It starts like this: When I think of something being "perfect," in the Platonic sense of the word, in that representation is the enemy of the real, in that nothing that can be written, sung, painted, or performed on stage can ever match the Form in which it imperfectly represents, I think of Bach and Glenn Gould.

(Stick with me here.)

I am of limited intellectual capacity and lesser patience, but if a recording of Glenn Gould playing "The Goldberg Variations" was playing in a car, and that car was speeding at 100 miles per hour about to run off a cliff, and if you were to drop me in the driver’s seat, the car would surely dive over the cliff unimpeded because I was thus transfixed. My favorite composer is Beethoven, my favorite pianist is probably Vladimir Horowitz, my favorite rock singer probably Joey Ramone, but if I had to pick one recording that puts me into a state of hypnosis, it’s Glenn Gould playing Bach.  

Now, the last time I wrote regularly in this space, I had a different job, lived in a different city, did not suffer from pestilence or pain. And when I actually wrote in this space at all–that being in August–Tiger Woods was still known as a golfer, when Jay and Conan were still friendly, the Supreme Court had not officially put plutocrats in charge of the United States, and we associated Haiti with a simply terrible history, overwhelming poverty, and helplessness.

For this golfer, perfection no longer entails making a hole in one

I consider those (relatively) stress-free days of 2008 in which I would check four or five blogs each day, usually at the office, without fear of prying eyes or corporate overlords, the latter of which was spending most of its time trying to figure out how avoid government indictments which I can happy testify was not on account of my actions.

No, looking back, I can see when the decent into non-blogging began: when I got laid off last year. I didn’t succumb to depression, nor did I lack subject material or desire, but it was time, that evil crook, which took everything away from me. That, and perennial, pathetic exhaustion.

After our fun-filled trek across this great nation of ours to relocate for a new job, I find myself somewhat settled in. My job keeps me busy, not that I’m complaining, and I am dutifully going to the pool to stave off the knee implants at least until age 60. Totster is entering daycare, Wife is complaining about my fill-in-the-blank fuckup but just every other day, and I have grown bored with surfing the Web for scantily clad ladies. Or naked ones, for that matter.

You talkin’ to me?

What has been hampering me–nay, crippling me–has been this nagging sense of imperfection in all of my deeds. I sit down, intending to write or blog or tap out a sentence of some coherence, and nothing happens. Call it what you like: writer’s block, primal fear, general neurosis, knowing that my words will lack meaning or the likelihood that I will be overwhelmingly imperfect  (see Plato, Glenn Gould).

The best advice I ever got (and the only advice I remember from graduate school) was from a fellow scribe, who said in response to a mediocre story, "You can’t be afraid to suck." And that’s been me–scared to suck.

So here I sit, doing what is the last refuge of writing scoundrels in our Internet age: blogging about blogging.

I promise to all of you to get off my proverbial ass and animate the being once known as the blogger "Bookfraud" once again.

Fortunately, I doubt anybody will bother to read the entire thing. Here’s to negativism!

And here’s the truth about writing, by a non-writer.

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This is what happens when you decide to better yourself following that pleasantly boring interregnum called "unemployment," get a job and move cross country. You drop off the face of the Internet for several months, lose Internet service altogether, lose the four readers of your blog, and lose contact with the rest of the world.

Right now, our new apartment is a disaster. Little Boy (formerly “Baby” and “Baby-Tot”) insists he lives in his previous city and demands to visit the playgrounds of our former home. Wife is running around like a madwoman and I’m not far behind. I may turn into a woman at this rate.

So, in order to pretend that I still have a “blog” and that I’m a “writer,” I’m posting this “down n’ dirty” entry for now.  Thus I bring you…

Five Hard-Earned Lessons Learned From My Moving Trip

1. If one must attache suitcases to the roof of the rental car, make sure that they are firmly tied down so they don’t fly off on to the Interstate, making Wife nearly have a breakdown, almost causing an accident, forcing the assistance of two state troopers with crewcuts and dour demeanors, and causing you to find the nearest post office where you must mail your suitcase to your new home. Yes, you really can mail a suitcase.

2. Little Boy, now two years old (Now Two! Now Able to Answer "No!" to Everything!), does not like sleeping in hotel rooms with his parents and makes his displeasure known through not sleeping. And making copious noise punctuated by tears.

In addition, the $3.18 Disney TV show (about a talking bear who can drive a car but needs help to learn how to brush his teeth) one orders in the hotel room to pacify Little Boy will only make him go insane with lust for more craptastic $3.18 Disney TV shows and make him cry all evening in withdrawal.

