Agita! The Conclusion.

It is now a week or so after the TV shopping debacle with dear ole mom. And I can look back on it and still not laugh or reminisce fondly. Maybe after I get the whole story written, only then, can I move on with my life. And so, I give you part two, and the conclusion, of the "New TV for Mom" saga: The Hook-Up.

I arrive with my mom and the TV at her house. My brother, Mike, is already there. We carry the television in. The box is a bit dented, but since it was the last one in the store, we took it with the salesperson's assurance that the set itself was fine. If not, we could return it. Yeah, that wasn't happening in my lifetime. That TV could have had human feces smeared across the screen and I was shoving it into its spot, plugging it in and going home to a large vodka tonic.

My brother had already removed the infamous "black & white picture" set from the infamous entertainment center. The dust was as thick as a mink stole. So my mother comes over and pushed the gigantic dust gophers around with a fuzzy duster. Well, that was pretty useless.

We open the box and inspect the TV.

When you were a child, did you ever have a dog that died? Did you ever lose a favorite toy? Did you ever shop for a TV with your mom, only to find a crack in plastic console of it when you opened it?

Yeah, all three of those really sucked. And the last one happened that day. A crack in the TV. Thoughts of packing it up and driving back to Best Buy clouded my head and sucked out any bit of life left in me. My brother spoke up first, "I think we should put it in the center, make sure it works, because that crack will be unnoticeable once we get it in there." My mother agreed. A small sliver of light pierced through the window and gave me hope that maybe the ordeal would be over soon. My mother asked if her cable remote would work the television. I told her that I'd have to program it in, but I need the cable remote instructions.

To my mother's glee, and our thankful predictions, the TV fit just fine in the entertainment center. In fact, it was perfect. You couldn't see the small crack in the plastic at all. And so we begin the confusing job of "what wire goes where." To compound the confusion, we were also going to hook up the new DVD player my brother gave her for Christmas, that my mother so vehemently opposed getting. Too bad. We're hooking up that sucker, and going home for a tall rum and Coke. My mother asked if her cable remote would work the television. I told her that I'd have to program it in, but I need the cable remote instructions. That's two.

After some unscrewing and screwing of cables, wires and whatnot, the TV flickered on to a beautiful picture. My mother asked if her cable remote would work the television. I told her that I'd have to program it in, but I need the cable remote instructions. Yeah. Are you keeping count? She tells me the cable guy left no instruction book. I tell her that I'll check mine and next time I come over, I'll program it. In the meantime, she'll have to turn on and off the television and raise the volume with one remote and operate the cable box with the other remote. My mother's medulla oblongata explodes.

Mike and I figured out how to hook up the DVD player, since we couldn't do it directly through the cable box, it had to go directly into the TV. A minor inconvenience that would make my mother more confused if she ever watches any one of the six disk set of musicals I bought her for Christmas. You know, that really expensive box set of musicals? The really expensive one, that is. My mother asked how long she'll have to use two remotes to work the TV and cable. I remind her that next time I come, I'll bring a book and program the one remote. But for now, she'll have to turn on and off the television and raise the volume with one remote and operate the cable box with the other remote. My mother's cerebral cortex explodes. I'm ready for a pitcher of rum and coke and vodka and tonic.

We start putting away the packing materials and trash, and my mother is still quite confused about the two remotes. Mind you, for about 10 years before the last TV, she was using TWO FUCKING REMOTES. Finally, the pressure cooker that is my mind goes off. The lid explodes sending beef stew all over the kitchen cabinets and ceiling. I grit my teeth and speak to her as if she's a 12-year-old who can't tie his shoes, or a 70-year old who just asked five or six times about the remote. Oh, yeah, she did. I loudly, slowly, deliberately remind her that next time I come, I'll bring a book and program the one remote. But for now, she'll have to turn on and off the television and raise the volume with one remote and operate the cable box with the other remote, just as she did for the 10 years before the last television.

