Non-Tweets of the month

 

For the record, none of these "tweets" ever appeared on Twitter. I'm fed up with Musk. Tired of the repeated password exchange. Done with reading news about blue checks, etc. Still, these are best described as tweet-like, so ...

• SnapChat, Instagram, TikTok — 10 years ago none of us had ever heard of these. Now, they’re taking over the world. It’s a Planet of the Aps.

• A military history buff, I enjoy seeing film of great generals discussing how they made key decisions that led to victory/defeat and upon which nations rise or fall. Kind of reminds me of my wife and I  explaining how our daily Wordle went from 3 guesses to 6

• Yes, I'm aware that Sing Sing is a maximum security prison that incarcerates many of New York's most vicious cutthroats, but every time I hear Sing Sing I convince myself that Sing Sing is a maximum hilarity prison populated entirely by wrongly convicted Muppets.

• Just so she’ll never need reminding that at one time this great nation could confront head-on the really big issues, if we ever have another daughter I’m going argue we should name her, “She/Her/Hers.”

• I’m becoming convinced this 2-pound device is the most excessively engineered piece of equipment in the world. It weighs nearly 2 pounds and all it does is bend a malleable thread of wire that weighs slightly more than a sheaf of butterfly eyelashes. I don’t hold it against the stapler. I blame the staple. The man/woman who invents a simple, safe and effective “pinch” staple will make a fortune. I’m workin’ on it!

• French Gen. Jean-Baptist Kleber was in 1800 assassinated by a Egyptian nationalist. To dissuade future attacks, an 8-foot pike was inserted into the assailant's rectum clear to his still-beating heart. So if things start getting dull and you hear me say, "I have an idea! Let's go find a French general, insult him, and see what happens next," promise you'll distract me with card tricks or a pickleball match until the urge passes.

• I’m grateful for all of you who’ve told me you’re rooting —praying, even — for something good to happen to me. Well, last night driving home from class (it had gone great so I was in a good mood) it happened. I decided I’d stop at Sheetz for a small Blue Raspberry Slushie. Kid at the register said it was his treat. A $1.48 freebie! I asked why. He said I looked like a guy who needed a free Slushie. I thanked him and immediately began trying to look like a guy who needed a fast $50,000.

• I wonder if even considerate stink bugs give up on things like washing their hands after going to the bathroom or if they figure, "What's the point? Either way, everyone's still going to say, 'Hold your nose, here comes the stink bug.’’'

• Some men wake up terrified of illicit behavior being exposed. Some fear responsibility. Me? I wake up with the dreadful realization that with each passing day the teachers we grade-schoolers used to viciously mock as being mean old witches are becoming young enough to be my granddaughters.

• I found peace in the trans controversy after concluding that, not only is there evidence of LGBTQ behavior throughout the animal kingdom, there is at least one breed that appears to be in an endless trans cycle. Behold the Poodle! I've never seen a single poodle that looked like it was comfortable with his/her gender. Every poodle looks like it's in a perpetual state of transitioning. Yes, in some complicated matters, many turn to the Bible; others to science. Me? I look to the poodle!

• Dreams are like kites. It’s rare to achieve liftoff without there being at least one string attached. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  • How come it took the firing of Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson to learn that Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson's full name is Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson. Maybe I'm sensitive because I have no middle name. But this much I know: If I'd have grown up with either of his middle names the mean kids would have stolen my lunch money mcnearly every single day.

• I remain perhaps foolishly optimist that someday soon great fortune and recognition will at last be mine. Yet I now worry that within hours of the windfall some killjoy doctor will inform me I’ve got 48 hours to live. Don’t let that depress you. We can have a lot of fun in 48 hours

• My attempts to philosophize through the Happy Hour tanked when morons pulled out their phones and forced me to look at pictures of their kids/cars/home improvements/etc. The Art of Conversation has descended into the Graffiti of Digital Blathering.

•A hypochondriac is a person who is abnormally concerned about his or her health. A person who is abnormally concerned about error-free messages, stories or posts is a typochondriac.

