More Blogging Secrets

It's easy to make money blogging. First, find a job with an Infernal Blog Machine (IBM). An Infernal Blog Machine looks like this:

You probably have one like it at home, except the home versions will let you play video games and show you dirty movies. The kind at work usually don't let you do that sort of thing- they are pretty useless for much but blogging.
The only game mine has is some really bad text-based role-playing game (RPG) where you assume the persona of a legal document inside a box- you might be a real estate purchase contract, a deposition transcript or even a medical record. In the game, you move yourself from one virtual location to another and make a written note of when you do so. Sometimes an NPC will email you and ask you where you are and you get points for knowing the correct answer. If you give the wrong answer you lose and the game is over.
It's a really boring game but since I always answer the questions correctly , I can blog between RPG sessions. It's not much of an RPG, really. You get put in a box and sent to a warehouse and don't do anything for years. After seven years, your character gets shredded but that's OK. You have 6,500,001 other ones just like it.

To keep my wits sharp between gaming sessions, I like to read and drink coffee. I wish I could do both at the same time, but I can't.
I read books on the bus on the way to work, but you are not allowed to drink coffee on the bus.
I drink coffee at work but I am not allowed to read books on the clock.

In some ways, my commute is the best part of my day. I get to sit and read for two 30-minute periods each day, which I find simultaneously stimulating and relaxing. Lately I've read a great Kafka translation (seated below), a trio of Jim Thompson crime novels (Pop. 1280; The Killer Inside Me and Taking Texas by the Tail) and a deceptively brilliant novel of dark comedy , Damned If You Do, by Gordon Houghton. It's the only book I've read of his, it being a gift from a friend.


It's a sign that someone
knows you and cares about you when they give you books that you like, even if you've never heard of the author.
(Thank you to my lifelong pal 'Sco')





So you read a little , ingest some hot bean squeezins' , play a little bit of the RPG and take a break. While you are on break, you might as well blog. If you're like me, you probably hate it when your boss and co-workers read your blog over your shoulder; so I came up with a solution for the privacy problem. I build a wall.
These boxes are the 'real-life' equivalent of the document RPG that's installed on my BM at work. These boxes have just advanced from first to second level.

I didn't get much blogging done at work today. Instead, I went to a lunchtime anti-escalation demonstration at the State Capitol. Due to my vast fame and incredible good looks, I was placed behind the podium- I was all set to make a fiery extemporaneous denouncement of all things Dubya - don't think I can't- but I was just up there to make the pictures pretty for TV. Aw, shucks. They already had good speakers lined up, including one man with two sons in Iraq- multiple tours I think. I was behind him and the wind flapping the signs made it hard for me to hear everything.

After work, I engineered a live performance by In Fervor, a talented and very likable duo doing a Radio Tour- how cool is that! After that, we had a Music Director's meeting. It was short and sweet- major progress is being made at the station- there have been some bad things happen but we are correcting them- running a listener-supported all-volunteer FM station takes a lot of work,but we've been on-air for over two years now, something almost no one thought was possible and we are getting pretty good at what we do. It's a group effort.

So tonight I'm blogging for free, on my own time. I had planned on writing something depressing but I had such a good day I wrote this instead. Maybe next time.