THE HAPPY FOOL

UM.

I recently went through every entry in this damn blog to correct the order of the illustrations in my Picasa album, and while doing so a few things became clear:

1. I can no longer start entries like this: "It's very late, and I was just about to fall asleep, but then I came downstairs and ate a crapload of sugar, and now I'm writing!!!" The number of times I've written a version of that sentence is very high. It is redundant. Therefore, although right now it is late, and I did just eat some sugar, and I am now writing instead of sleeping, I'm not going to say so.

2. I'm not as funny as I think I am. That realization was painful and depressing. While I write I often make myself laugh--I think I'm a gas*!--but in truth my wit is not always that sharp; sometimes it's actually pretty dull. After wincing my way through 150 entries, I just wanted to tell myself to shut up. Stop trying to be funny, Isabel!! Just shut up. Maybe it was the sound-of-your-own-voice thing, but I had a really hard time reading the entries and an even harder time finding what was meant to be funny, funny.

3. No more promises. This goes for promises about being a more giving person, about being a person who uses compostable diapers, and about being a person who is completing a children's book. Well, maybe the last promise is ok--I mean, I HAVE to do it, or I will KILL myself--but any other promises are a very bad idea. This applies to invitation-type promises too. No more of those. Those will only end in great sadness and regret.

4. Diarrhea makes excellent subject matter. Inherently hilarious, it always trumps the blogger-is-not-very-funny card and makes for an acceptable entry--especially if cake is mentioned. Cake and diarrhea, in fact, pretty much guarantee a laugh. At least from the writer.

5. Cut down on the damn words. We get it: you're an English major. You're very wooooordy. Very "SMART." Very "humble" while simultaneously a big showoff. Too many words are annoying. No one wants to read an epic account of your trip to the dentist with your kid. Well, maybe your parents do--maybe they do--but that's about it. So: cut words. Write like this: "Went to store. At store bought: bread, eggs, cake mix, chicken feet. Drove home. Unwrapped chicken feet. Saw maggots. Put maggots in cake mix. Cooked cake. Ate chicken feet and then cake. Had diarrhea."

6. Mid-entry, surreptitiously switch from first person to second person and even to third person plural. They can do this if they want: it's fun. If they call attention to it, they can continue, at length, at pains and at great labors, great, heaving labor pains, to underscore--nay, to emphasize!--their English majorness. He can already feel the glow of adoration from his reader in Kingsbaconbits, the gold hue that emanates from the love and admiration, the gilded bird which inside the cage sings at once with the bleating pig: "Heave, ho! You can do it, you know! Just get in that boat and row! To Jerusalem! To Squaw Valley! To squabs and such!"

"Nay, shush," says Nanny. "You mustn't: you are a nut. 'Twould be better to shut. Thy mouth. To linger prone upon a prawn."

"Ok," I say, "Nanny, you are right. With much ado and adon't I shall retire--pop a Benadryl to knock my brain out and sleep, at last, at long, yearning, keening last, the sleep

of the

Happy

Fool."

*a stinky one