I’ve been finding it hard to write lately.
It’s not the infamous “writer’s block.” The problem is that the only thing I want to write about is all the you-know-what coming from you-know-where.
And isn’t there enough of that sort of thing available pretty much everywhere? Every day? Every second?
I find myself belatedly having some sympathy for the mouth-breathers who squealed like maladjusted brakes whenever my columns would veer off the course laid out in the race bible and careen into the real world. Which, if we’re being brutally honest here, was pretty much all the time.
“Stick to cycling!” they’d wail.
“Everything is political!” I’d bark.
Now I’m just a blogger and don’t have to meet a regular deadline or wrestle with nervous editors, penny-pinching publishers, and illiterate critics.
Too harsh? Hey, I read the letters.
“Go back to waxing your chain, Spanky,” I’d grumble. “Leave writing to the pros.”
These days I write for free, because I like it. Anyone who doesn’t like it is likewise free, to fuck off.
Still, I’m not entirely sociopathic. I have you hardcores, my small, deeply disturbed audience, to consider. And I don’t want every single brain-dump here to be of the rancid, greasy, orange variety. There are only so many different ways to say ‘BOHICA!'”
Thing is, to write about anything else feels vaguely criminal. Borderline treasonous. Anyone with a voice, however small, should be sounding off like they have a pair.
What’s a poor mad dog to do?
Well, you may imagine my delight when I stumbled across another scribbler in similar straits. Chuck Wendig is a published author — like, of actual books, an’ shit — and he has a new one due out April 29, “The Staircase in the Woods.”
I first noticed him when The New York Times included “Staircase” in a roundup of 24 new works of fiction to read. Then his name came up again over at Daring Fireball, the free-ranging blog by John Gruber, who promoted this “crackerjack essay” Wendig had written while trying to write about other stuff and promote the new book and basically just live his fucking life.
It’s titled “What It Feels Like, Right Now.” Here’s a sample:
Writing is hard right now. Releasing a book is hard. Promoting that book is, say it with me, hard. It’s not trivial but it feels trivial. Like performing a puppet show in the town square as the town burns down. It feels good to do it and you want others to feel good while reading it but you also know feeling good right now also feels somehow bad, and maybe that’s one of the most fucked up things of all. They didn’t take joy but they took the joy of feeling joy away, made it feel wrong and strange. Turned happiness into a hot stove.
Top-shelf stuff here, folks. Rage and comedy, despair and hope, the whole ball of wax. Writing as an escape and an act of resistance. Inspirational.
In fact, I liked it so much that I immediately ordered up his new book from my favorite local bookstore, Page 1 Books.
Shit, I’d have given him the $32.29 just for the essay.
Mad Blog Media 
Maybe, if you believe hacks like Stephen King or Kurt Vonnegut — like, what do they know? — writing needs a certain amount of routine to it. I believe SK’s was something to the effect of: wake up, make coffee, let the dogs out to pee, sit down, write until your word counter chimes 2,000, take the dogs for a long walk, make breakfast brunch or lunch, then reread and edit your 2k.
And I’m having a metric shitte tonne of trouble establishing any sort of routine in These End Times™️ (brought to you by the Political Action Committee to End All Action From the Major Branches of Government Down to SubAtomic Particles).
Seems like we need big revolutionary type stuff, and then it’s hard to see how my 2¢ contribute to that in any meaningful way.
I walk my dogs. And so it goes.
What might help is achieving a critical mass of people who are angry for the right reasons, hollering at the top of their lungs, to finally make the politicos more scared of us than they are of the moneyed class that underwrites their fuckery.
Whether that’s possible, I have no idea.
The Donks appear to be playing chess while the Elefinks are playing rugby. Dog only knows what’s going on in the stands. “White Lotus” reruns, I expect.
“Gee whillikers, whatever will these poor rich people do next?”
Meanwhile: “Last of the BOHICAns.” That’s some funny shit right there.
I don’t know who’s doing the Donks’ media prep, but the lot should be strapped down Clockwork Orange style and submit, Strasbourg goose-style, to a force feeding of George Carlin. Half the time I think I’m watching Hillary campaign surrogates from 2016 when I hear them reply. “Did you know he called our troops suckers and losers? Did you know he cheated on his wife?”
Econ 101 says that there is a singular problem with tariffs that government policy cannot address. If I add $100 to something made in China, then I just told the plant in Texas that they can go up $90 and still do okay. And if there is no plant in Texas, then you gave China permission to jack up prices without losing any goodwill in the market.
But have you heard a cogent response from the Dems on this? They could get way out in front on the economy, but instead they’re playing the greatest hits. I mean, a little Fleetwood Mac is fine every now and then, but you can’t play it 24-7.
I’ve been waiting a dozen years for someone to simply ask the GOP to explain anything. Tell us how it works. Show you’ve cracked open a book once. Remember how they used to be their own worst enemy, Paul Ryan style? (“Didja know, insurance paid by people whose homes DIDN’T burn down are used to pay for rebuilding those who did?? That’s crazy!!”)
But I guess I’ll keep wishing in one hand, shitting in the other, and waiting to see which one fills up first.
And they keep going to the same dry wells, too. Rahm Emanuel. James Carville. Time to tap some fresh springs if they want anyone to drink their Kool-Aid.
