I live in a ever more crowded suburb of a growing mid-size city.
Today, being Saturday, I had places to go and stuff to buy.
Some of it, like groceries, had been planned for in advance. Some of it, like a way to fix a backed up toilet, had not.
I also managed to see my Dad briefly during his hospital stay. He had his knee replaced a week ago, swapping bone for titanium, in something that had also been planned for in advance.
During my stops at Publix, and Home Depot and Borders Books (not on the schedule, but hard to resist) I met a number of people...but didn't actually know any of them.
I imagine some of you who live in smaller towns would find that odd, if you think about it. Where you live, you would expect to say hello to people you see in the stores you go to. I'll bet you can usually call them by their first names.
You might also think it's a pain in the butt.
I've lived in small towns, and the biggest down side is that everyone seems to know your business...or thinks they do.
You could live the most exemplary life, constantly doing good deeds, or ministering to the sick; the friend and benefactor of every widow and orphan on your street, and still be the subject of gossip.
It's a short step on the rumor treadmill to having a sick relationship while doing the deed to benefit that widow up the street (never mind the orphans!).
Of course, you have to have a certain noteriety in town. Gossip is no fun if you have to spend fifteen minutes defining the subject of a five minute story. You might be a member of one of the wealthier families in your town, or a family that has headed a business for years.
Sometimes you are a member of the media, like I was.
I remember I had been working for a small-town radio station for a couple of months, probably not the station you're thinking of, when a rumor got back to me by way of my boss.
Without going into a lot of detail, he called me into his office, and asked me if it was true.
"I've never actually met the woman", I told him.
He shook his head in a way that silently indicated that this sort of thing had happened alot with his on-air staff, and never mentioned it again.
Within minutes of our brief conversation, I made a vow to myself that I would never again be the subject of a false rumor. Clean living was, obviously, not the answer.
So, like the Bonnie Raitt song says, I decided I would give them something to talk about.
I found that the rumors would continue...but that now I would, at least, get some of the benefit. Surprisingly, I found that I became less and less interesting to the community, less gossip worthy, as time wore on.
Since there was nothing all that interesting about someone doing what the rumor mongers said he was doing all along, I became boring.
Which leads me from small town USA, to big town Florida, to the small community that is Blogstream.
Since I began posting in November of last year, I have tried my best to guard my anonymity in the blogs. I have been using a pseudonym, albeit one I have come to despise, and have been using a 20 year old photograph (a profile, no less!) to identify myself visually.
The blogging has helped me become a better writer, with a couple of posts approaching a decent level of journalism.
Some of them make me laugh...usually for the right reasons.
But now it's time to move on.

I'm not leaving Blogstream, but I am going to try and expand my writing with your help.
Here's the deal;
I will offer a certain amount of honesty now, and you have to agree to put up with a whole lot of BS later.
Here goes....

My name is Tom, and I look something like this;




...and I want to write fiction.
Hopefully, the posts will continue to be fairly short...did I mention that I have Adult Attention Deficit Disorder (un-medicated)? I know I will get bored before you do...as a matter of fact, I'm really pushing my limits right about now.
What I write may often have little to do with my real world...or yours, for that matter. You can expect characters and situations that will exist only in my own mind. People who live in places that are far away, in a time that was long ago.
I will try to limit my use of space ships.
So let's call this little experiment a partnership between you the Blogstream reader/writer and me...a real person just making stuff up.
I may still post the occassional left leaning observation, but I think it's time for me to expand a little.
This may be a very bad idea, and I am quite aware that some of my upcoming postings may be impregnated with "eau de gym sock" until I figure out what I'm doing...but I still hope you'll come along for the ride.

We've all seen it...
We're going along, minding our own business, when we come upon the accident. We are horrified, yet fascinated, by the mangled syntax, the split infinitives, misspelled words and participles that seem to dangle by a thread.
We also see the bad similies, awkward metaphors and sentences that run together.
We see the wreckage of fuzzy thinking that has collided with bizzarre punctuation, and we can tell instinctively that this was no accident.
This was the direct result of another drunk blogger on the internet.

We've all done it...
A beer after work, or a glass of wine with dinner isn't the problem.
It's when it gets to be late at night, and the wine bottle seems more comfortable on the computer desk, or the beer bottles begin to stack up next to the printer.
The problem begins when we've had a few too many, and still decide to get behind the keyboard.

