My New Invention

I had an idea in the shower the other day. I'm not certain why most of my ideas occur to me in the shower but being wet and naked seem to be conducive to my cognitive faculty's. My back was sore from being hunched over the keyboard of my computer for hours on end and the hot water was soothing my stiff shoulders and neck when I thought that I had better come up with a way to sit at the computer that wasn't so hard on my poor posture. Sitting upright or laying down didn't seem to be working.

What I really needed was a kind of recliner that would hold my keyboard at just the right angle so I could type in comfort. But what if I could add every convenience possible to my new writers chair? What if I could create the Cadillac of writing furniture? What else would it need?

For starters, it would need a cup holder and an ash tray, surround sound and a waste basket. The seat must be of the finest Moroccan leather with heated massage settings of varying strengths. The chair would adjust it's support where I needed it most, and go soft and slack where I needed it. It would also have a fan feature that would caress my body from every angle, even underneath, to prevent bed sores. The air could be scented with the smell of my choosing, such as fresh cut grass, lilacs, bar room, or the sweet musky scent of sweaty sex. It would need a tap that would dispense the liquid beverage of my choice that would be dictated by my whim alone. At my elbow, day or night, it could provide an array of beers, coffees, teas, colas, as well as a finely crafted vodka martini replete with three olives. With these amenities, I could construct some fantastic works of literature.

But I am odd in the fact that I can't write with noise in room. I need it quiet, so that my too small brain can hear the echoes within it. This means that I would need a sound-proof booth to put the chair in, and why not make it globe shaped? The interior could be lined with screens to give the effect of an Imax theater for one, and it would have films of a busy street corner, the rain forest, a concert of my favorite band, a stormy night, the snowy view from the top of Mt. Everest, London during the blitz, to a Grand Canyon raft ride, all with appropriate sound tracks and vibrations. There would also be a mouse pad that I could comfortably run with my feet for those times when I find my hands full of drinks and sandwiches, or anything else for that matter.

And to maximize my writing chair time, it should be equipped with a way to eliminate my bodily wastes and a dentist's spit sink, so that the burden of having a mortal body could be lessened and my energies could be put to a greater and more focused goal.

It would also have a lock on the door and no clock.

When it comes to constructing this modern marvel that Dickens would have given his left nut for, I am not the one to build it. I am "good with my hands" in the sense that I can screw and unscrew a light bulb, can drive a straight nail, and know which end of a firearm to hold. Beyond that, you had better hire a trained professional and not rely on my duct tape mastery. So should any of my readers have some kind of engineering degree or are just plain ol' handy, drop me a line.

We could make millions!

Doc

A Few Ideas For Those Engaged In National Blog Posting Month

November is National Blog Posting Month and those who sign up for this grueling task are required to post every day for the entire month. Every year I tell myself that I am going to do this marathon of blogging and every year I fail for the same reason. My birthday falls on 11/1 and after a full day of celebrating, I am rarely sober enough to find the keyboard, let alone write in coherent sentences. So I've botched it from the start.

For those of you looking to pad your blog with something other than YouTube videos of cute kittens or music that no one but you could give a fig about, let me offer up a few suggestions for topics to write about. These are also good suggestions for those of us bloggers who only have one good idea a month or have run into a "dry spell" or the even more debilitating "writer's block", the most dreaded of blog diseases.

What follows is a list of topics/titles that anyone can pick up and run with, without any real preparation and require only a smidgen of thought to complete. The linked suggestions are ones I've tried myself. Such as: Eight rules for dating my Ex. An article written as if it were an auditory tour of your home. Frigidity in Men. The goofy advice column. A parody of the hard-boiled detective story. Off-kilter fantasies or four short-lived crushes. An inappropriate children's book. What people thought of you at ages eleven through fifteen. Cartoon lawsuits. Aesop's screwy fables. Why aliens would want to kidnap you. An unlikely conversation between two animals. Someone famous from history uses Email or Twitter or Facebook for the first time and is addicted. How you embraced the concept of total honesty for a few days. Waiting for someone who is late, broken down by time. How to suffer fools gladly. Your blog is presented as a PBS pledge drive or a QVC commercial. Advice that an elderly James Bond might offer over drinks. An article written like the descriptions for expensive things in a catalog. A faux high school reunion newsletter. Describe your home as if it were a travel brochure for a foreign country. Write about yourself as if it were a celebrity "tell-all" book. A prayer to God to not let you die in a funny way. Write your living will. Explain something hard to understand stupidly. A character study of an idiot or boob that you know. If you were one of Jesus' disciples, what kind of disciple would you be? (Great for atheists or agnostics!) Tell us about your first sexual experience and the hilarity that followed. Describe a new drug on the market with it's unlikely side effects. What would your resignation letter to your blog sound like? You are publishing your first CD, what would you put in the liner notes? Tell us about doing a simple task badly. (This is perhaps my best video ever!) Make a long list of ideas you stole from comedy articles in the New Yorker magazine and pass them off as your own in the vain hope that this will make your friends think you are bright, savvy, and above all, generous.

I'd put a link up to the last one but you're reading it.

The staff here at Social Zymurgy; the culture of beer, would like to offer the above in an effort to aid struggling bloggers and writers everywhere because we all know that only poets and writers can save the world. We have left it in the hands of others for too long.

Doc