A Faster, Cheaper, Gooder Time...

Hello Friends.

The lines at Starbucks and the people in yogurt commercials suggest we live in a fast-paced society. Everybody's rushing around, milling to and fro. Just the other day I was on the second floor of an office building, looking down at the bustling atrium below. “Those people down there look like ants!” I said, since people are always saying that. And on the internet I saw footage of downtown Tokyo where people were running around madly, pushing each other out of the way to get wherever they were going. I thought this was in the aftermath of the quake, but apparently, it's just Japan all the time.

Even I, who live a slow-paced, uneventful life with a low-stress job and a lax schedule, like to keep it bizzay. Just today I signed for a package, bought a drain snake, unclogged a drain, threw a boomerang, made some hard-boiled eggs, cried quietly in the shower, caught a boomerang and sat down to blog, all before two (which is really impressive when you consider I got up at noon). Now, I'm afraid, I must head to work in an hour, but because it's Thursday, I feel I must blog. But who's got time to read a blog, much less write one? Time to do this faster!

Dream: Write a short, concise, and efficient blog. Efficient like Japanese people when there isn't even an earthquake.

Goal. 'chievable. (Notice how I cut some time already by using the colloquial 'chievable, rather than the full achievable? I did).

Plan: Cut corners, like:

Backstory. I remember as a child, blah blah blah some bullshit. Digressions into my own life would be more interesting were I more interesting. Raised by wolves, for instance, or Unitarians. But as it is, there's very little I can tell you that would be of any interest unless you were there. Speaking of which...

I could draw in readers not by attempting to write about a universal experience, but by just referring to them directly. Hi Dana. Hi Angela Thul, Mr. Nostbakken, Bradley. Hi Tina Fey (She doesn't read this, but if she Googles herself, I'm pretty sure this would be like the fifth result on the first page. If you're reading this, Tina Fey, thanks for all the funny stuff you write/produce/star in. If you were to ever come to the store where I work, I would give you all the plastic bags you wanted, but not charge you, as is our custom in this country. Free bags, T. Think on it).

Steal other people's jokes and pepper them throughout the blog to use up space. Here's one I heard the other day.

Foxy eighteen year old twin girls are visiting their grandmother. Vandals burst and hold the girls and their grandmother at knife point. “We're gonna rape all of you!” they threaten. “Oh please,” the girls plead. “Please, do with us what you will, but spare our grandmother. We beg you!” The grandmother holds up her hands to silence them. “Now girls,” she says, “They said all of us.”

That might be a terrible joke, but I must admit, it tickles me just so. Hopefully like this blog tickles you sometimes. Now's the time where I would veer off into sentimentality, partly out of genuine sentiment, partly as a writing technique to take the sting out of old lady rape jokes, and partly to make you, the reader, think you've read something cohesive, not just a series of ramblings.

Truth be told, I had an entry at the ready, which I rethought, and scrapped last night. Sometimes I get too personal, both self-referential and self-reverential, too inside joke-y, too tasteless joke-y, and so sanctimonious you could just puke sugar. So call me lazy for throwing this together last minute, but you must also call me discerning in the same breath, for I'd rather give you thoughtless garbage than thoughtful stuff which is also garbage. But most everything on the internet is garbage anyway, right? But we feast on these scraps and carry with us little morsels of knowledge, busy though we may be, scurrying down here like ants.