At first, we can still use all our fingers to type, so we don't feel too impaired. It's almost exhillerating to start off with what appears to be an interesting turn of a phrase, or some laser like insight! You feel like a modern day Ernest Hemingway cranking out art for the ages.

"Yeah!, what about Hemingway?", you ask. "He drank like a frat boy, and I still had to read his stuff in High School!".
Well just because Hemingway did it, does that mean YOU should do it too?
I mean, if Hemingway decided to blow himself away with a shotgun, does that mean you...wait...sorry...bad analogy.
What I meant to say was, if Hemingway and his friends jumped off the bridge at San Luis Rey, would you...aww, forget it.
The fact is, this is the age of the INTERNETS, my friend!
Hemingway used a manual typewriter (something he didn't have to plug in) and wrote his stuff on actual paper, back before World War II.

Imagine a late Friday night, and Ernest Hemingway is click-clacking away on what he believes is the best work of his career, bourbon bottle close at hand. As his reflexes begin to slow, he delves deeper into a dark tale of intrigue and betrayal under the Andalusian sun. And the girl...there's always the girl...He will call her Mildred.
He staggers out of his bedroom around noon on Saturday, with his head beating like a bodhran, and takes the time to read the piece over. He immediately realizes it is the same kind of derrivitive, incoherrent crap he's written a thousand times. This will not be sent to his literary agent, or even to the Saturday Evening Post.
I can easily picture a hungover Papa wadding up every last page of "For Who the Bell Rings Really Loud" or "The Old Man at the Seashore" and tossing it into a roaring fireplace. Perhaps a manuscript titled "The Snows of Kankakee" hung around for a while, until he got drunk again and sliced it to pieces with a regulation sized Bowie knife.
What I mean is, his really bad or embarrassing stuff never got across the threshold of his cottage in Key West or his cabin in Idaho.

Today, thanks to technology, everyone in the world can read what you wrote almost as soon as you've written it.
And nobody cares if you were sober when you wrote it...but they can tell if you weren't.

Unfortuneately, rather than write fiction, many of us prefer to report about our own lives in a factual way.
Troubles at work? Troubles at home? The affair you're having, did have or are going to have?
Put it in the blog!
As soon as you hit "submit" everybody in the world is potentially in on story.
There are few secrets in blogging, and fewer still if the booze has knocked down the old inhibitions.
It is the virtual equivilent of sitting at the end of a gloomy bar and saying to anybody who sits near you, "hey...hey buddy...yew wanna know wass wrong with my life? Lemme tell yeh."

Perhaps you believe you're safe in your anonymity...and you are... unless you've told at least one friend: "Hey, hey buddy...check out my blog!".

I was thinking there should be some kind of law against drunk blogging...with one possible exception.
We strange people of Celtic descent, should probably be encouraged to be BUI (blogging under the influence) at every opportunity. It seems to act as an enhancement or neural lubricant to our postings...that is, if you can even understand them in the first place.

Long before there was an internet, James Joyce wrote in Finnegan's Wake;

"Can't hear with bawk of bats, all thim liffeying waters of. Ho, talk save us! My foos won't moos. I feel as old as yonder elm. A tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia's daughtersons..."

I would love to write like that myself...but for me to begin to approach the genius of Mr. Joyce, I fear it might take more than a few ounces of "inspiration". Given that much influence, I would soon be typing with two fingers...very slowly...before abruptly falling asleep, with my head on the keyboardddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd...

Remember...friends don't let friends blog drunk.

Unless they're Irish.
Then it might be interesting, despite the carnage.

