Sunday, August 14, 2005

The Misanthrope – Sunday’s Lighter Side

Against the disease of writing one must take special precautions, since it is a dangerous and contagious disease.
Peter Abelard (1079 - 1142), French theologian and philosopher

Oil Change. I brought the car to the dealer for an oil change because I simply trust them more than the local shops. I sat in the lobby reading my newspaper and everything was good. I finished reading, I started to watch the television, and rarely have I seen such insipid programming. I believe it is called the "Steve Edwards Show" and he has two or three female co-anchors. Luckily for those fortunate readers outside of the Los Angeles market, you don’t this rubbish. My description of their silly banter would not do justice to how truly bad this show is. It’s almost reaches the level of Wayne's World garage Cable Show on the old Saturday Night Live.

I called my friend Scribe and he informed me that such programming is exactly what the dealerships want because it numbs the customers’ brains so that when the bill is presented, one is like Jack Nicholson after the frontal lobotomy, and you pay the bill without question.

Angels. I am so glad that I adopted the Los Angeles Angels. They are an exciting team facing stiff competition in their division from the Oakland As, it has become an exciting pennant race. For the first time this year, I listened to game on the radio driving home. The Dodger station has weak reception for most of my drive home, but the Angel station was clear all the way home. Also, since the Dodgers fired Ross Porter after 20 plus years of service, I refused to listen to them on the radio. This afternoon the Angels face the 19-year-old pitching star for the Seattle Mariners. I expect a good game. Go Angeles.

Blogging. I have to say that I thoroughly enjoy the blogging community for the most part. I learned a few things from Bitch.Ph.d and Dr. Steven Taylor at Poliblog. I have even sent a couple of notes back and forth to them. Jack at Random Thoughts generally provides interesting comments on articles I’ve missed. Janet at The Art of Getting By is very clever and has great grasp on life for being so young. I know I am leaving out plenty of others such as, Vitriolic Monkey, Simply Put, Et, al, Diary of a Hope Fiend, Through a Looking Glass, The Dog’s Breakfast, Fighting Inertia, Daxohol, The Bulldog Manifesto, basically just look down the right side of our blogroll list and you will see the sites we visit regularly, even if two of those mentioned don’t link to us.

This a long way of telling you that I have enlisted the services of Lorianne at Hoarded Ordinaries as a writing coach. You can’t blame her for grammatical errors or typos here. She serves a bit like a personal trainer, she is my motivation for getting back into short story writing. It’s working for me. I have been devoting more time to my creative writing and thoroughly enjoying it. Maybe one day I will be published in a literary quarterly. Although, I mentioned that we probably get more readers at Toner Mishap than at a quarterly publication, but it’s the challenge and prestige of such publications that would make it such an honor for me.

9 comments:

Jack Steiner said...

Good luck with the creative writing. I really enjoy it, it feels like it helps my mind expand.

The Misanthrope said...

Jack,
I neglected to mention that your creative writing pieces helped spark my interest in getting back into it as well.

As I have mentioned, I like jazz and I equate creative writing to jazz. It's a freedom to conjure up anything and to shape pieces of life into story.

stc said...

I took the hint and added you to my blogroll. I always wait a while to see if people stick around, but I've been a bit tardy in your case!

btw, I greatly enjoy the quotes you use as headers. Either you have a great memory for quotes, or you are very good at research to find such apt words.
Q

The Misanthrope said...

Hi Q, I have a poor memory; it's easy to look up appropriate quotes. In all honesty, I was not referring to you. I figured we were, but I never checked. So, I should have said three. Thank you for adding us. I discovered you through Jack's site.

Jack Steiner said...

Hi Misanthrope,

I am touched and I mean that in a good way. I really appreciate your kind words.

The Misanthrope said...

Jack, my pleasure.

Devo, Something else about the blogging community is that most people appear rather bright and stay atop issues, whether we agree or not. I have this book I picked up at a garage sale called "The Wit and Wisdom of Spiro Agnew" and people who were old enough to know asked who Agnew was.

I am almost finished with my first draft, I hope to continue writing, but I'll wait to here what Lorriane says. She may tell me to stop and stick to blog writing or point out I am better suited to greet people at Wal-Mart.

The Misanthrope said...

I forgot to mention that the pages of "The Wit and Wisdom of Spiro Agnew" are blank.

Jack Steiner said...

Spiro must have come up with at least one witty remark. Ok, maybe not.

Chandira said...

I hate to admit it, but you know whose 'creative writing' inspires me? Hector Vex. Seriously. Perhaps.

Good for you! I could probably use a class in it myself. My silent blog partner Keith was a creative writing tutor, he's awesomely creative.. Wish I could persuade him to blog more.

My mum just brought over with her my old English journal from when I was about 11. I wish my English teacher could see my blog, he'd never believe it... He had to dangle me out of a window by the ankles to get me to write a scant paragraph. I still somehow got an A. One of life's major mysteries..