But I Said It!

I may go to sleep soon. I'm tired, but I'm more exhausted than I am tired, and I think "still" will be good enough. I worked today and I'm still sick, and the only thing good I can say about that is that it doesn't appear to be the same "sick" as I was earlier this year when I had recurring bronchitis. That was some bad stuff. This is bad and persistent but just different. Not so chesty. More in the head. Yay. (Said feebly with great weakness.)

I've got my new site feed live and all, and I'm beginning to transfer some of my archives to the new blog. I'm moving the "best of," because I know it's where I generate a lot of hits. May as well have people exploring their curiosity on the new site, right? Stats are everything in the big world of the web.

But it's bound to get interesting.

I think I've realized the fatal flaw in how I am: I spend too much time writing and not enough time reading my own work. I forget sometimes that, yes, I really do know how to spin a phrase. Yes, I do understand cadence and rhythm. Yes, I do operate well within literary devices.

We lowly write-types often live a little too much in the moment to be able to properly assess our abilities. Once in a while I'll let my guard down, sit around, and find something old-ish of mine to read. Then I have that occasional "Say what? I wrote that? Get out!" kind of moment where I've taken myself by surprise.

It's really unfortunate that we tend to get labelled if we recognize our own talents. Oh, she's tooting her own horn. Bah, he's such a cocky guy. Pfft, she's so full of herself.

Every now and then I think it's important to just say, "Fuck it, man, I do this well. It's why I do what I do." You know?

I know my weaknesses with writing. I tend to be a lazy editor. I'm verbose and need to explore the secret land of brevity. I know. I'm too conversational. (Depends who's opining.) I break lots of rules and start far too many sentences with "and" and "but."

I tend to forget my skills. I tend to forget things I've written that I quite like. I was told by a co-worker at the old job that it's uncouth to quote yourself. I think that's a very, very stupid rule, because you're the one who wrote it. Who knows what parts to quote better than you? Dumb rule.

I'm going to break that rule on my new blog. I'm going to quote all my shit. Fuck that. If Oprah can put her photo on every goddamned issue of her magazine, well, goddamn it, I can quote my own damn self. Fuck convention and the stupid horse it rode in on.

While I'm transferring posts over, I will read them. Sigh. There will be low points, I know.

There was this time, way back when, when I was hanging with this chick who was a bit nutty but always sweet. We were 17 or 18 at the time and she was already a bearded woman. It bothered us all that she didn't bleach or something. I digress. Anyhow, let's call her Ella.

Ella and I were having 3a.m. mochas at a vegetarian stronghold here in Vancouver called The Naam. (Home to the worst service ever. During the quiet pre-dawn hours, I once ordered a warmed-up blueberry muffin with butter. I got a cold muffin, no butter. "I ordered butter and this warmed up?" So, I get it back: cold muffin, butter. "Warmed up?" It comes back burnt. Motherfuckers. No tip for you, fuckwit.)

...we were at The Naam. Mochas. All of a sudden, this man rages into the shop. "It's Sally," says Ella.

"You know this nutjob?"

"Yeah. He's a local legend."

The character in question, Sally, was a man in his early '60s. He had breasts. Not moobs (man tits). I'm talking Betty Boop-boobs, all right? He wore a dirty blue button-down shirt all wrinkled and hanging loose from his scruffed-up khakis. It wasn't the dirty clothes catching my eye, though. It was the machete he was now waving haphazardly through the air.

"I want my mocha," he bellowed.

Apparently this happened a lot. The machete was possibly new, but the routine was not. Sally, it turns out, was (as legend had it) a result of government testing with hormones in the '60s. Half-way to a she-man, (s)he received no further treatment or alterations. It was said that the testing was all done to mentally unbalanced persons.

Who knows. Sally was definitely one egg short of a dozen. The waving machete settled down quickly and Sally took a seat with his/her mocha and just limply flopped the knife back and forth, as if watching reflections playing across the blade.

The cops came and took Sally away for a night's sleep someplace else. Ella and I returned to conversation. I said, "Where were we?"

She replied, "Somewhere between Steffinity and Steffisms."

It wasn't really my fault. She kept asking me questions, so I naturally had to answer. She said it rather warmly, though, with a nice smile, so I always kind of reflect on that and get a warm fuzzy. Not a lot of people are active listeners, but she was. She was the kind of person who seemed to just drink you in.

Then there was the beard. Sigh.

My point? I'm going to call my little quotey section "Steffisms." Why the hell not, indeed.