I’m a guy who can sit at his keyboard and crank out a column for ANewsCafe.com in about 30 minutes when I’ve got an itch to scratch. Finding enough words to fill a couple of pages isn’t a problem. My technique feels (and maybe reads) like a stream-of-consciousness exercise. I start out with a semi-formed idea of where I’m going, pound out an essay, go over it quickly once, and fire it off before I get cold feet.
Not long ago, after reading Doni’s take on a Doug Mudford-esque “Reflections” column, I decided to give brevity a try, just as an exercise. If you’re a regular you’re familiar with Doug’s style … humorous, weighty observations in about one to three sentences each.
Torture, it turns out. It’s why my Twitter account is nearly devoid of tweets. I stared at my blank screen for a good 15 minutes and couldn’t think of a single pithy observation before throwing in the towel. I confessed my failure in a comment below Doni’s column, and Doni and Doug responded by prodding me to give it another shot.
So here goes …
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•I could tell you, but then I’d have to bore you.
(Nah, I can’t lie. I borrowed that from my memory banks just to get started—a line I’d read somewhere long ago, maybe on a T-shirt. I warned you—I’m bad at this.)
•If you want to feel the love, a bad dog is better than a good cat.
(I think that’s more or less original, but I rank it as one of the tritest of trite observations I’ve ever shared. If it’s original, it’s still hugely unoriginal. How does Doug do this?)
•By almost every objective measure, humanity has never had it so good. That’s especially true if you happen to be American Scandinavian. Why all the hand-wringing and heartburn?
•Everyone should have a go-to insult. Here’s mine: “That dude is such a penis with limbs.” Yours?
•To the million or so federal employees who voted for L’Orange Führer whose annual raises were just canceled by L’Orange to help pay for the tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the über-wealthy (like L’Orange himself), I offer these heartfelt words of condolence: Sorry, chumps.
•If you connected the dots between the previous three observations, pat yourself on the back.
•Fried chicken. A favorite food of my childhood that I rarely eat these days, even though I still love it. That’s not mere nostalgia—whenever I do get my mitts on good fried chicken, I still love it.
•Also regarding childhood food: Mom, I grew up and got a Ph.D. in biology. The liver is the body’s toxic waste transfer station, and it’s got too much retinol. One serving of fried beef liver ain’t gonna kill me, but I’m not eating that blood-tasting garbage-can organ tissue ever again. Liverwurst can take a hike, too.
•Norman Maclean (“A River Runs Through It”) described in one of his memoirs a Forest Service colleague who wrote him one-line letters, which Maclean greatly admired for their brevity and precise wholeness. The one that I best recall: I slept with a woman who weighed 600 pounds.
•Speaking of sex, from The Times of London: People who own TV sets are 6 percent less likely in a given week to “sweep the special chimney.” If I were to say to my spouse, “My dearest, let us sweep the special chimney,” that would likely be the last chapter in the book of my marriage. Brits are weird.
•Tim Conway is probably the first person who made me laugh until it hurt. Dentist sketch.
•Dementia, you’re a bitch on wheels.
•Birds are extant dinosaurs of the suborder Theropoda. Wrap your head around it, because it’s true. I’m a cladist, so by the same taxonomic logic—common descent and relatedness are what matter—humans are the third member of the chimpanzee clade…and more than 99% of us live up to that billing.
•No, I’m not including myself in the remaining fraction of 1%. Nor anyone likely to be reading this. Galileo Galilei. Rene Descartes. Siddhartha Gautama. Leonardo Da Vinci. Charles Darwin. Hedy Lamarr.
•It’s not that I’m averse to eating organ tissue. Sweetbreads (usually pancreas and thymus) are rarely seen on restaurant menus, and never in supermarkets, because the gods keep most of it for themselves. But seriously, beef liver: You suck out loud.
•I’m visiting two of my grandkids in Sacramento the other day. My daughter cues up their regular FaceTime conversation with their other grandpa, Tom. Tom is wearing an alt-Forest Service T-shirt depicting Smokey Bear that says, “Resist.” I’m wearing my Drive-By Trucker’s T-shirt that says, “Resist.” I’m just gonna stake the claim, grandkids: Your grandparents are hipper than your parents.
•Polonius (from “Hamlet”): “Since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief. Your noble son is mad.”
•My bastardized version: “Since brevity is a load of $#!+, and taxing the trimming of lines and outward flourishes, henceforward I will be wordy. U mad, bro?”
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