3. DSL is one of the worst technical innovations of the last 400 years and should be put out of its misery with an extremely large-caliber weapon. Also, I cannot think of a suitable acronym for what DSL should stand for, though “Dong Sucking Lousiness” or “Defintely Shitty Linkage” come to mind.

4. Bad moving companies are very, very bad, but good ones are very, very good. We were lucky to have the latter. (Added so you don’t think everything was awful.)

5. No matter how many boxes you’ve opened, there’s more to follow.

If only I could say the same about my blog entries.

My new best friend

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Recently seen on the citizens review board of Amazon.com, regarding three different volumes:

The popularity of this book stupifies me—do people like it because they think they are supposed to?

This book was a peice [sic] o’… you know and wasn’t worth the time or effort to read.

Classic or not, I don’t care for this book.

These reviews are for major, major bestsellers, and so perhaps you were thinking they refered to the latest Tom Clancy, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, or Harold Robbins, even though the old cokehead died a few years ago.

But no. These (real) reviews are for Goodnight Moon, Harold and the Purple Crayon, and Babar, respectively. Yes, classic children’s books. These reviewer-parents say the books are of inferior literary quality and are not appropriate for our nation’s youth—I kid you not.

Things only get better from there. Curious George is panned because it promotes cruelty to animals. Other experts slam The Very Hungry Caterpillar because it teaches children to overeat and telling kids that butterflies emerge from cocoons (as opposed to moths) teaches bad science.

Worst of all, my all-time favorite children’s book is taken to the woodshed because it 1) promotes anarchy; 2) will scare children because animals in the book talk and are human-sized; and 3) isn’t about promoting imagination or literacy but is instead a subtle examination of id versus superego and the dynamism of the ego.

I’m sure you realize I’m talking about The Cat in the Hat.

I chanced upon this gems of critical insight after searching for a training potty for Baby-Tot, being that he keeps saying things like "made a poo-poo" and "I’ve got a wee-wee! I’ve got a wee-wee!" Modern parent and writer that I am, I also bought several "how-to" books on helping kids learn how to take a proper dump, and ultimately landed upon the reviews mentioned above. 

What is perhaps more odd than the reviews themselves—hating Dr. Seuss is like hating ice cream—is why anyone would bother. Does one really think their review will stop people from buying (and their children loving) Cars and Trucks and Things That Go? In my earlier, feckless days of youth (I was in my mid-thirties), I would post an occasional review on Amazon, mostly of music and movies. I once slammed a well-known music album that I likened to the vomitus that emerges after doing battle with a bad batch of raw seafood.

This is your id on drugs

Why did I embark on this endeavor of nastiness, full well knowing that it would not make one iota of difference in the greater artistic consciousness of the world? I can’t say for sure, but I remember feeling a distinct sense of self-righteousness when considering the work in question: These people love a total piece of donkey dung! They are deluded! They are wrong! I am right!  But at least I had reasons for these (admittedly) juvenile criticisms.

The beauty of the Internet is that it gives a voice to all, and the horror of the Internet is that it gives a voice to all. You don’t have to go farther than the comments section of most news Web sites to see the bile; if you really want to feel the hate, go to a sports Web site, scroll the comments section, and see why fans of a certain sports team are inherently inferior to fans of a competing sports team based on the fact the former fans were born in Chicago and the latter in St. Louis.

I carry no brief against the amateur critic, but when some nimrod weighs in and slams, say Great Expectations ("The fool author made it up as he went along") or One Hundred Years of Solitude ("Don’t waste your time or money"), it brings the death of literary fiction that much closer. These claims are in the minority, of course, but that somebody felt their empty thoughts were even worth writing down shows some serious hostility to some of the greatest works of literature, like, ever.

That was exquisitely awful

This is not a grad student expounding on a blog or a well-read civilian actually having insights into the book in question. This is like Rush Limbaugh saying waterboarding is not torture or Wall Street bankers don’t earn enough. Or, more to the point, this is just like Rush Limbaugh.

So if you don’t have anything intelligent to say, just shut the fuck up. Which I really, really wish I could make happen to Rush Limbaugh.

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Bookfraud, I miss you. Blog again please!

When the lovely and fetching (and brilliant) Voix asks me to blog, how can I say no? Even if she wrote this, like, six months ago.

There’s some good reasons I haven’t  blogged, and some not-so-good ones as well, and I will dispense of the latter before getting to the good stuff.