I go to the bathroom, splash some water on my face, go back down, apologize and wish her much happiness with her new TV. She asks if I'm coming over tomorrow with the instruction book for the remote.

Looks like I picked the wrong day to stop beating the elderly.

Agita! In Living Color.

Italians have this word we use for certain occasions. It's "agita." If you've never heard it, you've either been under your rock too long, or have never seen an episode of the Sopranos. So, if you don't know what it means, the next sentence should sum it up pretty well.

I took my mother shopping for a new television.



Okay, so here's how it started. A couple weeks ago, I got a desperate phone call from my mother, in the middle of my work day. She sounded very upset. I had thought that maybe someone died or she was sick or anything other than the fact that her TV picture had lost color. Maybe one of my brothers had an accident, or her roof caved in. Anything. But not that her color TV was now black and white. Stop the presses! Call the fire department! Dial 911! All My Children is monochromatic! And thus, her world stopped. Life suddenly came to a screeching halt. Nothing in the entire universe would matter now that my mother's television set HAD LOST IT'S ABILITY TO PROJECT IMAGES IN COLOR!

At first, she blamed the cable guy who recently installed a new cable box. Once I assured her that cable would not affect the color of the set, she put that idea away in her mind, until she was ready to mention it again on the next distressed phone call and the next. She asked if she should call a TV repairman. Now, in my mind, a TV repairman in this day and age is like the Fuller Brush Man showing up at your door, or a second anus on a fish. In other words, completely anachronistic and unnecessary. Both of my brothers told her not to get a TV repairman, because when a TV goes, it's time to get a new one. BUT some 85-year-old woman, farting dust and dying her hair blue at the hairdresser (my mother doesn't go to "salons," she goes to a woman's basement to get her hair done...every Friday.) gave her the number of a "reliable" TV repairman. Because, after all, a repairman would NEVER take advantage of a woman old enough to have banged DaVinci and living alone to boot.

So naturally, my mother listened to the logic of those who know what they're talking about. She called the TV repairman.

$95 and two visits later, the television still has no color. Too bad my brothers and I didn't tell her not to get a repairman. Oh, wait, WE DID TELL HER. So, it was time to get a new TV. And I, the single son, volunteered my services. Did I mention I'm into self-mutilation and mentally torturing myself?

TRIP #1. (Oh, yes. It took two trips. Two trips. Did I mention, it took TWO TRIPS?) I pick her up, first, carefully measuring the space in the entertainment center. She's got a 27" screen which is fine for her. Good so far, but somewhere in the back of my brain, I know that it won't all be this easy. We go to Best Buy. She is completely thrown into a dizzying whirlpool of disbelief at the prices of the flat panel TVs. No! There is no way she is spending that kind of money on a TV. Now, manufacturers are pretty friggin' smart. They know that if they convince the "U.S. consumer lemmings waving credit cards with massive debt" that the only TVs worth having are the more expensive flat panel, flat screen hi-def, high-priced sets, they can do away with the outdated monstrosities called tube sets. SO, they only make a few of these models for people not quite ready to spend a couple grand on a TV, namely me (I have a 32" tube TV that suits me fine), my mother and probably the old bat who convinced my mother to get the repairman. So, we go look at the few dinosaurs in the tube TV aisle. There's a flat screen tube TV by Best Buy's brand for $300 and a rounded tube Sanyo TV for $270. To me, both viable candidates. She's not happy. She's never heard of Insignia. I measure them. Either will fit in her entertainment center. She's still not sure. I tell her the flat screen would be perfect, and it's a better picture for a few bucks more. She's still not convinced. After all, it's a whopping $300 for a brand she hasn't heard of. She asks a sales person if there are any sales going on. Like he's going to pull a perfect 27" inch TV out of his pocket and say, "Oh, yeah, here's a top of the line Sony and it's only $25!" He looks incredulously at her and tells her that anything on sale is marked. I assure my mother that if there are any sales, Best Buy is not hiding them from us. She's worried they look too big to fit. I measure again, and assure her they will.

