporting vast numbers of welfare readers who never comment? Finally, we have coined terms, i.e. “egg fryer;” while not synonymous with “lame-duck,” it evolved just like any language. How organic. How insulting of me to imply this blogcommm is less than real. How do you fry an egg over easy?

  13. So it’s decided then! Let us vote to ratify, that’s what I say! I wait silently for an egg-fryer, and vocally for change!

    Let us ratify this with a vote! If the next MRFTG does not wish to take the ‘office’ offered by the powers that be, then the current MRFTG shall retain said ‘office’ for the period of one additional Millennium, at which point said Regent shall be subject to the continuing whims of the universe, and the potential ignorance of the ignorant who do not wish to know the glory, and the power of the Millennial Regent for the Gods; and the responsibilities thereof. To ratify this amendment to the Muddledness I require the vote be unanimous! And, hence to and furthermore, since, at this point in Muddled History, there is only one qualified to vote, this monumental decision falls squarely on his or her, and more specifically my, shoulders. Having read the above arguments, and being the only member of Muddled, at this point in time, officially qualified to vote in matters of Muddled Constitution, I hereby vote in favor of the opinions voiced above’the Regent shall remain in office until a qualified, and willing, replacement is chosen. And my vote makes it unanimous!

    Thank you very much for your support.

    Official Millennial Regent and Demi-god.

  14. Alas! The end of the world approaches!

    For the first time ever, I got a pop-up ad while using Mozilla!

    Oh, woe! The evil forces (or are they vile froces?) have found their way through!

  15. Yo Carol Anne. I too, receive an accursed pop-up using the big Mo. It shows up on my first click in the Drudge Report. Must be some subversive Commie plot. Those ChiComs, they’re up to no good. Them and the Norteno Koreans. And them Iranians. I don’t even want to think what them Coobans are up to… Oh yeah, Dubya tells me not to forget Poland. Enemies, I tell ya. They’re all around us! Keep your eyes open soldier!

  16. so far I’ve never had that problem, but the last sentence of my mozilla preferences pop-up page says,”Even if blocked, sites may use other methods to display pop-ups.” Zowie. evil is right.

    I’ve found a different, amazingly annoying, web artifice: when I go to about.com to read up on the latest internet urban legends, they put a floating ad in the main frame that bobs up and down with the mouse. Very irritating.

  17. Hi Jesse,

    Here’s an internet urban legend for you:

    On March the Twoth, the much beloved Prague Phil will emerge from his den and look for shadows. If he sees one, then we can count on six more weeks of conspiracy theories.

  18. And if he sees two? A very likely possibility given Prague Phil’s proclivity for the amber nectar. Perhaps he would claim to have seen a second drinker, across the bar, behind the taps?

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