BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Before you get all huffy and send me a nasty email, put that sentence on the back burner for a second and read the blog entry itself… The sentiment in the grandiose title is definitely not my own.

You see, a while back I penned a blog entry about, of all things, writing blogs. Yeah, pretty redundant, I know, but what can I say… It was a slow news day. At any rate, in a nutshell that particular entry investigated the whole concept of how, as an author who is also a blogger, I should only be writing about writing, (yeah, even more redundancy, go figure…) And, I was to do this all for the express purpose of disseminating information to other writers, and/or aspiring writers, so that they may learn from me.

Truth is, I didn’t even know I was qualified to teach, so as you can imagine this whole idea came as a shocker to me.

Well, if you happened to have read that particular entry you already know I found the above notion funnier than all hell. Still, even though I had, and have, every intention of continuing to write entertaining blogs rather than such self-serving B S as previously noted, I thought maybe I’d go out into the proverbial blogosphere and have myself a look see. You know what I mean… Do a little investigation on my own to find out if maybe I was missing a bus or something. Hey, I’ve made my share of mistakes, so it could very well be that this whole entertainment thing is a crock, and being a pompous ass is where it’s really at… What better way to find out than to do a little digging?

So, I tossed my cyber-shovel over my shoulder and away I went.

I read blog after blog, written by authors I had never heard of, but who purported themselves to be experts in the field of authoring. Know what I found?

A load of self-serving, pompous B S…

Yeah… I was disappointed. I wasn’t overly surprised by any stretch of the imagination, but I have to admit that I was definitely disappointed. I mean, after all, I was hoping to learn something. That’s what the whole writing about writing thing is all about, correct? Lesser writers like myself getting an education from the elite wordsmiths… (Of course, like I said, I had never heard of any of these elite authors, but that didn’t matter. They said they were the best of the best right there on their blogs, and they wouldn’t lie about something like that, would they?)

Well,  I have to admit that even though I found exactly what I was expecting to find,  I did in fact learn something. I learned that I was correct all along…

I  definitely do not want to be one of those types of bloggers, or even authors for that matter.

The harsh reality of the blogging world is this – there’s more than just a  convoy of turnip trucks full of us out there. The number of blogs currently on the web is way more than I can count, even if I take off my shoes and socks. Yeah… There are a whole lot of blogs, and each one is vying for attention. So, people – unfortunately, quite a few authors in particular – sometimes decide that in order to attract attention they should become self-appointed experts, then hand out advice from on-high.

“On-high” being the pedestal upon which they have placed themselves. And, unfortunately, the advice they dispense takes the form of criticism, more often than not.

Now, don’t get me wrong here… Everyone is entitled to an opinion, and even to expressing it aloud in most cases, whether critical or not. Of course, I should mention that one shouldn’t always express an opinion out loud… There are times when one should keep one’s opinion to oneself. It’s a matter of discretion and common sense.

At any rate, I readily admit I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to the whole opinion expressing thing… Hell, I’m doing it right now. And, this might even be one of those occasions when I should be keeping my mouth shut. Who knows? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

But the thing is, I always try to make note of the fact that what I am saying is merely my personal opinion, and that disagreeing with me does not a moron make.

So, opinions are not my issue. My gripe is when self-important people treat their opinions like they are hard, cold fact that everyone must cleave to lest they be labeled an idiot.

Well, actually, I should back up a second… I have to be honest. I really don’t have a gripe at all. Truth is, I found all of the stuff I read to be fairly amusing, but mostly because it’s so damn obvious the people who wrote it take themselves way too seriously. And, based on their rhetoric, if you can label it such, apparently they are effin’ brilliant, and I’m… Well… I’m not.

Just like it says in the title of this blog entry. And, to borrow one of this genre of bloggers favorite expressions, “I should know, because I [insert important sounding sh*t here].”

More to come…

Murv

It was pretty much a typical Friday morning as Friday mornings go.

