One Of The All Time Great Elvis Impersonators
Monetizing my Blog
I’m putting no effort into Monetizing my blog.
Monetizing is what bloggers do.
Figuring the angles.
How to make money Blogging.
I don’t seem to give a shit.
If I did, I would’ve monetized it by now.
Don’t you think?
Log Of The Yardbird
I started this blog to promote my novel.
I wrote the novel, self-published it.
Stuck it on Amazon…then…
I got this idea of starting a blog to help me sell the novel.
This was my bright idea!
I’m having fun writing Blog posts.
Because I like to write.
I got a few readers.
Jerry and his dog, Kerouac
And a few respectable readers.
Entreprenuer Reginald Loote
But the blog isn’t moving my book.
And since that was the main point of my blog, I guess you might say I’m a total failure.
The mark of a Loser
Complete Failure is hard on the ego
This is certainly true for your normal individual.
I’m blessed with a pretty thick skin.
So fuck it if the Blog don’t move the Novel.
Just keep Blogging.
I like to think people enjoy the material. I’ve mostly had positive feedback. People find the postings amusing. This I consider the highest compliment.
Up until recently, the novelty of producing Blog posts has been enough to sustain my interest.
Until yesterday.
Bogger’s Ennui
Yesterday I lost my Blogger Mojo.
It dawns on me how pointless what I’m doing really is!
Here I am, writing this shit. I mean, what is the point? I’ve got way more important things I should be doing with my free time than working on this silly stuff.
I could be hanging out at a bar knocking back Vodkas.
This is not even a diary.
A boring ass diary I could at least justify.
On second thought I’m not prominent enough to justify a boring ass diary.
Or weird enough for a diary of weirdness…
Faustina Kowalska recorded her visions of Jesus.
I know for a fact the voices I hear
when I begin to hear voices
won’t be those of The Savior
or of Lucifer
but more
like those of the man who sings
as he
manipulates the compactor
A standard Waste Management Inc. front-loading garbage truck in San Jose, California
What do you call this Blog Business?
It’s not writing in the normal sense of writing.
It’s not a novel
or a short story
or even a poem…
It’s a blog.
Pure and simple.
How do you justify this activity?
A day at the office
I’m in this grim mood as I arrive at the office.
Call it my Blogger’s ennui.
I arrive to find the old old couple sitting out front where they always sit.
They always sit out front at this very table. She’s got a rat dog in her lap. He sits across from her and reads from his hand written journal. I don’t know what he’s writing. Could be it’s a memoir. He’s reciting it to her like it means a hell of a lot…
She listens, he talks.
I like to think it’ll end up somewhere.
The loud talker
I get in there, snag a big empty table, set up my writing shit.
I’m good to go.
But where am I going?
I can’t get started…
I’m scrolling around. Reading the Ukraine news. The latest Trump bullshit. I watch a music video. Etcetera…
Dicking around. Wasting my time.
Just as Blogging is a waste of time.
Meanwhile, the Loud Talker appears.
She sits at the big table across from me and stares at this elderly Asian couple.
“DO YOU MIND IF I SIT HERE?”
They don’t mind. They could be hard of hearing.
I’m elderly but my hearing works fine.
OH, THANK YOU SO SO SO MUCH! HOW ARE YOU TODAY?”
They nod and smile.
IT’S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY, ISN’T IT?”
They smile and nod.
I’m telling myself to calm down. It’s no big deal she’s shouting over the sound of the buzz saw sawing away in her head.
“MY PHONE DOESN’T WORK,” she screams.
“That’s not good,” the elderly Asian man says in a normal conversational tone.
Engaging her is a mistake.
