Famous

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

So I google myself tonight and I find my DocuDharma entry second only to my Cliffs Notes.

Not only that, but the two top image results are from What’s for Dinner.

Impact is funny sometimes.

What is famous?

Now frankly, I don’t often think of myself as famous.

buhdy is much more popular than I am and while he admires my writing on certain technical levels (or at least has said so).  I don’t like any of it except for particular turns of phrase.

Cheap theatrics I can teach anyone.

Fortunately good writing is the least of your problems if you want to be famous.

Persistence and Regularity

Whatever success I have is entirely due to persistence and regularity.

Well, isn’t that what you expect a writer to say?  It’s as big a cliche as thanking Touchdown Jesus.

Eat some fucking bran if you want to be regular.

Establishing a reputation

C’mon, let’s all take the Poet’s Pledge-

I, [the Poet’s name], do hereby solemnly pledge:

To be peculiar in the most unusual way I can cook up

To write excellently, or more especially to be known to write excellently

To master bards of old and bards anew, or at least never give on that I haven’t

To advance in gestures of my own and not in the stirrings of a majority, except where money is at stake

To be perceived as morally suspect, no matter what the truth

To sniff at adulation and pooh-pooh honors no matter how much I crave them

To obey whim and eschew duty, or at least appear to

To rove ruffian-like across continents of poems with ease, or at least make them think so

To engage in ridiculous arguments, all hot and sweaty for my own position

To be judicious only in the judging of my own merits and mean about the others

To die young, or if I linger, to be ignored and abused well

To write tons of crap for every good poem I do write, and obfuscate the difference with rhetoric

To suck up to important editors with honeyed words, and cuff the assistant editors often

To bemoan the sorry state of poetry in my country and do not one damn thing about it

To speak so incoherently that everyone thinks I am a genius

Oh-

“Batter my heart three-personed God, for you as yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend.”

That was my thirteenth diary, not that you should be jealous because like a cesspool only the biggest pieces of crap rise to the surface.

Did I mention that only my Cliffs Notes are more famous than I?

Hornbeck’s character is static. He is as opinionated and iconoclastic, attacking institutions and firmly held beliefs, and he does not change throughout the course of the play. His character is also shallow and one-dimensional.

How do you survive?

Well if people had only understood how much I inhabit my character they would surely have strangled me in my cradle because I can’t dance nearly as well as Gene Kelly.

But stories?  I bang on the keyboard every day.  I average 40+ comments and 4.5 recs per (when I keep track of such things which I never do).

Attempts to silence me fail on the sheer volume of my record.

It also has this additional benefit which is not to be despised-

People know me and are interested.

On becoming the Paris Hilton of the inter tubz

Have you met my dog Frenchy?

Alas he has passed to a 72 coke bottle fucking paradise.

You can try Pooty Pics.

18 comments

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  1. I hope to post a more serious version of this about aging and vulnerability but I had to work some of it out of my system.

  2. Matthew Harrison Brady was a Democrat?

    • sharon on August 15, 2009 at 20:13

    thanks once again.  i love your writing – always find it intriguing, maybe even beguiling.

  3. heh!

    What?

  4. …will you teach me cheap theatrics?  I have practiced and practiced but I don’t think they are working.

    I am debating taking the poet’s pledge.  Consistent incoherence would be a great blow to my ego.  So far I have merely attempted to emulate Lord Byron, with the exception of wealth and the kid.  I am having great difficulty procuring the skull of a monk for my wine.  But I am definitely looking into swimming the Hellespont, albeit much dirtier than Leander or Byron found it.

    • Edger on August 16, 2009 at 06:12

    rove-like across continents, and die young, or if I linger, to be ignored and abused well?

    Is that a pict-poem?

  5. or at least pounding on the real problems.  Other than that, it’s just preaching to the choir, satisfying the outlets of those in the blogging world, which is a small minority.   I don’t think effectiveness can be achieved without numbers and the political blogs can’t seem to pull together on the real reforms needed.  Too much party bullshit, too many propaganda eaters, who knows, but there needs to be a common uprising and the effective writing needs to be geared toward that.  

  6. are not!  I know nothing.  But I’ll tell you what I know:  I love your devilish, near bawdy, gut punchin’ truth style — yes, I do!!!  You cause a kinda’ laughin’ in the stomach!

    I’m sorry about your “Frenchy!”  Always hurts BIG TIME!

  7. need for polling and for the creation a “famous meter.”  We could call the “famous meter” the “Hornbeck Scale.”  The “Hornbeck Scale” units could be called “EK’s,” going from say .01 (not famous) to 10.0 (very, very, very famous).  And monthly rankings of the utter most famousest on down to my level, whatever that might be, as if it were batting averages.  And, of course, there should be re-rankings, who’s up, who’s down, who’s stable.  And there might have to be stat blogs about the inside skinny of the monthly rankings (“Buhdy scored really high this month and used the f bomb only 45 times.”)  And celebrity blogs about the most famous bloguer@s, their private lives and pecadillos, their disputes, their cadres of sycophants devotees, their managers and touts, their spelling.  You know.  This could be a gigantic industry project.  I look forward to it.

  8. Photobucket

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