Zeta Woof: Old Fiddler’s Joke...: Hat tip to David Henry Handy, Roseburg's finest blogger.
(Oooh... Almos' fainted with the damn praise!)
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Thanks to Gordon's immoderate, and perhaps inaccurate, praise, I am now prepared to make a sudden, if temporary, departure from the regular business of this blog.
I do not operate this blog along the accepted, normal lines of expressing one's opinion about whatever topic one chooses to opine about; if any opinion of mine is expressed, it is merely in the choice of whatever topic I choose to be worthy of "recycling" - I generally express no opinion about whatever I'm re-syndicating, other than the implicit opinion that if I made note of it, it was worthy of being noticed; for I am of the opinion that opinions are like assholes - everybody's got one, but unlike assholes, no one seems greatly embarrassed at parading their opinions in public.
And so, Gordon's reward for his immoderate praise is two-fold.
One, that I should undertake, with great reluctance and against my better instincts, to write something new and original, namely these few paragraphs you are now reading (whose style is, as usual, greatly influenced by whatever I am currently reading (by which you can judge for yourself what god-awful, ancient crap I'm currently reading)); and two, that I should share with you, from one of my ancient notebooks, one of those passages that were so common with me in that day, a paragraph that was perfect in the first draft, with no revision.
Now it may seem that I praise myself immoderately when I say that, at the time, it was commonplace that whatever I wrote would be perfect in the first draft (perhaps the most obvious exception to the rule would be the first part of Afterglow of the UFO, which I re-worked and polished until it is the most gloriously over-written piece of prose imaginable.); but, in looking back over what I have just now written, it seems to me that this talent has not entirely left me, although I will more modestly assert that though I may not find these paragraphs to be perfect, they are most certainly serviceable.
It is the same age-old problem all over again: nothing to say, and an over-abundance of words with which to say it.
And so...
"Alas-alackaday but like a long unopened dresser of clothes, my poor mad mind has been invaded by the moths. Right now one sits chewing upon my comic books. None of my possessions is safe, least of all my sanity. Yes, the moths have come to burrow holes though my soul. And here comes another, a newcomer who must flutter about my room, bouncing off my possessions, the walls, the ceiling, flopping and fluttering into the lights, driving to distraction and the death of quiet dignity, pushing me past the limits of patience. They flit about me, gnawing on the bare bones of my soul until finally they settle down, and fix themselves in one spot, to bore a hole in my belongings, all the while mocking me with my own futility. Ah these moths, these cousins of the locust that make barren the harvest. Oh for a mothball to end it all."
