Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Cleaning out the Notebook

I keep a little notebook in my car in which to jot down ideas I get while driving.  I do quite a bit of driving, and instead of concentrating on traffic or road signs or speedometers or police sirens, I allow my mind to drift over facts and ideas both great and small. I ruminate, cogitate, consider and contemplate while my left turn signal blinks away. Then, upon coming to a red light, I pull out the notebook and jot down a few sentence fragments or key words in order to save what my mind has wrought. My intention is to later turn these fragments into Fishbrick gold.  Unfortunately, what is written all too hastily in my notebook does not always jog my memory, and I'm left trying to figure out just what it was I was trying to convey.  And it's not just because my handwriting is awful or that the color of crayon I've used is hard to read.  It probably has more to do with the dreamlike state of mind I was in when I wrote down these fleeting thoughts, coupled with a memory devastated by years of television watching and poor nutrition.  Nonetheless, I will try to mine the nuggets of gold hidden in these scribbled notes and pass them on to you, my long-suffering reader(s).

Hot pizza mouth  Not sure what I meant to say here.  I think it must have something to do with the fact that pizza generally goes in one's mouth and is usually eaten while still hot.  Not a great start.  Let's move on.

Stop labeling everybody  What I believe I meant here is that some tee shirts have labels that irritate the back of the neck.  Hardly seems worth mentioning.

Back on the glod standard  This one has to do, I think, with the quality of glod being too variable these days and the need to adhere to a uniform standard in its production.  I forget what glod is, though.

Free market is so much better  The idea here could be that some of the grocery stores in town charge too much for their food and there should be something created like Cleveland's West Side Market, only it wouldn't require any payment for its produce.  I don't know what I was thinking.  That seems like a formula for disaster to me.  Next.

Believe 10 reasons  Here we may be considering the idea that I believe 10 reasons.  But reasons for what I cannot recall.  Probably would have made a thought-provoking read.

Sandwich! Sandwich! Sandwich!  I don't know if I was thinking about the celebrated Earl of Sandwich, to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude, or if I was simply feeling a tad hungry at the time.  My guess is that it had nothing to do with the Earl.  

Slush fund disgrace  A slush is something you can get at some ice cream stands.  It's a tasty treat for sure.  Maybe the point here is that parents should not bankroll their children's hankering for such unhealthy snacks.  I'm not sure why such a thought would have occurred to me, but it must have.

Evolution debate  Here the idea may have been to chronicle the history of the formal debate, citing examples such as the Lincoln-Douglas debates and perhaps contrasting it with the format and quality of today's political debates.  Sounds like really dry stuff.  Why would I write about that?

Democracy is not ralph  The handwriting on this note was not great.  Maybe the point here was that Ralph does not represent the average man, or that Ralph was not elected on the up and up.  There is nothing worse than a crooked election, as you know.  But I don't remember who the hell Ralph is.

Where are the trash cans?  This one was probably a lot deeper than the question indicates.  Trash cans is a metaphor for something.  Just kind of fill in the blanks and there you have the makings of an important idea.  It makes one think.

Just give me ten good men  I may have had an idea about forming a football team.  But why?  

Hobnobbing with aliens among us   This could have been a very interesting piece about learning to speak Spanish or something.  I suppose that's a good thing, but I don't know why I would want to write a blog about it.  

I'm getting rid of that stupid notebook.







1 comment:

Donna OShaughnessy said...

And people say that I"M funny ! well, I am but you are sorta too. Oh OK you are damn hystercial, I just hate competition. So, bottom line is, I'll follow your blog if you'll follow mine. OK ? you go first