Whatever, Reader

My reading list these days suggests that I haven't been all that creative. On my nightstand sits a copy of Introduction to Marketing , Ogilvy on Advertising , Getting to Yes , Interviewing for Journalists , and even Merriam-Webster's Vocabulary Builder to try and remedy my piss poor vocabulary. I bought a new thesaurus. I bought a book on grammar. I even started one of those Bill O'Reilly books my cousin suggested. Didn't last long though. All this reading is in an effort to create better stuff.  Sometimes I sit and watch TV, drink a few beers, and remain in a state of self-sabotage for hours before suddenly, out of nowhere, something of inter-dimensional importance hammers into my thoughts. It could come from a TV ad, the static on the radio, or a speck on the wall. There's a question so profoundly stated back to myself that I feel like I'll erupt if I don't write it down immediately. It's a truth, and I know it, and until tomorrow morning once I...

In my copy of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the introduction suggests the novel makes no particular call to action, no inclination to political correctness. There is no clear message advertised through story. Literature, they offer, serves no greater cause than for pleasure, and this novel immortalizes Fitzgerald as a master of such. There is irony here, since the novel comments on, even parodies, the social circles where this kind of reasoning flourishes, and it was within these same social circles that Gatsby generated his legendary esteem. To overlook Fitzgerald's creation of a hero from the vapid, spineless froth whipped up by high society, well, that is where I must disagree with the introduction's conclusion. Jay Gatsby is perpetually blurry to all who experience him. All facts known about his life are muddied by a history that no two characters can get quite straight. His photographs, even, confirm the shakiest of suspicions, and yet nothing is prove...

from The Huffington Post As I pause to destroy my technologically faulty keyboard and wireless mouse (my keyboard is a cabled $10 second hand model) for not responding when I click, allowing me to write an entire first sentence without even realizing my keystrokes were lost in the abyss of the inactive window, I am confronted with the obstinacy of nature, and my inability to affect it at my whim. It is frustrating. This reality upsets my comfort, and sometimes I want to scream. I may become angry, and if someone crosses my path at the wrong time, who knows what could happen? My emotions may take over, or maybe I'll suppress them longer, but that is only likely to make me crack, and if I crack, what then? What happens when one's emotions drive him to a place where he no longer feels capable relating to society? This is but one of the many questions raised by Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest . Are any of us crazier than the average asshole? Randle ...