• I’d have liked to have been in the classroom to have felt the palpable rage, the visceral contempt, when the high school calculus teacher said, "You'd better pay attention, mister, because this is something you're going to need every day for the rest of your life," and see the student she was lecturing was Bob Dylan.

• I tend to keep a wallet for 2 or 3 years or until I can sense it'll  never be cash prolific. For that I blame the wallet. I sense it's lazy, that it repels cash. I figure if it can't be flush after 2 coddling years, it never will. In the last 35 years Ii've probably had 17 wallets. Same work ethic.

Admiring student says he wants to become interesting -- like me!

 

(754 words)

An admiring student of mine flattered me by saying he wants to become interesting “just like me.”

At least I think he was admiring. He could have just been very adept at brown nosing, a tactic I’ll fall for every single time. Bona fide flatterer or skillful butt smoocher, it all has the same effect: A kid who was borderline failing has now vaulted to the top of the class.

It’s so effective I think I’ll describe the technique on the first page of next semester’s syllabus.

Here’s a portion of what he wrote: 

“I remember after the first week of the semester a coworker asked me to use one word to describe each of my professors. I used the word "Intimidating" (IN A GOOD WAY) for you. Listening to other people tell stories and ramble has always been interesting to me. So meeting someone as good at the 'storytelling' craft as you was like meeting the 'FINAL BOSS' of observers. Very rare to meet somebody that talks smart but doesn't talk boring, and that is exactly what you do. My question: How do you do it?”

It’s really a very good question, right up there with, for God’s sake, how come I can’t convert this admirable characteristic into actual income?

I understand his yearning. Understand it perfectly. Being a good storyteller was what I wanted to become when I was his age.  I remember being mesmerized by men and women telling stories of their triumphs, their failures. It’s always been there but in my case, it became acute in the Music City taverns and honky tonks.

It was there in Nashville I began to understand that whether it was good or bad, every single thing that happened in my life could become a story worth telling — as long as it was told with bedrock honesty. 

I made it my life’s mission to become a compelling storyteller, a raconteur.

Raconteur is a 19th Century French word meaning “to tell.” So any moron with a mouth can be a raconteur.

But a good one will first spend many, many years engaged in the act of — another French word warning! — auditicie.

That word means “to listen.”

I didn’t become a true storyteller until I had a treasure chest of great stories I’d heard from other people. Unless you’re an astronaut or maybe a pilot who’s landed a commercial jetliner on the Hudson River, your stories about yourself are unlikely to hold anyone’s attention. They inevitably come across as boastful.

It’s like I always say about becoming interesting (it’s one of my favorite lines): “Those who want to appear more colorful get tattoos. Those who want to become more colorful get library cards.”

So you need to find out where the colorful people — good and bad — hang out.

I find many of them in divey bars. They have sketchy backgrounds, angry dispositions, an outstanding warrant or two.

I have many good friends from church who confess to being sinners and are ashamed of it. And I’m friends with guys in bars who confess to being sinners and they brag about it.

Which is the more compelling character?

And then there’s this to consider: there are two types of listeners. Actual listeners and those who give the impression they’re actually listening.

Being the latter is far preferable

An actual listener smiles and nods sympathetically, all the while preparing to offer salient advice that’s never sought. Most people simply want to talk to anyone who simply smiles and nods. They don’t want your lousy advice and may, in fact, respond with hostility once it’s offered.

The reaction leads the actual listener to feelings of uselessness and burnout and inevitably they end up back in the bar hoping to sit next to someone who’ll merely smile and nod, smile and nod.

At his or her heart every really good raconteur enjoys being human and enjoys human beings.

Struggle with those essentials?

Befriend an elderly neighbor, volunteer at a local animal shelter or join a church choir. Or you could do what I did.

Read Mark Twain.

I recommend starting with the broadly delightful travelogues, “Following The Equator,” “Life on the Mississippi” and “Innocents Abroad.”

These books exude humanity in all its glory and are told by America’s greatest storyteller. 

I could go on and on. The topic is that dear to me. But I sense some of you are beginning to smile and nod, smile and nod. So that’s plenty. 