We go home empty handed.

After a week or so of her commenting on how she has to watch everything in black and white, and wondering if it's the new cable box, which I assure her again it isn't, I tell her we'll go shopping again. Did I mention I also like anal fissures and drill bits shoved in my ears?

TRIP #2. (Yeah, two trips. I said that before didn't I? Two trips...)I picked up my mom and we drove over to Jersey to first visit the Best Buy there. She is completely thrown into a dizzying whirlpool of disbelief at the prices of the flat panel TVs. No! There is no way she is spending that kind of money on a TV. Wait, didn't I already say that in the Trip #1 story? YES! But that trip was a week or so earlier. Surely, the prices on those flat panels wouldn't be as ludicrous as before. Surely, they would have dropped hundreds of dollars. Surely, she's a 70-year-old woman who heeds the advice of living fossils in basements turned into beauty parlors. Anyway, Best Buy in New Jersey has the same two TVs as the one in Philly. Still, she's not sure. There must be some TV out there better. Maybe we should look to the skies and follow the star. We'll find the perfect TV somewhere in a manger.

So we head over to Circuit City. She is completely thrown into a dizzying whirlpool of disbelief at the prices of the flat panel TVs. Yes, I needed to repeat that again, because it's exactly what I fucking heard. It's all part of the experience, you see. Oh, and by the way, I had taken a laxative the night before, due to a little constipation I had been having. So in between the TV discussions, I'm running to the bathroom with the squirts. Somehow, it all made sense. Shopping for a TV for my mother and stomach distress. Yeah, all good.

Well, she's not impressed with the selection at Circuit City. Of the massive collection of two tube TVs they have, only one is a brand she recognizes, and she's worried it won't fit into her entertainment center. Oh shit. I forgot the dimensions. I forgot a tape measure. Suddenly, I'm in full panic mode. Oh dear sweet Lord baby Jesus, my world is collapsing around me. I can't measure it to assure her that either one of these will fit. They will FIT!

My mind is slowly disintegrating into a powdered substance. "Let's go back to Best Buy and get the $300 flat screen tube TV," I say. She's not sure it will fit and she doesn't know the brand. She's almost in tears on the ride back to Best Buy. I'm not kidding. She's crying over the decision to buy a $300 TV. I assure her it will fit, because it's the SAME TV I MEASURED THE WEEK BEFORE! We look at it again. From every angle. I tell her this is the one, and to buy it now. She's still a bit unsure. I call my brother and tell him I think we're close to buying one and ask him to meet us at her house to help carry and hook up the TV. First, he has to assure her that it will fit. I tell him to bring a hammer. Not for the TV or the entertainment center. But to hit me on the back of the head as hard as he could.

SHE BUYS THE TV. Oh, thank you God.

If you think it's over, it's not. In the next blog, I'll tell you about hooking up the TV.

So now you know what agita means.

Ode To My Belly

Every once in a while, I look through a folder of stuff I wrote or worked on years ago. Well, I was going through an old portfolio of work I did way back in the late '80s, when hair was still big and movie popcorn was still made with heart-stopping oil and real butter. One of the things I found was a folder of short stories and poems I had written for a creative writing course I had taken for fun. And so, in the interest of sharing the pain, I've decided to release one of the more tolerable poems to you, my dear readers. Of course, while others in the class were writing poems about nature and love and pain, I was writing about Marilyn Monroe, buses, bills and this; my belly. I decided not to share the short story about the voyeuristic psycho. Some things are better left in a folder, buried under junk. (I was in a weird place at that time.) Enjoy.

ODE TO MY BELLY

Is there any part of me more obvious than you?
Hiding my buckle under your bulk,
And straining to free yourself from the confines of buttons.
Your firm roundness, ever salient,
Becoming more and more difficult to hide under the bagginess of a sweater.