Bad reasons for not blogging: I haven’t blogged because the Cubs are the Cubs, because I’m still mad about Bernie Madoff, because I’m being disappointed in advance for President Obama, because Republicans still suck ass, because I’m really unhappy with my keyboard, and, finally, I haven’t blogged because a Irish wolfhound looked me in the face and told me if I ever blogged again, he would have to kill me.

Real reason for not blogging: For the first time in my life, I have a Blackberry.

This came with my new job, which I was fortunate enough to land in February and start full-time in March. I will not go into more detail about it save to say it is an excellent position, they’re working me harder than a Marine grunt in basic training, and I’m grateful to be working, as grateful a man who has regained the ability to walk.

So there’s that. Also, we have to move 800 miles away in July as part of my new employment. "We" being me, Wife, and Baby-Tot (ne Baby). We were in my new city of employment a couple of weeks ago and signed a lease for an apartment, thus "sealing" "the deal." 

(Anybody in the market for an overpriced, underloved, and never-will-be-purchased-in-time place to live? Mention Bookfraud.com to the realtor and I’ll give you a 3 percent discount. That’s three-fucking-percent! Off a place nobody is ever going to buy!

My vote for Obama is paying off already!)

Also, my mother was visiting us in April, took a spill and her temple introduced itself to the sidewalk, ended up going to the ER, got stitches, had trouble breathing later that night, went back to the hospital at 2 a.m. in an ambulance that got lost, got a buttload of chest scans, found out that she had pneumonia, and ended up extending her stay a week. A week in an out-of-town hospital, in isolation, no less.

(Did I ever mention that pneumonia was what felled my father? You might imagine I had a little stress no-sleep thing going there.)

After I started my new job—I’m really grateful to have it, did I mention that?—I became just a mite scared of blogging, if only of my new bosses discovering it. (Why they would suddenly discover it is beyond me, but I still had the fear.) Also, a minor point: I’ve been working nights, weekends, and sections of the morning marked by hours lower than "6."

Waldman: Loves Michael Chabon this much

And if it was not just my inability to find the hours to sleep, not to mention blog, I was about as active in the blogosphere overall as Ayelet Waldman is withdrawn and sane, which is to say, not at all.

I don’t know how much more of this I can take, honestly. If I loved Wife more than Baby-Tot, like a certain writer currently in the news, then I guess I could put the little bugger up for adoption, which would have the copasetic effect of giving me time to shower, cut down on the number of communicable diseases I contract, and save expontentially on the food bill. But when I entertain such ideas, Baby-Tot will do something like say "Delicious!" when eating dinner, will ask to hear Yo-Yo Ma, or runs up and gives me a hug, his arms wrapped around my knees.

Plan B it is, then. Baby-Tot will stay.

Maybe I’ll write something in another week, or another six months, or something. Don’t stay up for me.

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There it goes again.

The blight known as Facebook has now foisted upon us the "25 Random Things" chain letter, in which people post 25 random factoids about themselves, and tag other Facebook friends to do the same. That bloggers have been doing this type of thing for the last five years appears not to have impeded the popularity of of "25 Random Things."

Being that a) I was tagged,  b) I try to avoid Facebook like light beer and Republicans, and c) I think everyone is getting sick of this, I post my own list, all things that are bad, humiliating, or have other negative connotations. Except for two, one of which involves the greatest TV theme song ever played.

25 RANDOM THINGS ABOUT ME (ALL TRUE) YOU WOULD JUST AS RATHER NOT KNOW

1. The first time I got high, I urinated on something, but I can’t remember what it was.

2. I used to listen to Simon & Garfunkle’s "Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine" on my parent’s turntable and imagine I was on television singing it, dancing and gesticulating to my imagined, adoring life studio audience.  I continued this behavior from age eight until sometime last year. 

3. I’ve gotten in three car accidents, but only two were my fault, and one was when I was 18, so it doesn’t count.

4. My sister made fun of my lousy efforts me during my quixotic quest to be a soccer goalie in high school. In anger, I threw a piece of chicken at her. Like most of my athletic endeavors, it missed the mark.

5. The closest I’ve come to dying, metaphorically speaking, was when a friend and I were driving to a basketball game in high school when a cop pulled us over—my friend was about to light up a joint in the car. The cop, enraged we did not stop immediately, searched the car, padded me down, and gave me three tickets. He didn’t find my friend’s pot. But I saw my life crumbling before my eyes.

6. When I was a teenager, I was a total loser when it came to asking girls out on dates.

7. When I became an adult, I remained a total loser when it came to asking women out on dates.

8. Codicil to #6: Masturbation.

9. Codicil to #7: Masturbation.

10. The number of inappropriate women I’ve slept with far exceeds the number who were actually appropriate. If you’re reading this, and I’ve had sex with you, that means you were definitely appropriate.