As always, thanks for listening.

Or at least appearing to. 

Subscribe to my “Use All The Crayons!” newsletter — just $5 month/$50 a year — and get all my best stuff delivered straight to your inbox!

March (what used to be called) Tweets of the Month

 

Dog (Snickers) on left from back when he was a remote-sized puppy.  No reason for posting. No reason at all. Enjoy your weekend!

• I’m so conditioned to every innovation being related to snack foods that when I heard Elon Musk was promoting brain chips, I thought, man, I hope he makes some with sea salt & cracked pepper.

• I’m not insinuating our local volunteers join for social reasons. I'm sure it's just pure coincidence that every Friday at 4 p.m. the local whorehouse catches on fire.

• Texas teacher arrested for having sex with student in classroom failed to realize that while educators may touch the future, you're toast if they bust you fondling it.

• It’s Thursday, the day I begin making lists of all the old friends I haven’t talked to in years with the sincere intention of spending the weekend making long personal calls to and will once again put off because it’s the weekend and I’d rather not spend it making long, personal calls to all the old friends I haven’t talked to in years.

• It defies explanation, but if you cherish every moment, life somehow finds a way to give you more moments to cherish.

• Yard work. Painting. Excavating. When in work-obsessed America did weekends cease being weekends? Weekends should be for relaxing. Reading. Cuddling. Jigsaw puzzles. Fewer and fewer seem to realize this. Wake up, America! And go right back to sleep …

• The panic headline du jour involves some techie-sounding bank default they say could impact my savings, which, in fact, are right now at  $0.00. Look, I've endured, and some would say thrived, through pandemic and the death of my favorite bartender. To do what I do, I've been ignored, rejected, mocked and disparaged. I've survived the first six weeks of Kenny Pickett's QB career and the last six week's of the Trump presidency. And here it is again, Monday. You think you can rattle me with accounting errors? Bring it.

• Binge watching is the act of devoting consecutive hours to enjoying a much-hyped program. More common is grudgingly watching a declining show just because of some insane concept of viewer obligation. The realization makes you sick. This is the point at which you've gone from binge watching to purge watching.

• Whether it be climate change or a sudden preference for having their breakfast worms frozen, but robins are no longer a reliable harbinger of Spring. Heck, I've seen robins in January. Looking for a sign of Spring you can trust? Look for me strolling around town in this shirt. I promise to not wear it until the last lick of winter is put to bed. I'm thinking this year it'll be April 14. Now, is it a more reliable sign of Spring if I'm wearing pants or not?

• Being a dedicated and efficient law enforcer is one of the few roles that allow a public servant to truthfully declare they can bust our asses while simultaneously busting theirs. 

• One of my all-time favorite movies is "Scent of a Woman" from 1992, or as I call it in 2023, "Scent of a (she, her, hers)."

• A current national scandal features at its vortex a buxom porn star with a nickname that hearkens violent weather. Question: Will the circumstances open the minds of climate change skeptics? Or do her obvious breast implants give them all the proof they need to convince them it’s all fake?

• It says something splendid about humanity that on the day when long-forecast planetary doom finally arrives, a significant portion of the remaining population are going to be — damn the torpedoes! —having one heckuva good time. Happy Monday!

• Wildlife biologists say humans are the only animal on the planet that rolls its eyes in non-verbal communication. I say that’s because humans are the only animal that gets Dad Jokes.

• Anthropologists estimate that 117 billion humans have lived on Earth since the species appeared in about 50,000 BC. Know what that means? No matter how crappy your day is, it’ll still be better than about 97 percent of the humans who’ve ever lived.

• It’s humbling sharing a house with three opinionated females. In a foolish attempt to gauge where I rank, I made a top 10 list of their consensus priorities. No surprise. I wasn’t on it. So I extended the list to 25. I’m still not on it. But the Jonas Bros. and quinoa are.

• Nine of the last 10 new Instagram followers of mine are much younger women who either have loose morals or are determined to pose and dress as if they want the world to infer they have loose morals. Their profiles say their names are like Destiny06969 or TanyaEZ. Now, many would see all that and conclude it’s fraudulent. I gotta tell you, I see it and think, yeah, I still got it.

