Ne-twerking

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 21, Verse 2

"We can justify our every deed,

but God looks at our motives."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

So, I guess you're just not enough for me anymore.

Looks like my appetite is just too ravenous for only you to satisfy me they way I need to be.  There is a fire within.  There is a coal in the ember.  There is a pussball in the fistula.

(Sorry, that was disgusting-- hope you weren't eating.)

I'm doing something I haven't done since 2008, and I am horrified to fully comprehend just how long ago that was.  I joined a blogging network.  

Well, I haven't fully joined yet.  My "membership", such as it is, is pending.  It's been nearly 24 hours since I signed up.  I don't get it-- why the drama?  Are they scrutinizing me to make sure I have the necessary elan to stand beside the multitude of people writing about baking a different cupcake recipe every day for a year, or the freckle-shouldered English majors writing odes to Plath?  No.  They're more shrewd than that, these blogging network... people.  They're probably running my credit report right now, and examining my DNA on the ceiling at some shady motel under one of those "Dateline" black-lights.  Let them look-- whatever sordidly pusillanimous and shamefully wicked deeds and words and thoughts they might want to uncover are all here anyway.

Well, mostly here.   

I don't know why, on the one hand, I was so reluctant to join a blogging network.  I joined twentysomethingbloggers.com when I was, you know, a twentysomethingblogger, and I got a fair amount of readers out of it, and a couple friends (YES SOME OF MY FRIENDS CAME FROM TWENTYSOMETHINGBLOGGERS AND MY WIFE CAME FROM JDATE GET AND I CAME FROM OCDJEW.COM SO GET OVER IT) as well.  

But when I turned thirty, I checked out thirtysomethingbloggers and it was a haven for prescription drug and erectile dysfunction spam, which doesn't say many good things about thirtysomethings, but, needless to say, I was a little turned off.  So I bought some little blue pills from Canada and abandoned ship.

Nearly four years later, my little blue pills all well gone and my first blog suffering from a dysfunction all of its own, I began thinking about reaching a wider audience.  Why?  I mean, come on, people-- just LOOK at this blog: why should you get to keep ALL THE GENIUS to yourselves?  I suppose, of course, my "need" to be part of something larger, to gather more wide-eyed innocents at my knee for story time, speaks to the undeniable narcissism inherent in writing.  We like to pretend that it's this solitary pursuit, just a socially awkward, bespectacled guy in a t-shirt and corduroys listening to Maritime music on headphones while his children snore away in cribbies next door-- but that's just one part of it.  Then there's the part where we hit "Publish."

Publish (said derisively) It should be "Send."  What I do is "publishing" the way what Nicholas Cage does is "acting."  My mother kindly informed me on Sunday, while we were playing around with my children on her catfish vomit-hued living room carpet, that two of my former classmates had recently published successful books.  I knew about it, but it isn't real unless you hear it from somebody else.  You know, like your mother.

"I know, Ma."

"They got great write-ups in the Inquirer!" she announced.

"Honey," I said to my daughter who was jumping up and down on the rug in ecstacy, "would you please kill your grandmother for Daddy?"

She looked at me and laughed hysterically.  My daughter, that is.  My mother gave me a deadpan that could have slain Harvey Korman in his wingtips.  

So maybe that's what it is-- jealousy, wanting to be in a larger pool, a hunger for a more impactful twice a week jaunt into the writerly world.  Even if it's more Send than Publish.  But I think, of course, that it's about more than that.  It's about wanting some more connections.  To know that what I'm doing and saying is reaching people, people I know, people I don't know-- I don't really care who it is.  Because, as hermit-like and as quiet and as solitary as I can be and often want to be, there's that part of me, that small but very pungent part of me that wants to know you're there.  

And, if you've got a hot sister-- she can come too.  

Wrong, Sir, Wrong!

"What's wrong with the world?"

That's how it begins.  I mean, who wouldn't want to read on, right?

I suppose you'd like to know what's this all about, what is he doing here, what does he want from us, and why should we stop by here to visit?  Well, these are all good questions, and I want to be up front with you right from the start that I don't have very many answers.  At least, the answers that I do have aren't very good.

After two tries at anonymous blogging, I've decided to out myself.  To go public.  All natural.  Less sodium.  Full retard.  Why?  I don't know, because I'm stupid, I guess.  Because anonymity was too easy, too safe, too... fun?  Well, I'm a married man with twins, and Christ knows I shouldn't be having too much fun.  Or sodium.