An insufferable breadbasket,
Basking at the beach.
Flaunting your prominence,
And quickly contracting for the bikini-clad beauty.

Just a rotund tummy are you,
Prodding me to the larger sizes,
The way you forced me into the husky section,
When we were both young, but just as prolific.

What a cantankerous protuberance,
Making your presence known at the most inopportune times.
A romantic tryst, a job interview, or a quiet moment
Is not the proper place to sing your song,
My dear gurgling gullet.

You are my meal clock,
Alerting me to feeding time.
And I, your slave, generously oblige.
With wine and ravioli,
With pizza and beer,
or a thick slab of Italian cream cake.
And only rarely do you complain afterwards,
Gripping my innards with your sinewy fingers
As the rest of you flops and flounders.

I look at you, my grand belly,
Thinking of the wondrous buffets we've shared,
Of the hearty laughs that left you all a-jiggle,
And the smoothness of your skin laid upon hers as we love.

You, the buttoned maw of my jolly rotundity,
That, by a life sustaining cord did you unite me to a mother,
You that delegates the vital nutrients to the proper parts of me.
Would it be fair to diet you with Tofu and cottage cheese?
I should say not.

Do you care for fries with that Whopper?

by Steve DiMeo

P.S. The picture is not representative of my current belly, nor should it be considered as anything but a photo illustration of the title of this blog. Thank you for your consideration. -The Management.

Blogalicious!

I started writing posts for several different topics, but then realized none of them were working for me. So, I thought, screw it. I'm just going to write whatever comes into my head.

Underdogs.
Hey, I just watched the movie, Invincible, in which some regular schmo from South Philly, who plays football with his buddies on weekends, tries out for the Philadelphia Eagles and makes the team. Not only does he make it, he becomes one of the team's all time favorite players. It's the whole underdog from Philly makes good story, made so famous by that other Italian guy. You know, the one with the boxing gloves and the cement skull. Sometimes these stories make me think about my own life and how I never really wound up as the victorious underdog. If I was the underdog in something, hell, I lost. So I try to avoid those underdog situations. Although I do like Underdog cartoons.

My Ears! Damnit! My EARS!
I have to endure American Idol every Wednesday night, because it's the night I have the kids, and my daughter loves it. Last night, the 10 female singers mangle classic songs from the '70s. Some frightening Lily Munster looking chick completely embarrassed herself singing Kansas' "Carry On My Wayward Son." I prayed the electricity would go out just to spare me the pain. The night before, I flipped it on only to see a few of the men slap on their incredibly annoying histrionics to such great songs as "Imagine." Okay, why can't anyone just sing anymore? Just sing the song. I don't need to hear every single note you can hit throughout the song. I mean, the kid sang well, but the song lost every single ounce of real feeling. John Lennon sang it with such simple conviction that it really meant something. This performance reduced the song to a series of voice exercises. Elvis actually shot the TV because Robert Goulet was on it, singing, as the King put it, "With all technique and no feeling." Too bad I didn't have a gun. Or a crossbow. Or even a water pistol.

Weather or not.
What is it about old people and weather? Where are they going that they need to be constantly interested in what it's doing out? While I'm on my old people thing, why do they insist on taking all the early appointments at doctors or dentists? I have somewhere to be, Rip Van Winkle! I have to go to work. You have to pass wind, eat saltines and watch the Weather Channel all day. Give me a break!

I like beer.
Really, I do. It's good. But not Bud. Bud gives me the winds. I avoid getting the winds as much as possible. Just as I spend most of my awake hours making sure no sharp objects come near my eyes and groin. Oh, and I like vodka too. Vodka tonics, vodka martini (a wee bit dirty), vodka vodka, White Russians. I'm no alcoholic, but I know what I like. And I don't like getting gas from Bud. Although farting can be funny.