• In the interests of quaint authenticity, no business should be allowed to call itself a “shoppe” unless its origins date back at least to the 18th century. It’s a misleading sham that seeks to fool consumers into thinking the proprietor is some tried-and- true mainstay that in this age of slick hucksters can be trusted more than a mere “shop” keeper. Just my opinion. Sincerely, Ye Olde Blogger

• Score another victory for this '16 TINARA Award winner. Girl that cut my hair yesterday asked what I did and I told her I'm a writer. She asked what kind of books and I told her I'm all over. She likes mysteries. When I get home, there's an e-mail saying she bought "The Last Baby Boomer." Cool! So I signed one and ran straight back to the salon. I asked her why that book. "Well," she said, "they all look interesting, but I saw that was a major award winner." Then I had to confess. I made it up. I was jealous of seeing other -- in my eyes -- inferior books with gold stickers. So I invented the TINARA Awards & bestowed upon myself the '16 1st Prize and that TINARA stands for:

This

Is

Not

A

Beal

Award

She laughed. Thought it was funny. At least that's what she said.

I won't know if she's upset 'til after my next hair cut.

My letter to Grace seeking grace

 This is the letter I wrote to the 10-year-old girl, an aspiring writer, after she gave me the only copy of her 22-page handwritten book to review and I lost it.

I had her father read it first. I thought there was a chance he’d hit me. Instead, he got choked up and shook my hand.

I gotta be honest: I gave a lot of serious thought to trying to lie my way out of this one …

Dear Grace,

When your father  asked if I’d  be willing to read something you’d written, I didn’t hesitate. I’m more than happy to encourage young writers like yourself to pursue the kind of life I’ve been lucky enough to have lived.. I’ve been writing for 40 years and I still tingle with satisfaction knowing I’ve crafted a sentence that people will want to re-read because t made them laugh or think.

He gave me the draft of the book you started — in one night — on Wednesday. On Thursday I did something wise followed by something unbelievably stupid. First the wisdom.

I teach creative writing at Point Park U. I told my students that I’d begun a new book and I began to read them what you’d written. I read them two pages and asked what they thought. One student said it was “imaginative.” One said the writing was “well-paced.” Two said for me to keep reading. They wanted class turned into story time. Then I confessed I’d lied. I told them the writer was the 10-year-old daughter of a Ligonier friend. And they were amazed. One said you must be a prodigy.  I said that’s the perfect word to describe what you’re doing.

Now for the stupid. I don’t know if you can forgive me but I lost what you put so much heart into. I have no excuse. The class is 3 hours long and leads to a sprawl of papers, but I should be more careful with something so precious.  You can be furious with me. I deserve it.

But I’m going to urge you to do something else. I’m going to urge you to take three deep breaths (through the nose!). And do it all over again. The best writers aren’t really writers at all. They’re re-writers. A first draft can be a frolic. Very loose. Almost stream of conscious. I’m not saying yours was, but a rigorous re-write shines with a discipline that demands respect

So you can curse me — I’d start with that — but I recommend you learn from this and add it as another rung on the ladder to success I’m sure you’ll ascend. Lastly, make copies of EVERY THING. It’s a lesson every writer learns. It was just my incompetence that gave you a particularly vivid lesson at an early age.

The perils of parallel parking

 

(578 words)

I’ve said before that a father teaching a daughter to drive is like a warden teaching an inmate how to escape.

So as of yesterday it was, “One-Adam-12! One-Adam-12! We have an APB for a female 16-year-old known to come to a complete stop even at desolate intersections. Suspect exhibits pathological disdain for having to parallel park.”

That comes from me. Here’s the sum of my parallel parking instructions:

“Accelerate past the vacancy to reduce the temptation to parallel park there. Drive in a relaxed fashion until you find a spacious surface lot with three adjoining spaces. Park in the middle one. Summon Uber and pay $5 or so bucks to drop you off at the front door of your destination.”

This was her second time taking the test. I told her (lied) 72 percent of test takers who fail do so because of a parallel parking failure. 

