Life, in Particular

Personal blog blackout over

By Kevin Steel ⋅ August 18, 2003 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

PERSONAL BLOG BLACKOUT OVER: WRITER SAYS IT WAS A NIGHTMARE

Testing, testing… is this mike on?

So I gets a phone call this morning from this Jeremy Lott character and he’s yelling at me to update my blog. I says, “Why?” And he shouts back, “Because it’s time to update it, #@%&*!” And I thinks, “What’s he know that I don’t?” Because as far as I know ‘blog’ stands for ‘weblog’ and I’ve been away from my computer and away from the web and so I have nothing from the web to log. I tried to explain. I added that I had nothing to say anyway, and it’s summer, blah blah blah. But Mr. Lott was relentless. “Just update the damn thing,” he says finally, like he’s paying me to do it or something.

So I cave and I says, “Okay, I do it.”

And now you’re here and I’m here and we’re sitting around staring at each other with nothing to say. It’s like we’re visiting our relatives or something which, at least in my family, happens more in the summer than in the other seasons. So I guess it’s all right for now.

How’s your sister doing? Is she still married to that [bozo who plays golf all day and dreams about it all night]… fellow? I forget his name. He makes pretty good money, doesn’t he?

And where are they living now?

That’s right, right. I was through there last year. I should have looked them up.

And how’s your mother? Last time I saw her she had a pretty bad hip.

That’s good to hear. Health is important. If you don’t have your health… as they say.

Fine.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

It’s usually at this point that the nuclear bomb goes off, at least in my nuclear nightmares. More often than not in these dreams I’m sitting around in a living room having a boring conversation with relatives when I look out the window and see the mushroom cloud rising before the sound arrives. I’ve met other people who have had similar nightmares. These sequences are usually very vivid and the sense of boredom accentuates the shock that we are all about to die horribly without the faintest notion of why this is happening. I assume it happens because whatever part of my brain makes up my dreams is trying to spice things up a little and just goes overboard with the plot line.

So there, Jeremy. I’ve updated my blog. For those of you who are bored with this post, blame Jeremy. He won’t mind. He’s American so he’s used to getting blamed for all kinds of stuff.

For those of you who don’t know him, that fuzzy-faced fellow in the picture above is Jeremy Lott, a friend and a guy I used to work with. He is seated at a picnic table at the Northwest Washington County Fair, proudly holding a Dr. Pepper bottle cap that entitles him to a free soda pop. Big friggin’ deal, you say. Me, too. When he discovered that he was a winner he said, “I must have bought hundreds of these and never won anything. I think my luck is changing for the better.”

Well, right away he’s heading off to Washington D.C. to start a gig as an editor and writer at the American Spectator. So he’s gained some power and, possibly, some influence. Who knows where he’ll go from there. But no matter how high his star rises, we can always look back on this picture, at this moment, and say this, this is where it all started, with a humble bottle of sodey pop at a small town county fair, purchased not because Jeremy wanted to win and not because he needed to win, but simply because he was thirsty. That’s the kind of man he is, a straight shooter; a writer who talks your language about things that concern you. Read him three days a week in the Washington Post. Drink Dr. Pepper.

And now I better blog something. But what? What? What does the world need to know? If you are in the position of needing to know something, then what the hell are you doing here? Bah-doop-boom.

Here’s something. From the Vernon Morning Star: Curtain closing on auditorium

“It takes a couple of years for people to get used to a new building so the crafters in there would suffer,” said Rogers.

“If we can’t use the Priest Valley Gym, we will have to downsize. Chaos.”

Sounds pretty serious. I’m not a big fan of chaos and I bet you aren’t either. And wouldn’t that just be the way it starts? In a place where nobody would expect it? With a bunch of crafters (whatever they are) who are suffering (how I don’t know) outside a gym in some town you’ve barely heard of. And then it slowly spreads from there. That’s sort of how it works in horror movies, and so I assume that’s how it happens in real life.

Well, I’m blowing the whistle on it right now.

It’s good to be back. Glad I could help.