“I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S WRONG WITH IT. IT JUST STOPPED WORKING. I CAN’T FIX THINGS. I DON’T KNOW HOW TO FIX THINGS. IT DOESN’T WORK. I CAN’T MAKE CALLS. THE SCREEN WON’T LITE UP. I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO. I GUESS I’LL NEED TO TAKE IT IN AND HAVE THEM LOOK AT IT. YOU KNOW? I CAN’T FIX THINGS. I’LL JUST TAKE IT BACK IN. DO YOU HAVE A PHONE? YOU DO? THAT’S NICE. I HAVE THIS PHONE BUT IT STOPPED WORKING. I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO. I GUESS I’LL TAKE IT IN….”
Will you please be quiet please?
I want to tell her this. I want to say to her, “will you please be quiet please?” I want to tell her this even though I know it’s the title of a book of short stories by Raymond Carver. I suspect Raymond Carver, if he were alive today, would tell her this. He would tell her this even though he wrote the book of short stories titled WILL YOU PLEASE BE QUIET PLEASE. He would tell her. And if he were drunk like he was often drunk in his bad old drunk days, he would scream it at her.
I don’t know why so many great writers were Alcoholics.
Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald…and many of the lesser writers. They were all cursed by the bottle.
I wonder if Bloggers have the same problem?
She’s sitting barely a yard from me. This loud talker. Sitting. Cradling her dead phone.
She’s got her coffee.
She won’t stop talking.
“ITS SO NICE WHEN IT’S NICE OUT DON’T YOU THINK? YOU DO? THAT’S NICE. ARE YOU FROM CHINA? LOS ANGELES? OH, YOU’RE FROM OAKLAND? WOW! IT WAS SO NICE TO MEET YOU QUAN! YOU HAVE A NICE DAY TOO! I’M JUST SITTING HERE….”
A thousand years ago
when I was forty. I would’ve said to this odd damaged woman. I would’ve said, “can’t you tone it down, god damnit? Please. You’re hurting my ears.
She’s not EXACTLY hurting my ears. But her loudness. Her obnoxious tone. Blends with my Blogger’s Ennui. Transports me into a kind of chromium vision of supermarket hell.
and into this hellish vision a homeless figure appears.
like an angel of blogger’s death!
I’m done.
I’m done blogging.
Time to find a real Hobby.
Like Golf, for example.
I will never type another blog post as long as I live.
One of the all time great Elvis Impersonators
What happens next saves me.
Restores my faith in the value of a Blog.
Actually two things save me.
Number one. The loud talker gets up abruptly and exits. Maybe she’s headed straight to the phone store.
Does it matter?
The silence is bliss.
I’m gazing out at the old old couple sitting out front. He’s still reading to her. Another pointless activity. Could be it doesn’t matter.
They have something to do together.
Number two. I go back to scrolling the internet. Viewing YouTube videos.
And I chance upon this jewel.
3 thoughts on “One Of The All Time Great Elvis Impersonators”
Great writers were blessed, not cursed, by alcoholism; else how could they they have withstood the shitstorm of stupidity without booze? Besides, when you are a writer and have to deal with philistines, how else to avoid their enervating life-long whine but to blur their puny kingdom of Me. Thank god, I didn’t waste my sandglass of nothingness on a BMW or Platinum Card Failure is a honor for a writer. As for getting old, so what? We were dead forever before you were ever born to die again. So get over it. If you can’t be kind, find a noose and a stool.To patronized by eunuchs is enough to ruin Mother’s Day Today I told this smirking kid who shit-wiped his ego on my soul for being old: Sonny Boy, you don’t know how much downstream piss you’re drinking . It’s not just your Alfred E. Neuman face but your kow-town attitude to women, you will never fuck or get fucked the way dinosaurs did. So go jack-off, if you can find your needle dick. If not, they sell tweezers at Target.
it is funny how little of ourselves we really see.You are loud as hell as is your daughter.I remember being at the movies with you and you laughing like a Hyena, not only that, you were laughing at the parts no body else was laughing about. I have a big mouth myself and can be loud and obnoxious so with me you’re always in good company. Keep on writing ,I remember a time when your letters are what kept me going ,that and ol Bukowski. You love to write so keep it up.
DONT WORRY! BE HAPPY!