001: Fear of Death--Something to Laugh About...

Here’s what I want everyone to know. I’m a writing junkie. I spent a good chunk of this summer working on what I called “The Forced Writing Project.” The idea behind this project was that writing about anything that was on my mind, even boring, stupid, seemingly unimportant stuff was better than no writing at all. Part way through the project, I came to the conclusion that what I was REALLY doing was creating a little time capsule so that my wife and kids would be able to look back and see who I was, or what I felt like writing about anyway, once I was a pile of ashes... (I’m not in the mood to be buried. I don’t want to be one of those assholes that comes back from the dead and has a hankering for brains. Burn my ass! It’s better for everyone that way...)

Margaret Atwood, in her book NEGOTIATING WITH THE DEAD, says that ALL WRITING is a response to the fear of death. I think she is right... at least in my case. My family tends to drop dead at a young age, (my dad is the great survivor in his family, the oldest of his clan... at 54) so I decided that I had better get whatever done I can while the gettin’s good...

THIS project is both a response to the fear of death AND a worship of technology that began when I was only a wee-lad. There used to be this show about a boy who rode around in the palm of this GIANT ROBOT’s hand. It was a live action show, Japanese of course, and the show’s opening sequence had the giant robot shooting bullets out of his fingers at a bridge or something... I was around three or four when this show was on, I don’t remember the name of it, and I’m almost 90 percent sure that I didn’t imagine it! (If anyone knows the NAME of this show and would care to share it with me, I’d be very grateful, and rather impressed...) But, I’m pretty sure it was this show, and the archaic PONG game my Dad bought around 1975, that got me into technology. I’ve had a love/hate, worship/detest, really-want-it/can’t-afford-it sort of relationship with electronic gizmos ever since. This BLOGGING thing is part of that fascination, combined with my natural desire to write, and my exhibitionist tendencies, AND, most importantly, IT’S AS EASY AS F#CK TO DO... So do it I shall!!!

(Does anyone else remember that song “Do It” by Bronski Beat? It was off the “Truth, Dare, Double-Dare” album and was really good, kinda creepy, very naughty, and something that I felt applied to most of the girls I dated in high-school, both of them, actually, even though the song was probably intended for more of an “all male” audience... Oh, well...)

That’s probably good enough for my first entry... NEXT EPISODE: WHAT THE HELL IS A THROBBLEFOOT SPECTRE???