BrockLi Soup

I’m generally not altogether articulate or coherent when I’m speaking with someone, in person or on the phone. Every sentence, every word - you only get one shot to get it right, or you wind up stumbling over yourself. My problem is that I change direction mid-sentence - or worse, change word mid-word - and the prose comes spilling out of my mouth like the tinkle of an excitable puppy. Every time I talk to my mom on the phone, she has to remind me to slow down so she can follow - I don’t like waiting for my mouth to catch up with my mind, so when I’m excited about something, I try to say it all as quick as I can, lest I forget some detail in the process of verbalizing it.

Which is why I prefer writing things down. It gives me the chance to give it a once-over before anyone else has to try to make sense of it, and that’s got to be better than the alternative. The only problem is that I can’t type as fast as I can think or speak, so bits and pieces go missing - all those fragmented half-sentences that I would usually speak are either lost forever, or if I’m lucky, merge to form something more reasonable before seeing the light of day.

(Another old, unpublished post from April 4, 2005. Didn’t change anything.)

One of the books I’ve been in the middle of for weeks is Fear and Loathing in America, vol 2, by Hunter S. Thompson. It’s a collection of letters he wrote between 1968 and 1976 to “a virtual who’s who of the era.”

No one writes letters these days. No one uses typewriters. The immediacy of desktop publishing and e-mail has taken something away from the meaning of the written word. Will our generation leave behind letters to be found in the attic by our grandchildren in 40 or 50 years? Unlikely.

Thanks to Miss Hannah, I’ve learned that Brittanie has made a post concerning NaDruWriNi, which is good because now I don’t have to worry about it, and I wasn’t entirely clear on the rules as it was, not that I’ll be following them anyhow, but that bit’s beside the point.

The point, of course, is that I’ll be falling-down drunk on Saturday, November 4th, and I’ll be sharing it with all of you. I won’t be doing any real writing, to be sure - I can barely handle that when I’m sober, even if I don’t do as much of it as I’d like. No no, good people, you’ll be getting the grittiest, tritest, unfiltered-est crap that wanders haphazardly into the path of my train of thought, and very little of it is likely to make sense even to me, unless I stumble on some nugget of staggering genius regarding the existence of thought and humanity, in which case I hope I can draw a meaningful picture that will make sense in the morning.

I encourage you all to join me. For you locals, I’ll probably begin the evening with a few mixed drinks here at my place, then head down to the pub for a few pints (this part will hopefully feature notes scribbled furiously in my Moleskine), then stumble back here again, where I can be left alone while I beg the room to just sit still for a damn minute so I can find the pisser. Surely, it will be an evening to remember.

PS: I’ve had a couple of Jack & Coke’s this evening. Not only do I participate in NaDruWriNi, I even practice weeks beforehand. That’s how dedicated I am.

Are there plans for a NaDruWriNi 2006? Last year was pretty interesting, but I haven’t seen anything about it this year, and abroad-abroad.org seems to be no more. If no one else is going to get the ball rolling, I’ll be more than happy to put up a site for it, but I don’t want to step on anyone else’s toes. Has anybody heard anything this year?

I want to write a book.

Some years ago, I started the List of Things To Do Before I Die, but I only got as far as “write a book” and “skydive.” And since I can’t afford to go skydiving any time soon, I figure that writing the book is the only thing on my list that I can do (aside from #3: “finish list”).

Problem is, I don’t know what to write. I’ve got a couple of ideas, but one will require more money than I’ve got, and the other will keep me from holding down a steady job (these aren’t “sit down and write” book ideas, they’re “spend a year doin’ shit and THEN write” ideas).

Of course, when I’ve actually got time to write, I wind up reading, thinking that I need to read a lot of good stuff before I can write any good stuff - a reasonable conclusion, I think. But that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t have anything to write when I’m not reading. My life hasn’t been interesting enough for any kind of memoir, and I don’t know enough about any particular subject to write much about it, except maybe Getting By On Six Bucks A Day After Spending Your Paycheck The Friday You Get It, but the only people interested in that wouldn’t be able to afford it.

So, if you’ve got ideas, let me know. I figure a best seller is more likely than landing the lottery, and I could use some cash.

Don’t forget, everyone! Tonight is National Drunken Writing Night! I, for one, will be starting with Evan Williams and Coke and making my way to Honey Brown or Leinenkugel’s Honey Weiss once I’ve had enough liquor.

I hope that you’ll all join me and write something absolutely ridiculous once you’ve got a few drinks in you tonight. Cheers!

Earlier tonight, Ryan commented on literacy in this day and age. I’ve been meaning to address the overreaching “hot damn the Internet’s cool” issue for some time now - particularly how the current state of the Net has affected my every day life - but parts of it keep coming up and demanding their own consideration (see: Flickr, blog-friends, information collection, more Flickr, productivity, high class culture, etc).

At any rate, the ongoing blogsplosion (of course it’s a word) has contributed to the articulation of countless thousands that would have otherwise wasted four years of quality high school English by placing apostrophes before the ’s’ in plural words on fliers (this is one of my prime pet peeves). Were it not for the introduction of LiveJournal into my life three and a half years (and 1,907 posts) ago, my reasons for writing anything longer than a thank-you note would have ended with my last college essay. LiveJournal especially has opened the proverbial floodgate for the proverbial flood of proverbial idiots to spread their proverbial drivel.

Because, let’s face it. Most of the people writing in some kind of online journal are doing it to make their voice louder, to reach a wider audience, and to make themselves feel more important than they are (I know I am, anyway). For every legitimate, decent writer producing new content every day, there are 300 angst-ridden high school kids spouting illegible word-vomit on LiveJournal, and another twenty on the smaller (but notably angsty-er) DeadJournal. The unfortunate truth surrounding both of these sites is that they are largely populated by people whose concept of grammar is heavily influenced by shorthand AOL speak.

I couldn’t be happier that more people have a reason to write on a regular basis, myself included. I enjoy having a reason to write, and there are a lot of blogs out there that I enjoy reading. However, I can’t help but think we may have taken a step backward when we took monkeys off the Shakespeare project and replaced their typewriters with computers.

Also, thanks to Ryan for pointing out that I’m interesting.