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Howdy, friendly reading person!(Program Note: Yesterday’s writing love went over to Bugs & Cranks, in the form of Fenway Park, Chronicled.
It’s a post. It’s a book review. It’s a personal journey. Look, up in the sky; tall buildings; speeding bullets; yadda yadda yadda. You get the idea.)
(Program Note Concerning the Program Note: I’ve decided these ‘program notes’ about posts elsewhere are getting in the way of business here. As I mentioned somewhere recently, I’m writing every day — but not always here. If I’m writing for some other site, I’ve been linking it over in my next post, but that’s after the fact. And now every third post or so begins with this parenthetical italicized monstrosity that’s completely unrelated to whatever it is I’m babbling about at the moment.
That seems less than ideal. I’m in no danger of staying on one topic, but I’m not such a fan of losing my train of thought before I’ve even had my ticket stamped aboard the damned thing.
For these reasons, I’ve decided to forgo the manual updates and — as nature intended — let shiftless stupid animals do my work for me. In this case, the Twitter bird, with tweets about everything I’m posting [and a few extra bits of nonsense] now available over on the sidebar. If you don’t see new words here, you can simply look over there and see whether I’ve contributed elsewhere, or I’m just late with a post, or I’ve been eaten by rabid coyotes on the back streets of Boston and no one’s come forward to eulogize the goofy blogging bastard yet.
[I realize some of the three of you reading this may be subscribed to an RSS feed, or getting the text through some other kind of whiz-bang newfangled text gizmo — like Kindle, anyone? Henh? Henh? KINDLE? — and may therefore not have a sidebar where Twitter might reside.
You have one of three options, as best I can tell: you’re more than welcome to follow me directly on Twitter, for all the latest nonsense. Or you can do whatever it is that you do in life between posts, patiently waiting out the next batch of fluff to be spewed. Or you can refresh the site obsessively every eighteen seconds, hoping that some riotous nugget of hilarity has just made its way to the page.
That’s what I do. One of these days, maybe it’ll work.]
Embedding Twitter this way should keep things more straightforward in the posts, frees a bit of manual labor off my plate, and gives me more time for writing consistent topics, for baring my embarrassing inner realm for all to recoil from, and for wandering the neighborhood at dusk wondering who taped the ‘FREE COYOTE LUNCH’ sign to my back.
In short, you won’t see these ‘Program Notes’ about posts in other places going forward. So we’ve got that going for us.)
(Program Note About the Previous Program Note About the First Program Note: Sorry. I know we’ve got a post to get to. This’ll just take a second.
I only wanted to mention that it’s possible that we’ll still have the occasional ‘Program Note’, for one reason or another. I wrote a piece last week, for instance, for submission to a humor collection that’s going to be published. On paper — from real live, honest-to-goodness trees.
[Well, maybe not live trees. But real trees. I thought paper was just for TPS reports and bathroom tissue these days. Who knew the printing industry still existed?]
Anyway, until I find a way to hyperlink from Twitter to a copy of some small-batch self-published volume sitting on the back shelf of my local bookstore, then I’ll have to reserve the option of an occasional ‘Program Note’ to crow about those sorts of things.
If I make the cut. Which I haven’t yet. So no crowing. Or tweeting. Or anything else birds do, like singing outside my window at six o’clock in the effing morning, or taking turns shit-bombing my car in the parking lot, or getting sucked into jet engine air intakes. I’ll get to all those things later, if the time comes.)
(Program Note to Slightly Amend the Last Program Note: You know, it just occurred to me — that essay collection has a website. So if my piece does make it in, I can just tweet a link to that. Much easier.
I probably didn’t need another ‘Program Note’ for this. I just figured, you know — while we were here and all, ‘on the line’ as it were.
It’s no biggie, really. I’ll post now. You’re right; it’s time. I’m on this thing.)
(Program Note Unrelated to the Preceding Program Notes: See, here’s the thing about that, though.
I’ve got this quota on how many characters to cram into a post. I don’t know the ins and outs of it — something about the ISP and bandwidth limitations, and paying by the byte for drivel over the alloted amount, and some sort of fee for excessive smartassery. I don’t know. It’s in the contract, or so I’m told. TL; DR, as the kiddies say.
Anyway, the point is, I don’t have the space left now to squeeze my whole post for tonight in, so I’ll do what the bigwig networks do and send you back to the action ‘already in progress’.
Which in this case means ‘almost to the closing credits’. Sorry. That quota’s a hard cap, and these ‘Program Notes’ are a real bitch. Just be glad this wasn’t a ‘State of the Union’ speech. You could lose a whole prime-time lineup to one of those. I’m just sayin’.
But now, without further ado — back to the post. In, as they say, progress.)
“Are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure it’s pronounced ‘pap schmear‘.”
…so then the girl behind the bakery counter says, “Are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure it’s pronounced ‘pap schmear‘.”
And that, long story short, is why we were all out of bagels this morning.
You’ve been a great audience — g’night, folks!
(Program Note Postscript: You know, that ended up so short, I could have totally just tweeted that. Would’ve saved us both a whole bunch of effort. Damn.
Meh. Next time.)
Permalink | 2 Comments
tell us in which bookstore we’ll find you signing the copies. By the way, can we rip off the pages and pay only for your humor?
E-Man, you’re more than welcome to rip the pages out if you like. I can only imagine that the bookstore staff would be more than happy to help you, even.
Whether their goal is to burn them rather than read them, I can’t say. But your enthusiasm is much appreciated.