Blogs Are Hard

You know this.

Either you write them or you read them or both.

And I have no advice to give you to make them easier.

Shall I mention that I chuckle when I see George Takei hawking Sharp Quatro TVs? Because he's awesome.

But is telling you THAT a good use of my time? It was on a commercial that ran while I am half-watching SPACE channel (a repeat of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine- The Way of the Warrior is on. This is also awesome.)

I'm not doing very well at uni-tasking right now, as you're guessed. But now that the Klingons have withdrawn from the Khitomer Accords I'll shut the TV down and finish this little literary abortion.

I don't know what I'm doing.

There's three months gone from the time I set myself to finish writing a novel. Know what I've done? Jack-Effing-Crap.

So, if I review Geo. Alec Effinger's 1972 debut novel 'What Entropy Means To Me' by saying I dislike it in every respect, is that because I'm jealous? Yes. Yes, it is.

Also, I barely understand it, thanks to the generous helpings of intellectal literary references and what may be liberal sprinklings of in-jokes. (It might be a satire, since my personal definition of satire is an unfunny parody, usually with an obscure moral purpose. And if I add that it seems pretentious or self-indulgent it's like admitting I'm not smart enough to understand what he was doing. Which is totally true. I'm not.)

It's a sort-of fantasy quest story with an unreliable narrator Seyt, spinning whimsy about his probably dead brother Dore, while their mad incestuous family of book-drowning royals on the planet Home apparently give each other lobotomies while vying for religious and political power over one another.

Among other things, I think Effinger was suggesting that the fantasy quest novel was dead or overdone. While this is almost certainly true, in some sense, it is rather disheartening to dwell on the opinion that even 40 years ago everyone already knew that everything had already been written already, and by better than the likes of YOU.

It sucks the wind out of my sails whenever I realise that I don't have the creative chops to do what I wish I could do.

And so I blog.

Maybe if I keep practicing I'll be a writer someday.

As The Refreshments put it in their song 'Down Together':

"Whoever said there's nothing new under the sun

Never thought much about individuals, but he is dead anyway."