I hate this.
I’ve hit a dry spell.
I’ve been staring at this blank, white block for almost an hour, and I really, really want to write something funny and light, but nothing’s happening.
People have always told me, “‘Dog, you need to publish these stories.” Folks have offered to edit the stories for me, and I’ve had a gentle offer or two from magazines, but this is why I don’t publish. Every so often, it becomes impossible for me to write humorous stuff.
I’d hate to sign a contract for X number of stories over a Y period, because I jolly well know that as soon as I do, my humour muse will go on a sabbatical, and I’ll wind up twiddling my thumbs and banging my head off the desk, with nothing to show.
I’m given to understand that that sort of thing tends to irritate publishers something fierce.
Now, snide and sarcastic I can do. Trouble is, I’m tired of being snide and sarcastic, and I really want to be light, cheerful and humourous.
Dammit.
Let’s see here…
Had a young gentleman put in an application at work last month. Looked sharp! Sounded sharp! Folks everywhere were all sorts of happy.
Unfortunately, the officer doing the background checks put the applicants name into Google and came up with his MySpace account.
Tip for the Wise: if you’re going to apply at a Law Enforcement agency, take the paean to the Mighty Marijuana Plant off your MySpace page, along with the albums dedicated to photos of you imbibing the Wonder Weed in various … interesting … locations, hmm-‘kay?
*sigh*
What else do we have?
PeTA came to our fair city some time back to protest the arrival of a circus. I had not realized that the protest was going to take the form of a topless young lady, in tiger body-paint, whiskers, fuzzy tail and ears, in a cage, holding a protesting sign up to cover her sweater bumpers.
I accompanied several other officers out to take a gander at this — scientific curiosity, you understand — and noticed that she had gathered quite an audience. Mostly male, believe it or not, and all probably hoping for a gift gust from the God of Winds.
Another lady was giving some kind of presentation, and was, I gather, quite enthralled at the number of people within earshot of her “Eat Veggies, Don’t Eat Your Friends” message.
Noting that the audience was 90% male, I probably should have pointed out that nobody was paying any attention to the presentation, but I was too busy praying for a gust of wind.
Tip for the PeTA Petters: Those of us of the male persuasion surely do appreciate the new way of protesting, but it probably isn’t having quite the impact you hope for.
We are in North Texas, not California: if you put a topless lady in front of Texas men, anything else you have to offer is going to get ignored. And writing on the sign is useless: The only thing we’re interested in is: 1) The things hidden behind the sign, and (please God) 2) is something going to happen to the sign.
Hell, she was topless. Painted like a cat. Wearing cat ears and a cat tail. Locked in a cage. You done hit three of the top ten heterosexual male kinky fantasies right there.
Not that I don’t appreciate the effort. Tell you what, if you give me a bit of notice next time, we could probably triple the number of attendees AND sell tickets.
But don’t confuse the number of men in the audience with the number of people who got your vegetarian message, okay?
See? I can do snide, snarky and sarcastic.
Oh, well.
I’m off for tea. Maybe a nice cuppa and some biscuits will start the creative juices flowing.
LawDog
Missed an opportunity there. Had you got someone to have a hamburger or hotdog stand right next to it, and could get most of the guys eating said animal parts, then you may have agitated the demonstrators enough for her to have simply dropped the sign.
Then you’d have had her attired like that, in a cage, standing up, raging and screaming, and flailing limbs, which may have been more entertaining to watch.
Just struck me that there was another advantage to what I just outlined… and that is that, if anyone got too out of control, all those people watching her and eating meat, then you would have had cause to bring her in, with real bars, and make the whole show more… *private*.
Well Dawg,
I understand about them “dry spells” myself.
I never seem to go “dry” when it comes to Tacky, Snide or being Sarcastic.
Just sometimes the Humor don’t kick in, whacking the Funny Bone on a door facing don’t work, tried it, tried it twice just in case – don’t work.
Now a 2 liter of of Coke, and a roll of Mentos [tm] is still humorous, entertaining, and makes one hell of a mess.
Ever notice how when things make a mess, humor fun and big grins tend to be a part of it?.
I’m asking a fellow Southern Boy that has been known to wear a Pink Gorilla suit if he understands “humorous”, “entertaining” and “making a mess”. *sigh* This dry spell is getting to me now.
Get a 2 liter of Coke, don’t matter what flavor, just a Coke. Oh, and none of them “diet” or flavored with kumquat Cokes either.
‘Cuse me Dawg, …
Hang on – see a hand raised. < fella waving a what appears to be Quiche mumblin’ a stupid question>.
*sigh*
Dawg, Permission to answer a dumb question in your comment section, while you sip tea.- I’m Feeling a bit Tacky myself.
< Paw raised giving okay signal> .
