My Secret (so-called) Identity
Let's say you have two cars in your household. Let's just say. Car #1 and car #2.
Let's say you drive car #1 ninety percent of the time. You only drive car #2 when car #1 is otherwise engaged.
Let's say that when you drive car #2, let's say to the grocery store, and you come out into the parking lot and look around, sometimes you forget. It happens, right? For a moment or two, you get confused and then you remember. Stay with me here.
Now let's say that car #2 isn't getting driven a lot lately, because its primary driver has gone to Texas to attend college. Let's say you decide it would be good for car #2 to be taken out for a spin, even though you're secretly afraid car #2 might just think it was a good time to blow up on you.
So you go the grocery store, say, and you come out -- and parked next to car #2, which has not blown up yet, thank God, is a car that looks exactly like car #1.
OK, I made you work way too much for that. But, as I always say, if you're lacking a really decent metaphor then you just have to play the hand that life has dealt you.
If you're still reading, try to imagine the disorientation, the confusion. You stare at these cars, and for a good 20 seconds or so you wonder what you drove. You didn't really forget; you're just presented with the option that maybe you did.
I've felt this way lately. A lot.
I write a weekly newspaper column. Just a little one, which I'm attempting (with varying amounts of energy) to syndicate to the entire world. So that I can write one column a week and do nothing else. This has not been totally successful so far.
Since I write only one column per week, I take my time. I think a lot. I write some drafts. I wait for inspiration. I do the computer version of doodling. I take it easy.
But I also write for other publications, from time to time, so I can be doodling away and suddenly think that this one might be suitable for, say, the Times, and I can think of another topic for my column and make extra money, which is always nice.
Still with me? But now I have a blog. I have you, my friends in the blogosphere, who drop by to read occasionally. So I write every day, and I'll be typing away and suddenly forget what I drove.
Am I'm blogging or writing a column, or both or neither? Sometimes I post my column on the blog and sometimes I take blogs and incorporate them into a column, and sometimes I wake up and just decide to make fun of the President of the United States.
This is my Secret Identity. By day I'm a mild-mannered writer who tries to take ordinary events in his unremarkable life and spin them into 800 words that people will want to read while the bagel is cooling a little.
And then the Bat Signal lights up and I race downstairs to make the world safe for democracy.
You have to understand. I have my beliefs and feelings and issues, but my passion has dimmed with age and disappointment, and mostly I look for humanity. Rush is just an over-achieving DJ who got a hook and ran with it, right? Behind the bluster he must be a regular guy, right? Bill O'Reilly is a bully and a blowhard on TV, but one-on-one we could have a good conversation, right? Reagan was an extremely pleasant man and Clinton was very smart and Hillary is smarter, Dubya is congenial and friendly and someone out there must love Tom DeLay, although I can't imagine who.
I hope you follow me here. I wallow in wishy-washiness. I want to believe the best of people. But sometimes I get a bug up my butt and I decide to make some jokes, and, God help me, somebody says, "Hey! This will really piss people off!" and prints it.
Wesley Clark threw his hat in the ring the other day and I wondered what they were thinking in the White House, and so I decided to make stuff up. It looks like the Seattle Times will publish it next week. The last time I ventured out into political satire I got 600 emails in two days, including one from a woman in France who said I had the only brain in America. Which was nice enough, but I kept thinking about Stephen Hawking. A lot of them also speculated on my brain but, you know, not in a nice way.
So, we'll see. Just a Heads Up here. I'll post a link when and if it happens. It could fall through. Or they might publish it and it'll appear and then slink away, not funny enough to raise anyone's blood pressure. Or the Anti-Bushies will grab it and link to it in a million sites, and I'll get emails from people about the size of my brain and other parts of my body, not all of them complimentary.
Some lady in France will come to my defense and some guy in Oklahoma will talk about how hanging is too good for me, and I'll try to laugh and tell people I was just trying to get a few chuckles and know that the mask and cape are awkward and they itch, and I was really just wondering where I parked, is all.
7:41:29 AM 
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