“Just like you!”

Citing the made-up statistic did nothing to ease her despondency.  I needed to say something wise and insightful. Here, after hours of deliberation, is what I came up with:

“You’ll get ‘em next time, kiddo!”

That’s it. It was like she was 4 and blew a chance to win a silly straw at an Aisle 6 supermarket promotion.

Happily, God is well-aware of my many shortcomings. He (pronoun from Biblical sources) sent me two examples that bestowed perspective and levity that helped deflate her tension.

The first was a timely recollection of an “Austin Powers” clip of him 

trying to execute a 3-point turn. It’s absolutely hilarious. Check it out right here.

The second example caught me by surprise. He’s not someone for whom I’ve ever felt any affinity. He was a bad husband to one of my favorite Hollywood lovelies (Jennifer Garner) and he’s currently imposing his New England mopiness on another (Jennifer Lopez).

Yes, it’s Ben Affleck. I normally wouldn’t pay any attention to Affleck news, but I was having a bad day and the way small-minded men like me feel better about ourselves is reading about people we envy having days that suck. The headline is  “Another Rough Day for Ben Affleck,” by Danielle Cohen in New York magazine. It’s terrific.

So what was the source of the Afflek’s angst? Did he and Garner have families to blend? Did J-Lo ask him to break dance in her next video?

No, the trouble was parallel parking. This is from Cohen’s story.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to parallel park, but it is akin to entering the fifth circle of hell, with the sixth being doing it while people watch. (This magazine’s official stance on parallel parking: “People should be allowed the grace to park alone without being perceived.”) So it only makes sense that Ben Affleck, who recently resumed his reign as the king of despair, was subjected to being not only watched but also filmed while trying to work his way out of a parking crisis.

“On Monday, Affleck found himself in the nightmarish scenario of attempting to wiggle his Mercedes-Benz out of a parking spot in Brentwood. Affleck knows better than anyone that we live in a cruel, cruel world, so of course TMZ managed to secure footage of the entire ordeal.”

We can relate.

I propose we alter the spelling of the hassle to better reflect all that could go wrong in attempting it.

It’s peril-l-ous parking.

Subscribe to my “Use All The Crayons!” newsletter — just $5 month/$50 a year — and get all my best stuff delivered straight to your inbox!

RIP Charlie Appleton: a great newspaperman, an even better man

 

(478 words)

Charlie Appleton, the extraordinary newsman, would have frowned at all the adulatory words being used to mourn the passing of Charlie Appleton, the ordinary family man. 

And just the sight of the word “adulatory” in a scrappy newspaper would have set him off.

He came from the man-bites-dog school of news gathering, but then raised the bar by becoming a de facto dean of the man-bites-dog-then-marries-the-bitch school of journalism.

He had a genius for finding the best, most compelling stories with just a phone and a rolodex of sources he’d painstakingly groomed to trust him implicitly. 

He was the first person to offer his friendship when in 1985 I started working at the Nashville Banner. We became very good friends.

If it sounds like I’m bragging, let me clarify.

Charlie was like Arnold Palmer. I used to brag I was friends with Palmer until it dawned on me that Palmer was friends with everyone.

It was the same with Charlie, the only reporter I knew that had his own catch phrase.

“… and in a bizarre twist …” 

He’d be talking in confidential tones before saying a courteous goodbye.Then he’d set the phone down and turn to the editor and share the facts of what at first would seem to be a routine crime story until, “… and in a bizarre twist …”

That’s when everyone in the newsroomleaned in to learn the bizarre twist. 

I remember one time the bizarre twist was a mother marrying her son — I remember it being in one of Tennessee’s less cosmopolitan zip codes. Strange, but true.

It’s always noteworthy when a senior newsperson dies to see his or her juniors compete to see who can compose the most reverential eulogy.

I’ve already read many fine tributes to this great man by so many dear old friends that I don’t feel compelled to add.

I will, instead, offer another sentiment that comes first to my mind when I think of  dear old Charlie.

Gratitude.