Hold me closer, tiny digits.
I once took out this woman who had a really small fingers. Like, so small, they reminded me of those little cocktail wieners. But she had the nails manicured and perfectly painted with a bright red color. I wondered why she would want to draw any attention to those stubs stuck on the ends of her hands. If my fingers looked like that, I would try to keep all eyes away from my hands. I know, I'm no long-fingered godly-handed man, and she was very nice, and I guess I was being very mean and petty, but the fingers were just really creepy. I did try to call her for a second date, but she said we weren't a good match. She said she couldn't wrap her fingers around a reason why, it just wasn't there for her.

Ring-A-Ding-Ding!
My place of employment is doing some work for a local/regional snack cake company and we have samples of other brands all over the office. I am now eating a Ring Ding. Oh yes. And I've gotta tell ya, I haven't had one of these chocolate enrobed (love that word) cream filled goodies in a dog's age, but they have not changed at all. Not one bit. You know how Count Chocula and Alpha Bits and Coco Puffs all kind of changed their recipes to be a little more healthy or something. Well, those swell folks at Drakes gave the finger to the fat fighters and said, "We're not changing our ass swelling, gut growing goodness for you namby pamby joy killers. Our Ring Dings will stay exactly the same as they've always been!" And God said, Ring Dings are good. Going back for a Yodel. Let's hope they didn't fuck with those...

Until next time, when I'll have one topic to stick to, enjoy the weather before you get old and start complaining about it.

Sweet Jesus.

For Valentine's Day, the kids gave me a big Reese's Cup shaped like a heart. It's about the size of my fist and weighs about the same as a couple inches of ass fat. Of course, I'm eating it. Slowly. Eaten in one sitting, something like that could send a perfectly healthy person into permanent diabetic shock, and clog every artery in and outside of my body. Not only would my heart stop beating, and my brain stop functioning, but highways would be tied up for miles and the Hoover Dam would stop producing energy.

As a kid, chocolate was one of my four basic food groups, along with sugar-infused breakfast cereal, spaghetti, and Pixie Sticks. I remember licking the bowl and the mixer blades after my grandmother mixed the batter for her chocolate cake. Oh, crap, was that freakin' good. Except for the one time when the mixer was still on.

The family would pile in the car every summer and head out to Hersheypark, in Hershey, Pennsylvania. A whole damn town dedicated to the ideals and worldwide contributions of chocolate. Sweet Jesus! Yeah, they had one of those, too. You could eat the head off it, like the bunnies at Easter. Anyway, you would get within a mile of the chocolate factory and the air would be thick with the glorious scent of cocoa. The sweet, beautiful perfume that attracts pimpled-faced teens and flabby housewives from all over the country. Oh, sure, there were amusement rides and shows, but that all took a backseat to the tour of the chocolate factory. Pools of chocolate being mixed in giant vats. I imagined myself being Augustus Gloop, diving into the Willie Wonka's lake of chocolate. Okay, so I was a weird kid.

Easter was always a good time for ODing on chocolate. Even that cheap, waxy, imitation chocolate flavored chocolate they make those Dollar Store bunnies with would do in times of choco-crisis. I mean, it kind of felt like chocolate in your mouth, and there was a taste resembling chocolate, but when the Hershey's and Reese's were gone, a guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do, right?

Today, chocoholics are trying to find any possible way to ensure that chocolate isn't relegated to the list of "stuff that's so bad for you we have to get the government to issue laws changing how you make it." I would hate to see chocolate go the way of movie popcorn, fried chicken and trans fats. So now, they've found that dark chocolate provides anti-oxidants, and it's good to have a little each day. I would have loved to be in that room when they came up with that one. What's next? Milk chocolate with almonds can help urinary tract infections? Baby Ruth bars restore hair? Mounds relieve gout?

So, I will go on enjoying this gift from my kids for as long as I can. A little in the morning, a bite in the afternoon. And probably will be done it just in time for the Easter candy to show up. Oh, sweet Jesus. Mmmmm, really sweet.