Anyway, I was sitting at home one night this week picking my feet in Poughkeepsie when I had to pee.  "Bodily functions are so annoying," my wife frequently opines, and she's right.  They get in the way.  They're tiresome and routine, more so for some than others, and they interrupt moments of brilliance.  I know, I know, you're going to say that your bowel movements have inspired moments of genius, right?  You realized you just had to propose to so-and-so in mid stream, or you had that idea for invisible, razor-flavored chewing gum while you were straining for glory.  Well, you're just silly, that's what you are.

And I'm silly, too-- cuz it happened to me.  There I was, standing before the toilet when I looked up at our shelf that contains several literary offerings.  There's "What's Your Poo Telling You?" which is more reference guide than light reading, and there's a book I stole from Muhlenberg College's health center back in 2002 before I graduated called "Making Responsible Decisions About Sex", there's "Instant! Maori" and I've looked at that several times and I don't know what the fuck that's all about or how it got into our house much less our bathroom.

And then there's that other book.

Before my wife and I had kids, we used to do silly stuff together.  I don't mean stuff with Saran-Wrap and dental floss-- I mean quixotic adventures, stuff that every young couple does when they're all lost in schmoopiness and they have no clue about the cost of a tank of gas.  One day we decided to take a field trip to the Herr's Snack Factory in Nottingham, Pennsylvania, a mere 47.2 miles away from where we lived at the time.  We were the only adults on the tour not attached to any children, but that was not an experience totally unfamiliar to us.  We tagged along with the random, tow-headed, mulleted kiddies.  We saw the big machines and the ladies in hairnets and surgical-style booties, we tasted chips that probably came off the factory floor and we were unceremoniously dumped off at the gift shop where we were expected to plunk down five times the price of our admission ticket on shit we can buy at WaWa on the way home.

But the best thing that you could possibly take home with you from the Herr's Snack Factory wasn't on sale at the gift shop at all-- it was free.

Fucking.  Free.

While my (not-quite-yet) wife visited the ladies room-- see?  bathrooms feature prominently in life, I'm telling you-- I wandered around the large waiting area between the restrooms and the gift shop and there, on a bench of sorts were strewn hundreds of little pale blue books that featured the Herr's logo on the bottom of the front cover, and the words

Chips of Wisdom

in the middle.

I picked one up and leafed through it.  Scanning the pages, I saw a lot of stuff about Proverbs, quarrelsome women, and prostitutes.  An eyebrow warily raised, I put it in my pocket.

A few minutes into the drive home, I pulled the book out of my pocket and tossed it over to the passenger seat.

"Here," I said to my short haired, bespectacled companion, "this should keep us entertained along Route 1."

And it did.  We laughed.  We wept.  We learned that we shouldn't visit our neighbor too often, or we might outstay our welcome.

Well, neighbor-- you'll never be able to outstay your welcome here.  You can visit as often as you like, and I encourage you to bring your friends.  You can even bring your Friends.  I hope you Like my new blog.  I hope you learn a thing or two about neighbors and prostitutes.  For instance, did you know that, "a prostitute is a dangerous trap; those cursed of God are caught in it"?

Well, apparently, it's true.  I know because I read it in a book I got at a potato chip factory.

Jim Herr, in his introduction to "Chips of Wisdom" states that he frequently referred to the Book of Proverbs when making important decisions in life and in commerce (I guess there aren't too many "quarrelsome women" in the Herr's Snack Foods empire, probably not too many prostitutes either) and he sought to edit and compile some of his Proverbs favorites into this neatly packaged, accessible little book.  Yes, I find some of it funny, and that will be reflected in this blog, but I hope I come across as genuine when I say that the goal behind this blog is not to poke fun at Jim Herr or "Chips of Wisdom" or Proverbs or Christianity or God.  If I poke fun at anyone here, it's going to be at me, because that's sort of what I've been doing ever since I learned how well self-deprecating humor fit my skin.

I want to use the Proverbs, and Jim Herr's quest and desire for wisdom, as springboards for my own personal wrastlin' with faith, existential issues, my religion, my professional and social struggles, to make sense of my family and my life-- and, sure, to have a little fun, too.

But, not too much, remember?  Because I am a devoted husband and a father of two fifteen-month-olds and a soon-to-be-again dog owner, we're going to limit the fun to Monday and Thursday postings, and see how it goes.  I hope you like it here, and I hope you come back for more.  Otherwise, you're WRONG, SIR, WRONG!  You LOSE!  You get NOTHING!

Sorry.  Jim Herr, Willy Wonka, same thing.

"Chips of Wisdom" seeks to answer "What's wrong with the world?".  I suspect you already know, and that's good.  That means you're going to be my friend.  So hold on.

Here we go.