Notes On A 200th Post

I couldn't reach my 200th blog post without stopping to reflect on what the past two and a half years of blogging have meant to me.  For me,  writing a blog has been much like sex.  Even though with my readership I'm almost always alone,  I still manage to have fun!

From time to time those of you with no lives who read the blog for obscure reasons known only to your lonely selves have asked me a variety of questions.   I usually ignore them because I simply can't be bothered with you, but today because I have no actual premise for this post and have just bombed out with my Dorian Gray and Gay NRA parodies,  I thought I'd tackle a few.

How old is your avatar?  

What gives you the idea it isn't current?  Aside from the small almost indecipherable reference to Matthew Brady in the lower left hand corner?

My avatar is  just eight years old, and later today I'm taking it for water ice and mini-golf. It was cropped from a larger picture taken on an epic hair day in perfect lighting from the optimal nose-minimizing angle after a full-night's rest and a satisfying meal on a day that there was very little trouble in the world and ... I was at Disney World.

And I still, more or less, look like crap.  

What made you decide to start blogging?

Several years ago, I came to the realization that I had many unexpressed thoughts, ideas,  hopes, dreams,  desires, and aspirations.  They are none of your damn business!  So I thought I'd write me some schlock comedy.   

Where do you get your ideas?

Mostly from China.  I also import a smattering of ideas from several other Asian countries and a few from a real funny fat guy in Bolivia.  Don't get me wrong,  I'd love to source ideas from the United States,  but frankly the concept-ship is shoddy and I've gotten zero customer service attempting to get help for an idea that isn't working. 

Why a no-frills blog? 

Well, it's easy to maintain, doesn't require expensive tune-ups, and you'll expect less from me and maybe find the stuff funnier.  And do you really want to see me all dressed up with cutesy fonts and pink frilly graphics? 

Who are your humorist heroes?

Of course I've always admired Woody Allen, but his neurotic Jewish self-deprecating persona starts to wear on you.  Albert Brooks was hilarious in Drive,  a real comedy breakthrough for him. And I'll include Calvin Trillin so you'll think I read.  

Do you have a favorite gentile humorist?

That's such a funny thought!  I'll have to do a bit about a  quote unquote ....  gentile humorist ....  Ha-ha-ha!  See, there's a hilarious concept I've gotten from an American!

Do you have a writing schedule or regimen?

Yes, I do.  

What is it, asshole? 

Oh yeah, sorry!  I awaken at 6:00 A.M.,  have coffee, juice,  and two pieces of plain toast, not buttered.  I listen to the news on NPR, check my e-mail, and go back to bed.  Whenever I get up I write a bunch of stuff if I'm not too nauseous.

Is it true that if you have a successful blog, you didn't build that?

I don't know if you could call my blog successful, but as long as Blogger doesn't repossess the cyberspace,  I'll keep at it for a while.

President Obama may have misspoken,  but he was clearly on to something.  A lot of people have helped and inspired me both with respect to Nouveau Old, Formerly Cute and The Twitter.   Among them are Kd McCrite, Carrie Bailey, Marian Allen, Lexi Revellian, Winonah Drake, Darrelyn Saloom, Brenda Le, Melissa Moore, Diana Herrington,  Michele Young-Stone,  Melanie Sherman, Leona Bushman, Marni Mann, Junying Kirk,  Cheryl Faith Taylor,  Gail Maria Forrest,  and Libby Adams. Thank you, guys!

In the highly likely event I missed someone and you are that someone,  I will make amends either in the form of bestowing sexual favors upon you (if desired, and feasible from a geographic standpoint) or sending you a dollar.  Just tweet me to berate me, and kindly include your preferred choice of reparations.

Now, any of you with no lives got any ideas for the next 200 posts?

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200

The Tweet of Dorian Block

A dazzlingly new interpretation of the classic tale of decadence and depravity presented in the Age of The Twitter.
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His office was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac or the more delicate perfune of the pink-flowering thorn.

Unfortunately there also came through the open office door the stench of an attempted jest so stale, ill-formed, and unfunny it all but served to transmute the earth into a  cavernous abyss devoid of all mirth and merriment, much as does a movie by the Farrelly Brothers.

Dorian Block sat before the personal computing screen staring at the penultimate organ of 21st Century discourse known as The Twitter.  Another tweet which Dorian had typed in an attempt to convey humour and lightness of spirit had gone off into the night unnoticed and unrecognized, its passing mourned by no man,  no woman.

"Crap," Dorian moaned.  "I cannot comprehend the grand scale and prodigious magnitude at which I suck."

Dorian had tempted fate,  desperately hoping  for a response to his limp and lifeless tweet in the form a retweet, a personal response, or even a favoriting which would at least cause it to register favorably in that unsavory repository of dick jokes known as Favstar.   

Alas!  Alack!  Alec Baldwin!   It was not to be!

Presently Dorian had a caller in the person of his longtime associate Henry Lordstein,  a gentleman who always carried with him a cane and a pipe,  but oddly enough,  leaned on his pipe and smoked his cane. Dorian sure could pick 'em!

"How goes The Twitter, Dorian?" inquired Henry. "How many inmates of that curious asylum do you now follow?"