11. Once, when The Who were on tour back in the 1980s, they tried to make a stop in a city I was living, but the only night they could play, Billy Joel had booked a concert at the only suitable arena. Joel, who could have moved his concert a day, refused, making 12,000+ wieners happy in the metropolitan area. So if you think Billy Joel is better than The Who, I can’t be friends with you, and I think you suck.

Joel: don’t get me started

12. I have urinated on the basin of my toilet in order to clean it. Try it some time—the remove the blackish buildup from three months of not cleaning, aim right for the heart of the stain.

13. You’ve entered middle age when you have to trim your ear hair. Not that I would know.

14. Next to deaths in my family, the worst two days of my life was when I was eight and my puppy ran away. I cried non-stop over a weekend. I’ll never forget opening the front door and seeing a person in the neighborhood holding my dog. That was probably the happiest moment of my life. The following year, she had puppies, and she lived another 16 years.

15. If you try to tell me about the superiority of cats to dogs, not only will I question your judgment, but your sanity.

16. Jobs that I’ve had include: horse-carriage driver, costumed pizza parlor mascot, pizza delivery driver, McDonald’s indentured servant, camp counsellor, civil servant, cafeteria worker, window washer, hospital policy manual writer, the guy who tries to sell you an apartment when you walk into the front office, pseudo-software writer (fired), twice a busboy for a day (fired from first place, didn’t show up for my second day of work at the latter), survey taker, and temp office worker (I tested out at 90 wpm). Amazingly, none of the jobs panned out as a career.

17. I would tell you the time I was most humiliated, but there are far too many candidates to choose from.

18. There are people in my extended family I don’t like very much. You know who you are, except that I don’t talk to you and you don’t know Bookfraud exists.

19. I have nicknames for bowel movements, including Thunderdump; All-Star Crapathon; Human Shitstorm; Laying a Lincoln Log; Tossing the Whole Bakery, not Just a Loaf.

My favorite, however, has a literary pedigree: Turdgantua.

20. My formula for life: (Times Having Sex*Number of Partners²)+Money When You Die+Number of Children Who Don’t Hate You⁵/(Number of Major Disappointments Involving Women, Money and Publishing+Hospital Visits³)+(Years in Therapy*Money Spent on Therapy). If your number is > 1 when you die, you’ve had a successful life.

21. I watched so much television growing up that I knew each night’s network schedule. As a result, I do not speak a foreign language, play an instrument, cook,mountain climb or participate in any activity that entails paying any attention for more than 15 seconds. However, I know what "Book ‘em, Danno" means. 

Also, I will say without equivocation: the theme song and title credits from "Hawaii Five-0" are the greatest in television history. I mean, that song totally kicks ass. And the tracking shot when they zoom in on Jack Lord at light speed is totally badass. Totally.

I will look for any excuse whatsoever to run this

22. One of my grandmothers was a country Baptist girl who got a nursing degree and made something out of herself. But I was sometimes ashamed of her, and didn’t want her around my friends out of fear she’d say something embarrassing. 

23. I have visited blogs because the subject was sexual. I’ve visited porn sites for the same reason, believe it or not.

24. On more than one occasion, I have reduced someone to tears.

25. All of the above.

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Please sir. I want some more.

More? You want more?

Yes, sir.

Ah…just what the hell are you doing here, anyway? Wearin’ that fancy suit ‘n piece a’ silk ‘ya neck?

Oh, that. I got my ass fired from the place where I worked for over a decade.

Blimey, I understand. It’s just that we don’t get too many older ‘uns from the 21st Century here. ‘Specially those who sound like they come over from the colonies.

The United States hasn’t been a colony of England for over 200 years. And I don’t understand the dynamics of the space-time continuum myself.

What the ‘ell are you talkin’ about?

Oh, I meant, "I don’t understand the dynamics of the space-time continuum meeself, sir."

That’s better, laddie. Oliver Twist, it is?

I’ve been called worse. Of course, I’m not a fictional character or metaphor for a street urchin.

Stop talkin’ in ya’ fancy-pants Cambridge talk! Get the feck out of here, you slimy Yank!

Just can I have something to eat? It will serve as a metaphor for feeding my hunger for approval, now that I’ve been unemployed for several months.

Off with ‘ya, I say!

A week later…

You sure have a funny way about you. What’s with all the fucked-up dance moves?

Why, I’m the Artful Dodger.

I hate the Dodgers. They swept the Cubs in the playoffs. Get the fuck out of my face.