"Saturday morning cartoons really suck anymore", he thought, as he made his way through the parking lot.
"I mean, who really understands anime, anyway?", he said out loud, slightly startling a kid in a Publix vest gathering up shopping carts.
He had dressed in his best jeans, a tank top that showed his biceps and hid his beer gut, and grey-market Reboks. He had gotton a great deal on the shoes, even though they were spelled "Rebocks" and smelled like a tire store.
After tying a yellow bandanna around his head (you can't be too careful with this Florida sun, even in Winter), he lit a cigarette and surveyed the scene.
He spotted his target, right near the front door.
It would require all his speed and daring. He was glad he wasn't too drunk this time, since timing was of the essence. He really didn't know if they would be armed.
He tossed the half smoked cigarette to the ground, and stubbed it out under his left Rebock.
He took a shallow breath, put on his "game face", and made his move.
Moving like a cat, or maybe a really fast dog, he ran to the table and scooped up the cash box.
In answer to the protests, he casually tossed the word "yup" over his shoulder...zing!...as he made his way to his cousin's Honda Accord.
"Damn stick shift!", his cousin said, as he nearly hit an old lady.
Yet, within seconds, they knew they would make it...
The Orlando police wouldn't have a thing to go on...he had beaten them again!
"Take that, Girl Scouts of America!", he thought, as they headed north on 436.
It looked like this might be his biggest score since that Salvation Army kettle caper back in December.
"You dah MAN!" he shouted at his reflection in the vanity mirror in the visor.
"No, YOU, da man!", shouted his cousin in that irritating whine of his.
"That's what I said!"
"Huh?...Oh", said his cousin.
Next stop...Taco Belle for a couple of buritos.
He planned to steal a whole lot of those little hot sauce packets...a whole lot!

Earlier this month, a 150 year old institution came to an end, never to return.
Western Union announced the end of the telegram.
It's funny, but I've never actually recieved a telegram myself, so I have mixed emotions about the news. In my lifetime, many things have simply disappeared, never to return. Things such as dial telephones, 8-trac tapes, Commodore computers, the Commodores, Rosie O'Grady's and the older model VW Beetle.

Things I am glad are gone, and not coming back, include Disco, Jim Crow laws and my ex-wife.
Things I'm sorry are gone forever included The Beatles, The World Trade Center and over 2,400 American soldiers sent to Iraq.
Things that apparently will NEVER go away include The Rolling Stones, Orlando's toll roads and Nazis.
Now before you point out Nazi Germany was put down like a rabid Alsatian in 1945, or think I'm taking a cheap shot at the Bush Administration, think again.
First, I already took the cheap shot.
Secondly, the "National Socialist Movement" is planning a march in the predominately black section of downtown Orlando this Saturday. Sure, I could link you to their web site, but why bother, since These fine folks have all the information you need.
I have often thought the media's term "neo-nazi" was astonishingly inaccurate. There's nothing new about these people. To me, a Nazi is a Nazi, regardless of when they were born. It also seems not all Nazis wear brown shirts and armbands.
Yet, for those that do, WELCOME TO ORLANDO!
We, here in Central Florida, have often felt left out, never having been a stop on Nazi-Tour USA...(Tampa always seems to have all the fun).
To show our thanks, knowing most of you will be travelling from out of state, may I suggest a nice place to stop in for a post-march brew or two?
Considering the average Nazi's political savy, what could be better than to meet at The Parliament House? I understand they have a great beer selection, served by a friendly staff, and you can actually walk to it from where the march ends up!
Plus, they really, I mean really, love a man in uniform!
No, don't mention it...it's nothing...you can thank me later.

I am not, nor have I ever been, a Rush Limbaugh fan.

Fortunately, since I stopped working at an Indiana radio station, dropping news headlines into his daily three hour rantfest, I haven't had to even think of the knuckle dragging oxygen thief, let alone listen to him.

I often eat lunch, at my desk, at an unremarkable state office building. I've become used to the chatter of others and the scent of re-heated cuisine from around the world wafting over my cubicle.
I was about to cut into my own chicken marsala, when it happened.
Suddenly, like the belch of a rapidly eaten, onion laden, Italian sub or hogie, I felt a sickenly familiar taste return to my mouth.

Some fellow cube rat was playing Limbaugh at full blast just a few feet away.

Making my way to the offending party, I noticed he had headphones on...really nice audiophile headphones, and not a cheap set of ear-buds. I did a little two handed wave, like a football referee signalling a missed field goal, to get his attention.
He managed to both remove his 'phones and say "huh?" at the same time.
"The noise", I said, (dropping into more hand signals)...it's, uh...I mean, I don't think your headphones are working".
A puzzled look came over his face, as he looked to his right and said "huh?" again.
I started to say something else, when he blurted out;
"Well, fer cryin' OUT LOUD!"
"I forgot to plug 'em in", he said...

Ditto heads...they're everywhere.

*a true story