HOT DAMN #7 — Talking To Yourself

LIFE’S WONDERS PRAISED IN SUGGESTIVE, ODDBALL, AND NONSENSE WAYS

In an effort to offer a counterpoint to my usual cynical antics, I’ve committed myself to a weekly, year-long discussion of my life’s joys.  But, never one for the more traditional approaches, I intend to keep things a little off side, a tad outlandish, and always one foot outside of polite company.

TALKING TO YOURSELF

“Are we really going to do this?”

“Should we not?”

“Well, not to be that guy, but you always said you wouldn’t.”

“But it’s something we do all the time. Every day. Hell, every hour.”

“I know.”

“Right?”

“I know!”

“Besides, some people find it amusing.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. Some people. There’s a good number of them.”

“The same number of people who read this blog?”

“I thought we weren’t going to do that either.”

“What?”

“Have a pity party.”

“I’m just stating the facts.”

“That’s not at all what you’re doing, and you know it. You’re trying to drum up sympathy. Oh, poor you and your barely read blog.”

“But couldn’t it maybe also drum up some more readers?”

“You’re really not very smart, are you?”

“Which doesn’t bode well for you either, does it?”

“I suppose not.”

“But suppose also that our site stats have been lying to us.”

“That implies sentience.”

“Yes, but forget that. Suppose, for a second, that all this time our site, this beacon of blog bounty, has been visited by thousands of readers every single day. Except, when we check our website statistics, we’re being told that it is only a few, less than a dozen.”

“You mean more like a half-dozen.”

“If that.”

“Right.”

“Instead of being made confident in our selves and in our superlative prose, as we should be, we’re left to think that we’re not at all interesting to the vast majority of our acquaintances. In a very short matter of time we lose hope, we become anarchists. Shortly after that, the world has fallen to ruin, the cities have burned. All is lost.”

“That escalated quickly.”

“But suppose.”

“Oh, I see. Yes, it makes more sense this way.”

“Does it?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Will this help, do you think?”

“With our readership? No, I doubt it. You just rambled on. That’s all you did just now.”

“But it was amusing.”

“To whom?”

“Well . . .”

“You see. And that’s why you’re left talking only to yourself.”

“But it felt good.”

“It did, yes.”

“Bully to us, then.”

You do it, too. Don’t lie to me. I heard you. And, no, I wasn’t listening in. Okay, maybe I was.

–

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