What? I’m gonna teach you the ways of the streets, m’boy.

Do I look like I need your help?

As a ‘atter of fact, you look a bit downtrodden. There’s a stain on your scarf.

What is it with you people and ties? And that stain is soup. From the orphanage. But I’m not an orphan. I’m Bookfraud, 21st Century Writer and victim of the financial malaise gripping the world.

Financial crisis, you say? Why, I know just the bloke to help ‘ya! He’s a Jew!

Guinness as Obi-Yid Kenobi

Don’t tell me—his name is Fagan, he has an enormous hook nose, and he makes Shylock look like Jesus.

Egads, the man reads minds! How ya’ know?

I was an English major, what else?

Upstairs in a hidden attic, the Artful Dodger leads Bookfraud to a dark corner where a deformed old man with a nose the size of Queen Victoria’s left buttock is counting his money.

Stay back, I say! Stay in the light where I can see ya!

Uh, OK. How come I have a feeling I already know you?

Shat up, ya’ pathetic ragamuffin!

I’m 44-years old. Do I look like a "ragamuffin"?

Well, blimey, you are a bit on the old side to be doing this type of work.

I don’t steal stuff, if that’s what you’re talking about. Even if I wanted to pick pockets for you, I’ve got the manual dexterity of an office chair.

What?

Just forget it, old man. I’m not going to steal for you. I’m a writer and I’m looking for a job.

A writer? No wonder ‘ya don’t ‘ave a job! Nobody knows how to read, everyone knows that. And if you did read, why do you need to hire someone to write for ‘ya? It’s bloody stupid, I say.

I guess things were the same in the 1850s as in 2009.

You do look like you shouldn’t be here. What you same your name was?

Bookfraud—it’s a pseudonym.

You do fraud on books? You’ll fit just nicely ’round here, just nicely!

No, I—

You a regular ‘ookkeeper with a crooked streak to ya? We could make so much more with you ’round.

No, no, I chose the name because…oh, never mind. Let’s just say I’m not a crooked bookeeper…crooked bookkeeping…why does that ring a…hey—now I recognize you!

Oh, don’t tell me you’re with the police? I never done nothing illegal in my life!

You’re supposed to be Fagan, Dickens’ anti-Semitic character in Oliver Twist!

What are you talkin’ about? I don’t know any Dickens, but me name is Fagan—

You’re not Fagan! You’re Bernie Madoff! Shit! You’ve done more to set back Jews than anyone since Barry Manilow! I hate you! You’re the reason I’m going to reattach my foreskin!

Off with ‘ya! Get out of my attick, you non-interest-paying traitor!

With pleasure! I hate you, Madoff! You’ve given anti-Semites around the world more reason to hate me! They hate me even more than I hate me! Thanks a lot, you fucking wanker!

Bernie sucks

Why, you…people gave me their money, you buffoon! I only took from other Jews! They were just too stupid to question the returns—

Shut the fuck up! I’m outta here. But I have one question.

An’ what might that be?

Can you get me Victoria Beckham’s autograph?

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Walter Payton, the late, great Bears running back, is one of my few true sports heroes. I can name the starting lineup of the 1985 Bears, which was one of the greatest NFL teams ever. Some of my fondest memories have to do with football.

So it is not the game of professional football I hold a brief. It is the SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today’s SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! leaves me flat, unmoved, uncaring. For it is no longer a football game, no longer a bunch of oversized men headed for multiple joint replacements slamming into each other. It is our own secular holiday. It is the most-watched, most-advertised event in the United States, making the ratings for Obama’s election and inauguration look like a 3 a.m. weight-loss infomercial.

It is a the source of parties, celebration, sorrow.

It is the pinnacle of human achievement.

It is the SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

say it again, with feeling:

SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I have a specific image in mind for this. A muscled, bare-chested man, arms raised to the sky, beseeching the gods to grant the SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! to mortals. Kind of like Achilles’ screaming at Zeus, or me screaming at my computer when eats a document, minus the muscles and bare chest .)

Now, this is not to judge those of you attending pre-game parties, watching the game for the commercials, football fans interested in the game, or if you are actually a Pittsburgh or Arizona fan. Nor any of you to watch the post-modern "bowl within a bowl" like Bud Bowl, Lingerie Bowl, Puppy Bowl, or Heroin Bowl. Have fun, get drunk, don’t make a pass at your boss’s wife.

That kind of minor innocence is lost on the legion of sportswriters, TV "analysts," programming executives, and any other person with a stake in promoting damn thing. There have been millions of words spilled about the game, both in print and television, micro-analyzing something worth about 10 minutes of pregame.