Life in a Wintry Mix.

Last night, the area was hit with what the faux-expert imbeciles we know as "weatherpeople" call a "wintry mix." What it consists of is snow, ice, sleet, freezing rain and kicks in the head with a steel-toed boot. It also comes with a heaping helping of brain-loss from every driver on the road. Suddenly, it's like no one behind the wheel ever took a driving lesson in their life. I really think that driving instructors should take the time to teach people how to drive in bad weather. If you can't pass the "wintry mix" driving portion of the test at the DMV, then hand over the keys and get your dumb ass back to driving school, schmuck.

My PT Cruiser has 93,000 miles on it, and frankly, I doubt if it will make it to 100,000. What with the vigorous commute everyday, I really think she's trying to tell me through osmosis that it's time to pull the plug. "Just stop the nonsense, Steve, and put me out of my misery. Why are you doing this to me? What did I do to you, other than provide a means of getting where you need to be...Damn you!" But she muddled through the slushy mess last evening at two miles an hour, and that was in the good spots. It was like I got the extended DVD edition of my commute. Usually 45 minutes, it was expanded to the complete two hour-45 minute director's cut, complete with deleted material and never-before-seen footage. Oh, and plenty of bloopers. If there was a bright side to the whole evening's festivities, it was that I wasn't on the other side of the road, where a tractor trailer was jackknifed across the highway, blocking all the lanes, with traffic at a complete standstill for miles. Nice going, good buddy. Should've put away the Carmen Electra hand-puppet and worried about driving instead. Of course, there was the whole rubberneckin' thing happening on my side of the road, but since traffic was back up anyway, it just made the whole thing more laughable.

So, how does one keep sane when puttering along, while the heavens spew the icy diarrhea down upon the area? Well, here's a quick diary of my commute:

Hour One was just dread. Okay, not that I had anything to do on this particular evening, except make some dinner, chat on the phone, go over some papers from class, watch Family Guy, throw a load of laundry into the wash, and pee, but there's nothing on that list that says sit in my car and wait for some jackass to hit me from behind because he doesn't understand the phrase "safe distance." I have the news channel on the radio, until I get tired of hearing about the traffic that I'm sitting in and the shitty weather all over. Why do I need weather updates from people on the scene in other parts of the area? It's a crappy night wherever you are. There. Report done, move onto the more pleasant shooting, robbery and extortion stories. So I put on a CD, but I don't feel like singing yet. I did yell a couple times. I curse at all the people around me and want to know what the hell makes them think they're allowed on my road to home. Stupid bastards. Oh yeah, and I have to pee, and it's getting worse with each press of the brake pedal.

Hour Two. Slowly, clarity takes over. I'm moving toward the light. I begin singing whatever I'm playing on the CD. Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Bobby Darin, Elvis, William Shatner. It doesn't matter. My mind has become a sloppy bowl of tapioca pudding. All I'm seeing are red brake lights and Jesus. I begin to laugh at the senselessness of it all. The utter insanity. I throw on Amy Winehouse, hoping some talented, yet coked-up wacko's cool music will bring me back to earth. It doesn't. And I still have to pee. I'm tasting uric acid at this point. And then, my low gas light dings on.

The final 45 minutes. My mother calls. I don't answer. I can't. My one hand is on the steering wheel, the other is on my crotch. If I move one, I crash. If I move the other, I pee myself. My mother has this uncanny ability to know exactly when the absolute worst time to call is, and she never fails. I've gone through most of the CDs in my car. I'm back to the weather reports and traffic updates. There is now traffic where there aren't even streets or roads. There is traffic going up the sides of buildings in Center City. There is traffic backed up down the cereal aisle at Pathmark. There is frigging traffic everywhere and my mother calls me. My bladder is the size of Idaho and the little gas light shaped like a gas pump on my dash is searing it's red light into my brain like a branding iron. Just then, a fat, bearded woman in a big gas-sucking SUV veers through two lanes of traffic and cuts in front of me. I wish I could hang my schlong out the window and spray her oversized Global Warming mobile with my piss, like a fire boat hosing down a burning tanker. In my mind, she's flipped over on the side of the road, because I'm Magneto and have the ability to lift even her monstrous vehicle and what I'm sure is a monstrous ass, and send them both flying into a mangled mess of twisted metal and broken bones with the waggle of my finger.