Sniff…Dawg, that Irish Breakfast Tea you sipping, I may have to have some that myself…where was I – oh yeah Quiche done ask a stupid question…
Quiche- You ain’t from around these parts is you?
“Pop “ is what the weasel does in an nursery rhythm. “Pop is what a Jack –in-the Box does.
Coke is the Southern vernacular for carbonated beverages. Some examples are “Coca Cola”, “Royal Crown Cola” [better known as “RC”] “Dr. Pepper”, “7Up” and, “Pepsi”
Sorry about that folks – matter of principal you understand.
Like I said – get a 2 liter bottle of Coke, a roll of Mentos and best to do this outside.
Dump the entire roll of Mentos into the Coke and …
It is gonna spew big time!
Yeah one could say the juices get to flowing.
Thanks Dawg.
Steve
‘Dawg ~
If “have to” dries up your muse, stay away from “have to.” Ain’t no fun in “have to” anyway.
You want to write a column, but don’t want pressure? Obvious solution is simply to write X number of funny columns on your own schedule whenever the muse is willing, but then sell the pre-written pieces one at a time, over X number of months, as a series. No fear in signing a contract for X number of months, if you already have X number of columns on tap.
And as far as the book goes, just start writing! Don’t bother a publisher until you’ve got yourself a book.
Did the peta broad have shaved pits?
I ask because I once feigned a serious interest in vegetarianism and animal rights in order to fornicate with a hot peta type chick and discovered much to my stark horror that she didn’t do any maintenance in the pits, legs or her pubes.
I am actually very much a carnivore and much to the disgust of peta types enjoy chasing down and killing my own dinner. But hey, she was hot. Well, except for the lawn maintenance issues.
Yeah I went ahead and hit it anyway.
Dog, the PETA pet bit may have been snarky, but it was damn funny!!
But thanks to you and the last comment leaver I now have “Chia pet” stuck on the brain LOL.
her “Eat Veggies, Don’t Eat Your Friends” message.
Yep, definately not the message you’re sending when you get nekkid and dress up like a giant pussy cat.
Talk about mixed signals.
When I lived in Pierre, SD, I was in the gun store one afternoon when some cowboy told us that, “Some ‘a them animal rights people are gonna show up an’ demonstrate, an’ the girls is gonna be nekkid!” Well, after it was verified that the PETA folks were going to show up and demonstrate, every cowboy in a hundred mile radius found an excuse to jump in his pickup with a few friends and highball it to Pierre for one thing or another. Shops downtown lost most of their employees, and the rest just went along to see what was up.
The trouble was, this demonstration was taking place in February. Now, for any who don’t know, let me explain that February in Pierre is cold. I mean cold! So you can just imagine all the comments and jokes made about the weather and the, ah, assets, of the demonstrators.
What a let down.
It turned out that the weather was a little too raw for the girls, who remained covered up in heavy nylon despite encouragement from the cowboys lining the streets.
Oh well.
Good luck with your writer’s block, Dawg. I’ve heard that when the block strikes, just write about anything and pretty soon the stuff you want shows up. As far as a contract goes, look at a few syndicated columns with an unbiased eye and see how many belong in the round file, but get published anyway.
Dawg, are we talking Pamela Anderson PETA, or Janet Reno PETA? Reason I’m asking is cuz I have seen a couple of those PETArds demonstrating out front of the local chicken shack a time or two. And like one poster mentioned, there were some lawn care issues on a couple of the women folk.
“I don’t understand, this approach worked fine when we tested it on our vegetarian male friends back in NYC.” Gals, not eating right can shut down testosterone production and turn a man into a metrosexual.
Calico Jack: Why couldn’t you fine gentlemen have found those poor women a nice heated hall for their exhibi…I mean demonstration?
I read a bit recently about some dedicated young ladies who were threating ‘shock’ demonstrations in Australia.
Somehow I don’t think that their threat to unleash nude college girls had quite the effect on (at least reported) animal cruelty that they indended.
I’d say your writing, at its worst is better than 99% of the garbage that is printed every day.
Writing is like riding a bicycle. Once you learn how, you never forget how much it hurts to slam into the rear of a car and bruise the family jewels.
Dawg, all you need is to get yourself some zen. What is zen, you ask? I’m not sure either but whenever I had been moping around the house and snuffling to myself, mam would give me a couple of boxes of 30-06 and my ’03-A3 and send me to the range with the admonition to “git some zen”. Still don’t know what it is but i surely felt better when I got back.
Are you saying men in California pay no attention to topless women? What’s in the water out there?
Hey, LD. I don’t think you need to worry about a “dry spell”, man!! You’ve got enough fodder stored up from the last few years here! WOW! If you can’t think of something new on a particular day, just yank somethin’ outta the archives. 😀
I say, Sell this stuff, DUDE! You could retire. Your funnier than Patrick McManus and Robert Fulghum!