For it is then it morphs from merely a big game to SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hype isn’t even the right word for it: deification is more like it.

If you ever think that some people do not take this seriously, I submit to you the following:

I don’t know what is worse: this fan’s bathetic response to the collapse of his beloved Giants, or his unfortunate resemblance to Jonah Hill.

OK, OK, enough of the post-modernist, pseudo-intellectual, uninteresting blather. Here’s the real reason I’m writing this: Pat Summerall, and an incident that illustrates this hot, overhyped mess much better than my hot, overhyped hyperventilating.

For those of you too young or unlikely to have seen Summerall, he is an ex-player who was an NFL sports announcer for CBS and FOX for years, having reached some modicum of fame, particularly with his work with John Madden. Summerall was known for his laconic, terse delivery: "Montana drops back in the pocket…to Rice…touchdown 49ers." He had the type of voice that lent itself to this kind of thing, and was actually quite good at it.

In any case, because of my best friend’s father, I was able to attend the NFC Championship game the year of the glorious ‘85 Bears. As part of the package, I got to attend an NFL party the evening before. It was quite the swank affair, with a band, open bar, ice sculptures. Impressive to a college kid like myself.

Among the luminaries attending the party were Pete Rozell, the NFL commissioner, Madden, and Summerall, who would call the game the next afternoon. It was January in Chicago, and the forecast for the next day’s game was well below freezing. But Summerall was dressed like his name dictated the weather: lemon khakis, a white buttondown shirt with open collar, and a cream sportsjacket with thick green tartan stripes. It was as if he were stuck in 1974, about to step on a plane to Bermuda.

I approached Summerall, thinking, what the hell, this guy’s famous, he’s by himself, why not chat him up? Standing alone, Summerall was holding a drink of an amber hue and staring at the scene between sips. I introduced myself, and said I was the guest of B_____. Summerall glanced at me, nodding slightly, saying nothing. My friend’s father had been a sportswriter in a prior life, and I said I was thinking about becoming one professionally as well. I said that B_______ was kind of a role model.

Summerall: You too

This seemed to stir Summerall, for he looked at me with heroic intent. There was no gleam in his eye, nothing but stoic earnestness. He then turned away and stared into the distance. 

"If you follow B_______’s footsteps," he said, "you too will be a champion."

And then he walked away to refresh his drink, his tartan sportsjacket flapping in his wake.

Those were the only words Pat Summerall said to me. It was the greatest, weirdest moment of my life. So as you plunge your chip into your salsa, slam down your eighth beer, or begin to cry like Jonah Hill above, remember to follow B______’s footsteps. You too, will be a champion.

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Long before getting food poisoning last Sunday night and its subsequent vomitus Monday morning, before there was Sarah Palin or "Obama Girl," before Baby had been conceived or Bookfraud had made its debut, before Steve Bartman had his date with infamy, before the non-plague of Y2K or the real plague known as "Bush Cheney 2000," even before Girlfriend became Wife, I saw a Neil LaBute film called "Your Friends and Neighbors."

Besides seeing Ben Stiller with a goatee, "Your Friends and Neighbors" was notable for the music accompanying the title sequence: disturbing, basso profundo violence of what sounded like a string quartet whose instruments were on ‘roids. It was loud, cacophonous, and was the most memoriable aspect of the movie (other than Jason Patric playing football with a baby doll).

Move ahead 10 years, to Saturday, 36 hours prior to consuming the extremely bad scallops that led to a 5:30 a.m. technicolor yawn. A friend of Wife’s is a cellist, and upon learning that Baby is about a music-besotted 21-month old as can be, graciously lugged her instrument to our home and gave Baby a concert that included a Bach cello suite, "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," and several cat-death notes created when Baby tugged on the strings.

For some reason, I thought of "Your Friends and Neighbors" and the soundtrack. The cellist friend didn’t know what I was talking about (though we did note that a group she was in and Kronos Quartet both had covered "Purple Haze").

Following further research that day, I finally discovered the source of the music after a decade. It was a trio who play heavy metal on the cello.

Yes, that you read that correctly.

Apocalyptica (see pictures above and below) are three classically trained cellists (I imagine there’s no other kind) plus a drummer. Of course, they’d have to be from Finland.

Though I am not familiar with Apocalyptica’s entire body of work, and will not become familiar with Apocalyptica’s entire body of work in this or any other lifetime, they are known for playing covers of Metallica songs, including "Enter Sandman," the song from "Your Friends and Neighbors" that had perplexed me all these years.