I get off the expressway, finally, and find that the two minute ride from there to my place is also backed up. It's another fifteen minutes to go three blocks. I grab the first parking spot I could find and make it into my apartment just in time to keep the urine from squirting out my eye sockets.

My car made it through. My bladder made it through. My sanity nearly intact. I sit down for a quick bite, and watch the news to see those poor bastards still out on the roads. Whoever said hell is hot never drove through a wintry mix.

Length and Girth.

We've all heard that "size matters" or that "it's not the size, it's what you do with it that counts." I believe both. Especially when it comes to blogs. Yeah, I know, you thought I was talking about something else. That's a trick us writers use. It's called "Bait and Switch." You thought you were going to read a blog about one thing and here, it's about something else. Now that's funny.

Okay, maybe not. Anyways, I think one of my problems with getting a post up here regularly is because I'm really concerned with the size and quality of what I'm posting. I worry that it may be too short, or not top-notch, grade-A quality. (Pretty much the way I worry about size and quality of other things. Like dinner, for example. See, Bait and Switch again. I kill me.) I like to take my time. I started writing the last one on January 26th, but didn't post it until early February. Just when I think I'm done and ready to post, I read it over and decide to change a few things. Like the first three paragraphs. And the last two. And the one in between. I finesse and fiddle with the words until I'm really happy. Then I hit "publish post." I read it again when it's up and go back and edit it again and republish. Yes. I can be anal. Retentive, that is. But it's all to bring you the Live Musings Nightly you've come to know and love, at the absolute best quality you expect from yours truly.

Maybe someday, I'll write a quick post, just a few lines and publish it without proofing it. But it might be a while before that happens. Most of my daily work routine is to crank out copy with impossibly short deadlines. So I pick up some old copy, write a few new transitions, churn out some workable headlines, shove it all in a dirty sock, spin it around and slap it into Word. There. Copy done. Move on to the next piece of marketing mumbo jumbo.

I don't want that to happen with this blog. I care too much about my subject and about you, my dear readers. Oh, you're welcome. I'm just glad you like it.

Of course, it doesn't help that my life has been busier than a crab louse in an Italian's groin. (Not that I know that situation personally, mind you...) There's always something keeping me from writing. Like other writing. I do freelance copywriting, which can be really fun, because you can spend time doing interesting things, send it off, and invoice them. Nice work if you can get it. And then, there's my class. As I may have mentioned in the past, I'm teaching a Continuing Education class called "Copywriting: Writing Effective Marketing Materials" at University of the Arts. I always thought I wanted to teach, and now, I'm glad I'm doing it. I have a great bunch of students who actually listen to me. I'm not used to people listening to me. I was the middle child. I didn't get listened to. I got the little nod, as if to say, "That's nice, Steve, can we move on to something more interesting? Like passing the ketchup for the meatloaf?" But, if I can help people become better writers, that's totally cool. I've been doing this job for almost 23 years, and it's about time to share the pain.

Okay, back on track. So, there's class lessons to put together and assignments to go over. Oh yeah, in between all that other stuff and time with the kids, I try to squeeze in a little social life that I like to think I have. That life, up till now, has just been a series of online dating and beer swilling with the boys. Not bad for a guy. Although, not great for a guy of 44.

So what I'm saying is, be patient with me. I love writing this blog and plan to continue. I hope you continue reading. It may not ever be live musings that are actually nightly, but rest assured, they'll be timely. And of great length and girth. Just to keep the women happy, of course.