I’ve got a bad case of writer’s block lately. Things are bad enough that I don’t know what difference my piddling little voice (or $0.02 as SteveO’ says) will make. Especially in solid blue NM, where there are zero, count ’em, Republicans in the Federal legislature from here. It’s singing to the choir.
My brother has it a little better. He is in a suburb of Buffalo, where there are a fair number of MAGA hats on people’s heads. Has a big sign in front of the house: Pro America, Anti Trump. And has a pistol caliber carbine.
It is gonna take a bloc of those people who voted for Mr. T last time to turn this around. He will always have the hard core, but I bet a fair number of people are asking themselves if this mess is what they bought into. Seems the GOP contingent in Congress will never grow a pair, so they need to lose some elections.
That said, I’m not happy to go back to the current Donks. Someone is going to have to reform government so we don’t go broke, but do it with due respect to the Constitution.
BOHICA indeed. Back when I was co-investigator with my buddy Eric DeCarlo on various NOAA projects and always fighting for a scrap of cash in a grant, we christened ourselves “The Last of the Bohicans” because we were always one step ahead of fiscal calamity.
“What’s a Mad Dog to do? “You just did it. Beauty! I just take a day out of three or so to turn it all off.
“Blow up yourTV, throw away your paper, move to the country, build you a home.”
I’ll try to quit overthinking it and just let fly with a rant from time to time. But yeah, shutting it all off and walking away for a while every now and then is good medicine for the mental health.
I generally ease into the day by cleaning Miss Mia’s litter box, which is a lot like reading the news, but more productive. Though I note that the litter box, like the newshole, is never empty for long.
We have a 13 lb tomcat we inherited. At least that shit is honest shit.
Not all the BOHICA is coming out of Washington these days. Enbridge is still trying like hell to put another pipeline between the UP and Lower Michigan under water, across Lake Huron, in a tunnel no less. Geez, what could possibly go wrong? And the most bestest part is the chemicals and fossil fuels they run through the current decaying pipeline isn’t even used by we Mitten Staters. Enbridge has one of the worst environmental records in history yet I’ll bet they get the permit they need to start this tunnel. So there…hope it took your mind off of Adolph tRump for a minute while you focused on the fact that the Great Lakes hold 84% of the country’s fresh surface water. Maybe ya might want to fire off a note to your legislators letting them know while tariffs are all fun and wiggly, being able to FIND fresh water might be a bigger national security issue down the road.
My man Charles P. Pierce always has his eyes on the pipelines. One of his laws at the shebeen is “Pipelines leak.” Here’s his take on the most recent Keystone rupture.
Tanks (pun intended) for the CP article. Set aside protecting the environment for a minute. Think about how ridiculous and inefficient the whole fossil fuel industry extraction, transport, storage and refining is. It’s Erie Canal level tech compared to solar, wind and nuclear which are not by any means perfect but going the right direction.
Also, stinky. Cyclists and pedestrians pick up on that shit pretty quick. A “classic” car burp-farts past, followed by a Dumpster-fire of a diesel HonkyMobile®, and then by a Civic packed with weed-smoking street racers. Peeeeeeyewwwwwww.
Bringing up the rear is a Teslacle, which stinks for different reasons.
Yes. When things seem to have gone awry for us (me if I’m presuming too much here), we have a tendency to wonder if maybe we should back off just a bit. Don’t look because we know that it’s there – The information that adds to our list of what the hell is going on. Many times I think of adding my chime to this dinner bell but I back off and delete the gibberish as aimless confusion. Also in my case, I wonder what world that I exist in. Along with the wandering mental state that exists in my household, sometimes it’s difficult to believe what is real. Are there that many people raised in a country where it already has been great, so disappointed in what we have they they are willing to jump on the blast-it-all-to-shit rocketship believing that all will be that much better in the future? Wow, I guess I really am out of touch. But that’s ok. I’m enough of a scientist to realize that it really doesn’t matter. Eventually time will prevail. Nature, God or the Q-continuum will produce a gravity wave that suddenly engulfs whatever still exists of our rocky berg and all our thoughts and matter will become just bits of stellar fuel again. But in the mean time and because all is so confusing, I’ll continue to wonder if Boebert really is one of Donny-T’s illegitimate children. At least that’s what I think it said in the AI generated Smores recipe that I downloaded.
Thanks for the Chuck Wendig link. I’m not sure about horror literature these days but perhaps I’ll consider the falling up the Staircase.
We all know the Enemy is out there, snuffling around our doors. The trick, I think, is to have something worthwhile to say about it, which ain’t always easy.
A while back I opened a couple of social media accounts — yes, I did that, picking two new kids on the block — to see what all the fuss was about. I found I had to step away from them for the same reasons I abandoned the old ones. It was like drinking from a fire hose connected to a sewage treatment facility.
I don’t want to turn the blog into the Horn-call of Buckland — “Fear! Fire! Foes! Awake! Awake!” — so I’ll try not to raise the alarm about each and every sortie by the Black Riders. But I will holler when hollering feels useful. We all need a pressure-relief valve, I think.
PO’G: We need you to keep flinging the poo, as your aim is true.
(I’m just shallowly disturbed. May I stay?)
There are many rooms in the Dog House, my son. Even the mildly upset are welcome. Do bring your own flea collar, however.