"Enough," replied Dorian "to fully commission an army to invade Carthage and win the Second Punic War."

"And how many follow you back, Dorian?"

"27."

"Are these your humble tweets?" said  Henry Lordstein.  "Ah, yes, I have discerned the problem straight away."

"Which is?"  queried Dorian.  

"Your tweets," said Lordstein, "lack the succulent amusement of true wit and erudition.  In a word, Dorian,  you're about as funny as George Lopez."  

At that moment, however, there arose in Dorian Block a surge of inspiration that blossomed like the sweet rose I made some obscure and pompous reference to in the first paragraph of this overheated literary parody. Dorian swiftly typed out onto the Twitter:

"If there weren't any Jews in the world, Jeff Foxworthy would be a billionaire." 

Henry Lordstein exploded in fits of laughter.  The Twitter lit up like a Christmas Eve in London with responses, retweets, and favoritings to outshine even the finest dick joke in all the Favstar firmament.  It was a tweet at the glorious level of the immortal Oscar Wilde, or even of Oscar Mayer, whose bologna was beloved by all for having a first name.

"I congratulate you, Dorian," said Lordstein. "This is your moment of immortality.  This tweet will remain funny for all time,  while  for the rest of your natural life you personally will continue to be as funny as a descr iptive passage from a novel by Joseph Conrad."

"If it were only the other way!" exclaimed Dorian. 

"If it were I who were always to be funny, and the tweet was to grow unfunny and lame!  For that that --- for that --- I would give everything.  Yes there is nothing in the whole world I would not give, except perhaps for either one of those two bodily parts denoted left and right that come external to the rest of the other parts."

Yes,  I would give my very soul for that!"

In the days and weeks that followed this event, all of Dorian's tweets came to possess the zest and humour of Lewis Black, only less Jewy.  The Twitter soon  lay at his  newly assured feet,  and his praises were sung in 140 characters or less from coast to coast, continent to continent, and Zanzibar to Barkley Square.  A wise literary agent signed Dorian and a rapid fire succession of humorous New York Times Best Selling books made his a household name, like "kitchen" or "spatula."

Record-shattering appearances on television and in motion pictures now brought his fame to such a frenzied degree that hubris stole the heart of Dorian Block. "I have nothing to declare but my genius," he famously said to a Customs Agent as he entered the United States to do The Conan O'Brian Show "along with a ziploc bag for some toothpaste." 

Dorian Block, for his part, could feel his humanity slipping from him.  He thought of the tweet and of his vow.  Was that simple but exquisitely funny tweet the cause of both his new found comedic brilliance and his emerging heinousness?   

Dorian entered his office, switched on The Twitter and rolled it back to the splendid tweet. He found that the tweet had changed! It was no longer the exemplar of brilliant observational humour he had created during that summer's day when the smell of lilac had so deliciously perfumed the air and entranced the senses.  

It was a line of stand-up from Tracy Morgan's  HBO Special "Black and Blue!"

Dorian backed away from the personal computing screen, shrieked as if to wake the gods on Olympus, and ran from the room. He had never seen or experienced anything so sickeningly or horrifically unfunny in his life, and he had followed Sh*t My Dad Says on The Twitter.

Now Dorian's rampaging career began to leave a wide swath of destruction in its wake!   In humbling tribute and supplication Louis C. K. offered Dorian the only two letters in his last name,  complete with their attendant periods.  Jay Leno attempted suicide by impaling himself upon his chin.  In a psychotic fit of sheer madness brought on by his wretched inability to compete with Dorian, Jon Stewart became a Republican.

"This cannot continue!" screamed Dorian.   "A just God will punish me and should.  A five minute time out is fair."

Dorian raced to his office and opened up The Twitter.  Perhaps the tweet had righted itself and had returned to its former glory.  He rolled back the time line to those days of summer when the sweet roses bloomed, the lilacs blossomed, and he couldn't get @Crudface99 to follow him back. 

A cry of pain and indignation broke from him.  The tweet was more foul, loathsome, and unfunny than ever before!  Would he never be free of its monstrous power?  Or at least have a long weekend away from it? 

If he could destroy the tweet, Dorian reasoned, he could yet be free.   He lunged at the personal computing screen intent on highlighting the tweet with a left click of the mouse and then exerting all force upon the Delete key.   At that very moment as Dorian thrust himself forward, however,  the personal computing screen froze,  as was its wont being Microsoft Windows XP. 

There was a cry heard and a crash.  Passing in the street below was Henry Lordstein  who rushed into the house, banged on the office door,  and when it would not give way, broke it asunder.  When he entered, he  found flickering upon the personal computing screen the splendidly hilarious tweet that Henry Lordstein recognized instantly as the one Dorian had inscribed upon The Twitter those many months ago. 

Lying on the floor was a man who in visage resembled Dorian Block but in personal manner was virtually unrecognizable.  As he bent over him --- writhing deliriously in pools of his own flop sweat --- he heard his pitiful murmurings over and over and over again:

Good evening, Ladies and Germs!

A priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar ...

Take my wife --- please!    

The End.

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