Even longer before I had seen this movie, I had written in a stupdendously bad novel (one of three stupendously bad novels that have flowed from my fingers) a scene involving a tuba quartet:

“Gerard’s Tuba Quartet No. 3, ‘The dance of the piglets’” the program read.  “A T.U.B.A. command performance.”  Yves Gerard’s third Tuba quartet,  The dance of the piglets, c.1989, represents a return to form for the great French composer.  It reflects Gerard’s obsession with livestock and the deconstruction of agriculture as metaphor, a theme reflected also in his Tuba Concerto in C-major (the “Farmer St. Jean” Concerto) and his famed “Barnyard suite.”

I don’t repeat these silly lines to show the craptastic nature of my writing, but to illustrate that no matter what I or anyone else writes, reality will trump it. Philip Roth’s famous screed that fiction writers cannot compete with the news of the day ("The actuality is continually outdoing our talents, and the culture tosses up figures almost daily that are the envy of any novelist") is made flesh each day: reality beggars the writer’s imagination.

Look at this picture; try not to laugh

This is really why I like to blog, not only to comment on the literary life, because given my literary successes, this would have been a short blog indeed. It’s things like Apocalyptica—I mean, if I had made up such a thing and put it in a short story, the derision from my fiction workshop would have been palpable.

After several months of unemployment, things are looking better. I’ve got a few job leads and some steady freelance work. The worst president since Harding (Nixon included) is gone. Baby is healthy and happy, and Wife hasn’t left me (yet) for the gainfully employed. It’s only a month before Spring Training and the cycle of happiness-despair known as the Chicago Cubs 2009 Season.

In other words, I don’t have a reason to wash myself in the bathos of self-pity, a state that allows me wide leeway not to blog, not to write. You see, I’ve tried to blog; I even wrote some heartfelt encomiums to our new president. But the writing wasn’t any good, and it wasn’t anything you couldn’t have read in 8 billion other blogs.

It’s because of things like Apocalyptica that remind me just why I do this.

So let us give thanks that Obama is president, and greater thanks for heavy metal cello. Rock on, Eicca, Pavvo, Perttu, and Mikko. 

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They said unemployment would be a respite.

They said that while the stress of not drawing a paycheck might wear down my fragile psyche, it would be worth the short-term financial burden. For not having to clock in each morning would afford me the time to reflect, to meditate, to discern the true nature of one’s self.

They said I would have time to write. They said I would have time to read. They said I would have more time with Baby.

Of course, they lied.

"They" being friends, family, career counselors, headhunters. To a person, they all said that while getting the axe sucks ass, at least I’ll have the time to catch up with life.

Apparently, all of these people are employed.

In the 21st Century, looking for a job takes far more time than actually working at one. It is more time-consuming than the pursuit of sex, reading Tolstoy in Russian, or trying to find the perfect pasta lifter. Looking for a job is not something you can do in one’s spare time, like, say, blogging or relieving oneself.

Add the fact that jobs are about as plentiful as Mormons in favor of gay marriage, and I am an extremely unhappy fellow.

They also say that a project expands to the amount of time allotted to it, and for this, they are correct. The ironic thing about searching for work in this Internet-dominated, 24-7 environment, is that what makes finding job leads so easy makes actually getting a job so difficult. 

Take job hunting in the Dark Ages, when I was 22 and a freshly minted college graduate, in the late 1980s. One interviewed with companies who sent recruiters to campus. You found a few companies you liked, and sent your resume off and waited. If you were a loser, you scoured the newspaper’s help wanted section.

The Dark Ages

Or, in my case, I sent out my resume and writing samples to several newspaper editors, one of which apparently laughed at my clips so hard he suffered a seizure and inadvertently hired me.

These days, it’s not so simple. Looking for a job is like starting a relationship. You are completely paranoid about every single aspect of the search. You obsess about the things you said, and worry about the things you didn’t say.

Did I apply to the right job? Should I update my resume on Monster.com? How many contacts can I add to LinkedIn? What additional research should I do on Company X, in addition to the 18 volumes I’ve already downloaded?

Even as I write these words, I think of e-mail to write and answer, Web searches to do, resumes to upload. And that doesn’t even count the calls I need to make and the meetings I’ve been trying to schedule.

Is there an echo chamber in here?

Now, I know everybody here wants to know what I think of Roberto Bolano’s 2666, the death of the literary best-seller, and the sorry state of short fiction. You want to know about what I think of our nation electing an African-American president (holy fuck! It actually happened!), the long-term prospects for the Democrats, my learned opinion on Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.

