Let's Take A Break

Man, that driving was hard on a brother, even just writing about it. Things will get easier, I promise, and I also promise I won't write in nearly so much detail about the trip back, although I will hit the highlights.

Thanks again to Wayne for sending folk here. I wish I could figure out this whole sidebar thing, and I'd permalink him. Since I can't (figure it out), though, his blog is here. I swear, after I finish _Finnegan's Wake_ I'll go find an HTML book.

And I guess thanks to you guys who come by and read what I'm writing. You've almost got me convinced you like it.

The more I read back on this story, that is the Burning Man story, the more dissatisfied I am with it. There are a lot of events that don't really come through like I want them to, but since I'm writing it quickly (I am at work, after all) I barely skim for spelling and grammar before posting it. I think I'm trying to get the skeleton of it out and whole. If enough people tell me they like it, I think I'll take it and flesh it out a little bit. Offline, that is. I don't know. Let's get through the crucible that is the Nevada desert first.

This is a strange medium to work in, for me. Usually I'm more of an oral storyteller, and I can adjust the content of the stories to the audience. In this blog, I've really got no control over who reads it, so I'm having to find ways to gloss over some awkward points (that is, points that may embarrass people I don't want to embarrass) without taking away from the momentum of the narrative. That's difficult--I'm wishing more and more for time to rewrite this shit, but I can't, so I'm promising myself if I think it's worth it, I'll rewrite it once it's all down on "paper." I just hope Blogger doesn't eat off the front of it before I get done with the end of it.

Just finished reading _The Great Gatsby_ last night, for the first time since high school (or maybe junior high). I liked it far more this time than last. If I had any sort of artistic ability, I'd whip up some sort of dock with a green lantern and get it tattooed on me somewhere. That's how cool I thought it was.

I do have a complaint about it, though. I purchased "THE AUTHORIZED TEXT," which put me on notice that there would most likely be a preface by the author then probably a preface by the publisher or one of Fitzgerald's agents/family/editors about what's different, or what makes this edition better. So I skipped that. I've found that if I start reading there, by the time I get to the story itself I've completely lost interest, or maybe my expectations have grown too outlandish for the actual story to keep me awake. I've decided to read the fucking story first, then if I like it go back and read the stuff.

My complaint is that they put stuff both at the front AND after the end of the actual text. This may not be a big deal to a lot of people, but it's awful to me, because I'm one who keeps thumbing the pages remaining and thinking about how long the author's got to wrap things up. In essence, Fitzgerald killed the guy off and closed the book about 20 pages before I expected it. This sucks, kids. It reminds me of _Clockwork Orange_, when I strugged to contextualize and define all those fucked up words (droogs, krovvy, and viddy, remember), then found out the last fifteen pages of that specific edition was a fucking glossary of terms. How angry was I, on how many levels?

So fellas, put the extraneous shit either in the front or the back, not both. And tell me which end I should ignore. Some sort of notation on the spine or cover would be fine with me. Thanks.