Thursday, July 24, 2003

Chuckle’s Top 40

Wednesday, July 24, 2002: A day that will live in infamy.  I started blogging.  Now, 657 entries later – an average of 1.8 per day – I have taken it upon myself to review the mountain of output I’ve generated.  I’m actually rather pleased with some of what I’ve written, and have really enjoyed the experience of fleshing out some ideas that have been rolling around in my head for years, as well as some ideas that barely even occurred to me before I had them in print.  I strongly urge each and every one of you to read every single post I’ve put up, if you’ve missed any of them.  Really, some of that early stuff was pure gold. 

But if you’re in a rush, you manic 21st century schitzoid person you, the extended entry here contains a procrustean selection of some of my favorite dollops of ‘hut over the past year.  This list of 40 of my favorite posts represents a mere 6.0883% of my total blog contents.  I’ve cut the list down with brutal efficiency.  There are a lot of other posts not on this list that I really enjoyed writing, and a lot that I really enjoyed re-reading – but I remained ever firm in my resolve to limit myself to 40.  40 is plently.  I’m good but I’m not that good.  There’s a reason we’re not built to pat ourselves on the back.

Oh, and in case you thought you were off the hook, I’ve got a notebook and a writing book crammed with weird crap to whine about.  Changes may be afoot, but Huklechut will persevere.  Through the weekend, at the very least.  (Actually, this weekend poses one significant challenge to my sanity and sunny good nature.  If you don’t want to wish me luck, send me an email so stating - otherwise I’ll check my sitemeter and assume you’re all actually invoking some manner of cosmic power to assist me in my unmentionable inconvenience.  Thanks, guys!)

Sweeping the Gene Pool
Report from the Toaster Dance
Why I write
[It was the hardest thing I ever said]
[I’m not hiding]
[the room was white, uncompromising]
Jesse
People in the Park
When the streetlights started going out
I’m just saying there was pie
20 lesser hazards of air travel
Stow Lake wildlife
Am I going to hell pt 2: so you’re going to hell
the schneckening
xmas traditions
sleeping with Bern
nana’s cookbook
[she who lives next door]
camping with bears
the Odors of perception
directions to Oakland
[the man who suckled elvis]
candyland
curriculum
Shizzle-cell anemia
a muse of forgotten arts
surreal day
cookie review
the stuff I do
Ocean Beach Ride
Quiz of Affliction
Iceman
Not his fault
Media Tool (Africa poems)
Candlelight dinner
The Tippling Point – Redi or Not
A Small Price to Pay
Photographic Evidence
Just as God Made Me
Ball Boy

"There’s a reason we’re not built so we can pat ourselves on the back” - yep. It’s so there’s room for others to do it for you. I’m patting. Can you feel it?

wow - I do!  And from you, Jules - that pat means a lot.  Thanks!

Happy anniversary!

Has it been a year already? I can’t remember when I started reading your blog, but I think it was close to the time you started it.

Good luck on whatever it is that may cause your sunny disposition to cloud over. Don’t let your mood mirror the PA weather.

Elizabeth

I promise I’ll read all 40 ... I do ... I will ... zzzzzzzzz

"unmentionable inconvenience”???  you can’t drop a hint like that and expect us to let it go!!!

what’s up?

luck with it, no matter what it is.

oh, and i’d pat you on the back, but you might give me a monkeybump in return! happy anniversary!

All well and good but how many of the 40 mention me? I’d like a breakdown of that please. Thank you.

Happy Blogaversary, Dan!

It’s been quite a year. Makes one just tingle with excitement at all the wonders the new year will bring.

Happy Blogaversary.  Somewhat miffed you didn’t include the encounter with the job seekers, though, which is when I started reading.

Greg, I seriously considered including that one - it was one of the last I cut from the list.  But in the end I wanted to concentrate on stuff I wrote for the blog.  I included one essay I put together BB - before blog- but when it came time to make hard choices and whittle down to 40, I gave deference to new writing over older work.  That’s no aspersion against the older work, just a preference in terms of this list.  In retrospect, I probably ought to pick a replacement for the remaining “old” essay. 

OR - I left that one out just to piss you off.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

i am patting you too

just not on the back

I trust that your “unmentionable inconvenience” will work itself out. 

And now my weekend will be shot with reading all of these posts.

Thanks a lot, jerkwad.

congratulations! i just let my blogiversary slip by silently awhile back. i’ll admit i had hoped someone would notice and commend me for changing their lives for the better and send me lots of presents, but they didn’t. and now i hate them. all of them. ungrateful readers. and after all the cute pictures of my cat that i’ve posted. harumph.

just kidding! hahaha. i’m such a kidder. woo boy! yeah.

uhm, but back to you. excellent idea posting your top 40. i only wish i had as many posts to consider. i think i’ll start working on the altar’s top 7? 11? 2? yeah. anyway…

happy blogiversary.
xoxo, jared

It deserves to be mentioned that JARED, the EVIL QUEEN, at the ALTAR of MEDIOCRITY, was the first person who mentioned blogging to me; she wrote down her site address for me one fine afternoon at L-13 and I’ve been hooked since.  If any of you have ever enjoyed anythign I’ve written, thank Jared.  She’s awesome!

Happy Blogiversary, Baby! AS this is a most inconvenient time for me to be reading 40 entries, I will have to come back on Monday. Will you still be around then? heh, heh
I read “Ocean Beach” because I thought it was about the one in San Diego---but I got sucked in all the way to the end because of your extraordinary descriptions of the sunset over the Pacific. You sure can write some pretty words.
I found myself going back for DAYS, sucked in. I need to prepare for Saturday’s task now. No time for this. REALLY. But, damn you; those are some amazingly pretty words. So: “Ahl be bock.” I hope you keep writing forever.

Dan, I didn’t realize that job applicant post was “pre blog.” I feel validated now.  So my parking is, at least, all in order now.

Happy first birthday, Dan.  What do you think you will be writing in another year?  In five?  I don’t think you’ll ever stop writing - I don’t think you could stop.  Writers write.  The true writer, the writer who can really write - who is compelled to do it more than anything, more than breathing --- must write.  It’s a calling.  It’s a devotion to exactness and truth and being true to your feelings and integrity of language and a gift.  Yep, I bet you get going so intensely your fingers almost fly off.  I bet you get going on a piece so intensely that you forget to breath.  You’re typing like crazy and then you’re like, “Damn, I feel light headed.  Oh yeah - air.” You have to write.  You have these amazing thoughts, and you have to get them down.  Writers write, they have to.  Even if the police dogs are closing in, and the chopper’s search light is sweeping down through the forrest tree to tree and the light comes to rest at your muddy feet and some guy with a utility belt yells “There he is!” and the only writing materials available to you are a piece of pine bark and your own pricked, bloody finger.  Anyway, happy first year.  Hopefully I will be typing this same kind of message to you 50 years from now for the 51st time.

One thing that hasn’t been articulated here is that this is about a lot more than writing for me now.  Blogging started for me as a means to a community, and that community has evolved for me in one short year in some unexpected and very gratifying ways.  Thanks to each of you and all of you for your kind words, not only here and now but over the year when we congratulated each other, supported each other, offer each other perspectives.  You people mean more to me than most of the people I see every day.  I am a much more complete person for knowing you and I’m very grateful for it.

Cool.  Congrats Dano.  Chucklehut is not an enclosure. Not a place requireing mild laughter.  No.  It is a being there kind of magical place.  An open space filled with things all good.  Belly laughs instead of chuckles.

Kudos my friend.