I rolled out of bed at 5:39 AM. A bit later than usual, yes, but only by around 9 minutes, which is the span of time allowed by a slap of the snooze button on our alarm clock. Not really a big deal. I just wouldn’t have quite as much “quiet time” alone in the office as I normally did prior to the hustle and bustle of getting E K off to work and the child off to school. I could easily live with that.

I hit the ground running… Or, these days, shuffling just a bit. I fixed breakfast for E K and the offspring, packed E Kay’s lunch while the coffee maker sputtered and steamed, downed a cup or two of the java once it was finished, answered some email, checked my Facebook and Myspace pages, and even took a quick look at the local news on the idiot box. (I prefer K M O V channel 4 here in Saint Louis, just in case you are wondering. They seem to have fun, and Matt Chambers is one of those honest weather guys who prefaces his forecasts with, “This is what we think is going to happen”.)

But, lest I digress…

In keeping with the regular Friday routine,  (as Friday has a few more steps than say, Wednesday, for instance), I had already run about the house  on a mission – gathering trash and replacing the bags in various refuse receptacles, then cleaning the cats’ litter boxes, (not one of my favorite tasks, but hey, it has to be done), and finally delivering the bountiful haul of garbage out to the street corner to await removal by the big, blue, noisy truck that arrives every Tuesday and Friday (except holidays, of course).

All was good… In fact, even with getting a bit of a late start, I was now actually ahead of schedule by just shy of 10 minutes. Not only had I made up the 9, I’d added 9 and some change to it. I was feeling a bit proud of myself.

I figured I could take advantage of that extra time on the back end of the morning, so rather than stop in front of the “toob” to admire Julie Chen and Maggie Rodriguez on The Early Show,  I just kept plugging away. As the clock continued ticking forward my routine progressed with little deviation from how it has gone for countless Friday mornings past.

My initial chores of the day were finished, (though there were many more on the docket for later), the offspring was in her room obsessing over exactly what to wear – as female offspring often tend to do, and E K was finally out of the shower. Since I was next up in the scrub-a-dub-dub queue, I slipped into the bathroom with my lovely wife and proceeded forward with step one of  “Murv’s Morning Routine Phase 2”.

Advancing mechanically through my usual order of tasks I had already run my toothbrush over my teeth, dragged a comb through my hair, and had even made it so far as to whip up a passable lather with my shaving brush,  (trying to be eco-friendly, I’ve used old school shaving soap and a brush – when not on the road – for several years now, as opposed to cans which just end up in landfills). At this juncture, my face was full of rapidly dissipating foam and I had just dragged a trio of  insanely sharp, cold metal blades resting on the end of a short, crooked stick, across my cheek when the demand hit my ears.

“Move over,” came my wife’s voice. “I need to wash my face.”

I gave the end of the screaming metal skin scraping stick a quick rinse and shuffled to my left. I was an inch away from dragging it along my jawline when I stopped, cocked my eyebrow, then turned to look at my bride. Her hair was wet and I knew she had just climbed out of the shower moments before. Still, not being one for taking things at face value, with a vague questioning tone I said, “I thought you just took a shower?”

“I did,” she replied. E K didn’t seemed surprised at all by my query. Of course, after 22 years together she has grown used to my random verbalizations of various thought processes and simply accepts them as old hat. I’m certain this will serve her well later in life when we are both sitting in rocking chairs, side-by-side, and I am talking to myself for no apparent reason.

I pondered her answer for a moment, then gave her excessively damp, red tresses a one-eyed stare as I added, “And, you washed your hair.”

“Yeah,” she answered. “I did.” She still didn’t seem at all fazed by the fact that I was currently channeling Obvious Man.

At this point, had I bothered to look in the mirror, I’m sure my eyebrows would have been see-sawing back and forth like a puppy trying to figure out whether to pee on the carpet in the living room, or on the tile in the hallway.

