One night, seven years ago, I guess, I was sitting at home stone cold sober with not a whole hell of a lot going on―and on a New Year’s Eve to boot―and I thought it would be fun to start a blog. The name that I gave it was either serendipitous, or pretentious, or just plain stupid.
Because the next day, I tried to change the
name to something a little catchier, less derivative, and less lofty in terms
of aspirations, but every name I chose (I
found out by researching, this time), had already been taken. And this one,
as luck would have it (golly goober!),
had not. I didn’t have a hair in my ass about what I wanted a blog for, and in
the course of trial and error, I decided that I would write 26 stories, each
one about somebody or some inspiration whose name or title each began (in
sequence) with a letter of the alphabet from A to Z. The idea was to attract
some attention to a book that I’d written, the cover of which has adorned the
margin of this blog from the beginning.
I’m proud to say that I was successful on
both counts: and I don’t know what the
other guy who bought Muchácho
thinks of it, but I almost put it on my list of favorite books (because when
you spend two years writing a book and it’s not a favorite of yours, you’re either
completely egoless or somebody else wrote it for you) but I didn’t think
anybody would get the joke. So, at least, a 50% favorable rating ain’t bad at
all. And there are two other covers going in the margin as soon as I get to it (if I haven’t forgotten how to do it).
And the 26 stories are done. And I start a lot of sentences with “And” because somebody
once told me it was biblical. And I checked it out. And it’s true.
So now it’s New Year’s Eve (seven?) years later. And I haven’t made
an entry in this blog yet this year. And I feel that I should.
In some years, on New Year’s Eve, I made
some predictions for the coming months and published them here. I’m not going
to make it this year (although I’m still sober), but I’ll work on them tomorrow
and publish them here as “The Book of I
say…'uh...'".
Have a Happy New Year!
Noe.