It’s not that I don’t have opinions, or that about 9,334,222,798 other blogs have written more and better words on these topics than I could ever hope to do. It’s that I haven’t had the time. I mean, literally. Anybody reading this who has a blog and who I haven’t visited or commented — that would be all of you — I don’t apologize, but rather say, give me a job, please.

Not because I simply need the money (I do). It’s because I need a life.

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This is less a blog entry than an exercise in that thing called writing, which I’ve done precious little of in the past three weeks.

Fun times in Bookfraud-land:

• Trapped in a conference room with a nice, perky lady, a moribund old guy wearing a hearing aid, and a librarian who gives "cliched" new meaning.
• A poor schlub yakking for ten minutes about a computer patch management system.
• Half the room clearing out after lunch.
• The worst computer tutorial in the history of the world.
• Suicidal thoughts.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, this was my introduction to "outplacement services," or a three-month tour of duty that’s supposed to help me find a new job. My previous employer paid for this service, though I would have preferred that they had given me the cash outright.

I arrive early one morning, find a seat in a crowded conference room, and think about ways I can leave gracefully. Enter the perky lady, once an airline employee (no, not a flight attendant), who will be our instructor for the morning.

Our instructor introduces us to the office managing partner, an older fellow who reeks of wisdom and Fixodent, for a pep talk. He tells us that he knows what it’s like to be unemployed, for he’s had to change jobs four times in his life, but there’s positions out there, if you know how to look. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack, he says. Though with this economy, "the haystack is twice as big," a comment that effectively reverses the happy caffeinating effects of my Starbucks in a millisecond. I look around the room for a samurai sword to impale myself upon, with no luck.

Then, all the enthusiasm sucked out of the room, we go to work.

The morning features a couple of highlights. First, as a matter of "defining" our skills, the patch-management dude talks about a work-related "challenge," and how he overcame it. How any of this will help anybody find a job I don’t know, and the homunculus residing in my left temple starts tossing pain-tinged darts at my brain.

Not before or after: instead of

Later, everybody has to write a two- or three-sentence explanation of who you are and what you want to do. Stupidly, I volunteer to read mine. 

As I should have expected, it’s ritual humiliation. Double for me, as I’m supposed to be an expert in the art of communication. It’s not punchy enough. It’s got too much information. It just sucks.

We break for lunch, when I wander around the lobby for 45 minutes in a catatonic state of Faulknerian realization that my job is gone left for parts unknown for budgetcuttingpinheads lopping off the department, the interstices of brain and soul and bodyspirit, the accursed soil, bookfraud without direction is bookfraud without faith without hope without…

After a security guard slaps me, I find a sandwich shop and whomp down a lunch of indeterminate matter (carbo, protein, sliced vegetables) and a Diet Coke, then return to a classroom now one-half full, the rest of our former classmates apparently going to job interviews, finishing that novel, or having sex with tranny prostitutes. Then, the fun begins.

The outplacement agency has a members-only Web site to which we will have access. An older, bespectacled woman who looks as if she stumbled out of the dictionary’s entry for "librarian" addresses us, which is appropriate, since she’s the company librarian. Her hair is curled in a helmet, her pantsuit is bright and generous, her shoes are, of course, sensible. The librarian is wearing a pin in the form of a jack-o-lantern, which I somehow feel is a bad sign.

And it is. The librarian gives a presentation on how to use the Web site. Apparently, the presentation has been geared towards first-graders. The librarian tells us how to sign up. How to choose a password. That you have to fill the fields with asterisks and if you want to see another part of the Web site, click on its link. Now in an extremely ungrateful (and unfair) mood, all I can think of is, "How come this idiot has a job and I’m unemployed?"

They’re not lining up to vote

After our computer savant is done, we are released from purgatory. I’m about as fired up as a Frenchman, Jew, or a person with a college degree contemplating a Sarah Palin presidency.  It’s grim.

Things will get better. Two days later, I meet my counselor, not the perky not-a-former-stewardess lady. This person is calm, empathetic, smart, and has several excellent ideas. I actually have some hope here that I might find a decent-paying position.

Then, as I ride the elevator downstairs, it occurs to me. I know what I’m going to do. I envision a job in which I have to work hard, hustle, be creative, but make gargantuan amounts of money. It’s completely legal, and I don’t need to get anyone’s permission or even get hired to do it.

I’m going to become Baby’s talent manager! He’s cute, he’s got a fabulous smile, and has an excellent vocabulary for an 18-month old, including "cheese," "yellow," "boat," "bear," and says "clock" and "flag" without the "l"s. As they say on "American Idol," we’re going to Hollywood!

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