“So…” I started, then paused.

“So, what?” E K asked, amusement now welling in her voice.

“So, if you took a shower and washed your hair, how did the water manage to miss your face?”

“It didn’t. My face got wet,” she chuckled.

“Okay…” I paused again. “But, you’re saying it didn’t get washed while it was wet?”

“Of course not,” my wife replied. Her tone had made a drastic and sudden change. It was now one of sympathy for someone who is obviously a bit slow in the brainpan, so by way of explanation she added, “I have different soap for my face.”

“Different soap,” I said.

“Yes,” she replied. “Different soap.”

She reached past me and rummaged around in the medicine chest,  so I watched on in silence, now taking notice of the countless weird shaped and various sized bottles, tubes, and jars lining the shelves. I’d never really paid any attention to them before. After all, they are on her side of the medicine chest, not mine. Of course, I have to admit that I had always wondered why her side of the three-paneled chest consisted of both the left and the middle as well as a portion of the right, whereas mine was just a small sliver of said right.

Now,  my curiosity was piqued, so I focused my attentions on her task.

Oddly enough, upon initial and even secondary inspection, I didn’t see any containers with “soap” written on them. I  did, however, see things like “anti-wrinkle cow placenta apricot avocado P H-balanced age defying micro-bead moisture-rich scrub“… With “scrub” coming in at the end of the title, I suppose that stuff would qualify as soap, but it seemed to me “face soap” would have saved some ink when the bottle was being labeled. But, that’s just me, I guess.

There were other products as well, each with equally descriptive and endlessly confusing names like, “glycolic facial peeling solution masque,” and  “collagen infusing pore cleansing makeup removing pre-wash.” I figured that last one probably had pig in it instead of cow, what with collagen being first in the title.

One of the bottles that did make perfect sense had adopted the simplicity in labeling scheme I suggested earlier. It was titled, “nail polish remover.” I pretty much got what they were saying with that, so it seemed like a pretty good marketing move to me. I mean, if E K were to say, “Honey, could you hand me the nail polish remover,” I was all good. But if she were to ask me to retrieve her “face soap”, I’d probably be back to deciding whether to pee on the carpet or the tile. By the time anyone found me I would most likely be doing the “potty dance”.

There were other bottles, jars and tubes – more than I could count really – but I can’t even begin to pronounce their dozen word, semi-foreign, hyphenated and fancy-script-fonted names, (nor would I want to, unless of course, I was considering a career in Dermatology).

“I see,” I finally muttered, even though I really didn’t.

After a couple more swipes across my face with the stubble scraper, I gathered enough courage to ask, “So, do you have different soap for other parts of your body too?”

By now, E K had dried her freshly washed face and was lining up various bottles of differently named products along the edge of the vanity – each of which thankfully ended in the easily definable word, lotion. This helped reduce my confusion, but only just a bit given that there were so many containers that ostensibly all contained the same thing.  Once the linear arrangement was complete, she began working her way down the line, applying different amounts of each to various different areas of her person. Had I not been somewhat preoccupied with my confusion at this point, it probably would have been fun to watch, in an adult amusement park sort of way, if you get my meaning.

“Don’t be silly,” she chuckled in response as she adopted a Marlene Dietrich-esque leg-hiked pose, using the toilet lid to rest her foot, then proceeded to slather, smooth, and rub various lotions into the shapely appendage.

I was actually taking some amount of solace in that answer until she snorted, “Of course I do.”

I didn’t pursue the conversation. A quick glance at the clock told me I had used up my almost 10 minute surplus of time and was instead operating at a deficit, now being a little over 3 minutes behind schedule. I figured I’d better pick up the pace, because since E K had been in the shower first, I knew I was going to be spending several more minutes just looking for the shampoo amidst all of those different bottles she had lined up along the ledge around the tub.

At least now, after 22+ years, I knew they weren’t just decorations…

More to come…

Murv