File under: New Beginnings>Worlds By Storm

Here I am rocking out to Abba and planning my grand return to the blog-o-sphere. If you felt that emptiness in cyber-space...that was me...or the lack there of.

Filed under: Fame > Comments

Sigh! Everyday the new naive blogger checks to see if anyone left any comments. Comments from his wife don't count...cause she knows how often he sighs and wishes someone would leave a comment. Sigh!

Filed under: Publishing > Egalitarianism

Getting published used to be an expensive operation...I mean back in the 1800s they had to set type by hand. Now that'll run up your prices. Today any Joe Shmoe can get published. Please read this New York Times article "You're an Author? Me too!". Printing books is very cheap now, in part because of computers, but also there are different ways to get read now...like blogging for instance. Once I publish this blog it could be potentially read by almost everyone in the world. There's a good chance that no one will read it...but that is not the point. Of course, some would argue that allowing everyone to be published means that anything of real quality will be buried under a heap of mediocrity. But real literary genius had always taken centuries to rise to the top. In the US an average of 172,000 titles are published a year. Since most Americans read less than 5 books a year, we are falling way behind the curve. I myself won't read anything written after 1900. I think it takes at least a hundred years for the good stuff to rise to the top. Another way to look at it is, say 5 good books are written every year, the average American has almost no chance of reading any of them! So my attitude is; relax...stick to books published a hundred years ago and you will be fine.

Filed under: Gravitational Pull > Global Warming

Quick note: I checked this morning and I have the 7th, 8th and 9th spot on a Google search. Keep up the good work me!

I believe Global Warming is contributing to an increase in the gravitational pull of the Earth. Yesterday, Shirley and I went climbing for the first time in a year. My harness had shrunk so I had to use one of the spare gym harnesses I had lying around. Our first climb was Bunny a 5.4...considered an easy climb. Now I climbing in the Gunks like a madman from 1994 to 2004...and I'm sure I climbed Bunny several times a year, so I've climbed it at least 30 times. You could say I'm familiar with the climb. But this time, it was a real struggle. I didn't even try to do the small roof at about 60 feet...which I soloed once. It didn't help that my climbing shoes had shrunk also. I was in real pain. I did make it to the top eventually, but I think Global Warming is going to be really tough on my climbing career.

Filed under: Feeding Frenzy > Caffeinated Piranhas

I didn't start drinking coffee until I turned 40, so I feel like I missed out on a large part of American culture. Every morning now at 9:00 I go up to the cafe on the first floor to get my mega-iced coffee. And boy do I get surly if there are a lot of people there before me. There's always one person blocking the coffee machines and doing inexplicable things like slowly adding packets of sugar to taste. I feel like screaming, "You should know how many packets of sugar go into your coffee, you moron!!!!" Or if some schmuck is searching for lids or holders, "You are standing between me and sanity!!!" In fact, the whole scene, as a mob of people desperately cluster and surge around the coffee machines every morning reminds me of a mob of Hyenas feeding at the carcass of a Gazelle or over-caffeinated Piranhas feasting on a surfer.

Of course, after I've had my mega-iced coffee, I can gaze on my fellow humans with a great deal of complacency. At that point its more like, "Go ahead my good man, take your time...there's plenty of coffee to go around...and no Piranhas in sight."

Filed under: Procrastination > Fortitude

I really want to blog everyday, even when I don't have anything to say. I want to be able to look back 50 years from now and say, "For 50 years, a never missed a day of blogging, Sonny Boy!", to some poor schmuck in charge of changing my Depends. Of course, its highly unlikely that I have that kind of fortitude. We shall see.

Filed under: Fame > Google Rankings

My one ambition in life is to make it to the top of the Google rankings. That is; if one were to Google 'David Merle', I want something about me to come up first. Right now, I have the 7th and 9th spots...which is not bad....but I think I can do better. The question is how? Of course, I could simply do something to make myself actually famous, but after thinking hard about ways to do that for up to two minutes, I decided that becoming actually famous is too much hard work and probably involves guns. So I will have to settle for wanting it really, really bad...and putting myself out there in cyber-space...like with this blog. I don't think anyone actually has to read or look at the stuff I create, it is enough that I create it. The lucky thing is, there is not a lot of competition for the top spot of 'David Merle' in the Google search rankings, so I just might make it.

Another thing I have been trying to do, is make a society of David Merles from around the world. I already chatted with a David Merle in France, who is a really nice guy. However, the David Merle in Germany has so far spurned my attempts at friendship. Maybe he thinks I am an impostor. Or maybe Germans just don't have much of a sense of humor.

Oh, drat! I just realized that by linking to David Merle of France on my blog, I helped him to keep his number two spot in the Google search rankings!