See, Charlie is solely responsible for getting me the job with National Enquirer, the notorious tabloid that brought me in to chase the amazing tales I go back to time and time again when I know people are counting on me to be interesting.

I remember interviewing at The Enquirer’s Lantana, Florida, offices prepared for a day-long grilling over my resourcefulness, my tenacity, my ethics …

Kidding! They cared not about ethics — as long as you didn’t have any. I’d fit right in.

For me, there’d be no interview.

“Oh, the job is yours, if you want it,” she said. “Charlie Appleton vouched for you and that’s all we need to hear.”

So I’m thankful that Charlie recognized in me a kindred spirit for telling stories.

And coincidentally, for being a decent human being who will be loved and missed by one and all.

In a bizarre twist that’s what I aspire to one day  become as well.

Subscribe to my “Use All The Crayons!” newsletter — just $5 month/$50 a year — and get all my best stuff delivered straight to your inbox!

February Tweets of the Month

 

• Legendary escape artist Harry Houdini could extricate himself from a straight jacket in just 4 minutes and 9 seconds. I have to imagine escaping from an LBGTQIA jacket would be much more time consuming.

• Restitution is the act of restoring ownership of something that was illegally taken. The act of restoring something that was illegally taken but doing it with island rhythms and bales of ganga is rastatution.

• How will you react if the next time some F-16 guns down a high-tech, high altitude spy balloon investigators find it leads to some rich kid with a really, really long string.

• Teaching college level anesthesiology must be a real challenge. How do you determine if a student snoozing is a lazy goofball or a real go-getter determined to truly absorb that day’s lesson?

• He has influence, a prestigious job, opportunities. In many ways he's a true role model. So what am I supposed to say when an impressionable youth comes up to me and says, "I wanna be just like George Santos." I look at his life and I look at mine and wonder, man, where did I go so wrong? I used to regret I didn't work harder. Now, I regret I didn't spend more mirror time working on my poker face.

• Middle Easterners put aside ancient differences to aid Syrian/Turkish earthquake victims, proving once again the only thing capable of bringing the world together is the world coming apart.

• For a human face to convey the same look of pure elation a dog gets when he sticks his head out the car window, I believe you'd have to time travel back to Eden and the first time Eve wondered what kind of reaction she'd get if she kissed Adam someplace besides the lips.

• I apologize for feeling the need to be so divisive here on Facebook, a forum only intellectually belligerent use for anything but food porn & cat videos, but it’s been 16 years it must be said: Just what the hell was David Chase thinking?

• Told students one of the best ways to unleash creative thinking is to immerse yourself in absurdity. The premise was discussed and I soon congratulated them on recognizing the absurdity abundant in their lives. Yes, they all parents who thought they knew all the answers.

• The very idea of writing for a living is  so inherently wussie, I at least once a week like to shout loud commands peppered with meaningless jargon -- "Tango! Alpha! Charlie! -- to confuse Tin Lizzy drinkers into thinking some real serious shit is going on up here.

• Tragic about the Florida woman, 85, killed by gator. It's all some people are talking about. I wonder what they're saying in the gator community. "I was just last week warnin' Roscoe nothin' good would come from chasin' them cougars.”

• Beleaguered Buffalo is expected to get hit with another 2 feet of snow. The population of the Greater Buffalo metro region is 889,217. If I were mayor of Buffalo I’d order every able-bodied adult to obtain at least two cigarette lighters and stand outside with both arms upraised.  The goal would be to convert every snowflake into raindrops before they hit ground.

• I hope one day I get summoned to the witness stand of some big, high-profile trial just so I can squander an hour or two of the court’s time trying to insist there has to be a little wiggle room in that bit about swearing on the Bible to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” I mean, c’mon. They can’t be serious. Can they?

• Tonight I intend to alert my students they have a historic opportunity to surpass The Greatest Generation in achievement. After all, The Greatest Generation saved the world from fascism. Today’s college students will battle climate change, cynicism, pandemic, fundamentalism and a dozen or so other isms. So today’s students won’t just be saving the mankind from fascism. They’ll be saving mankind from mankind.

• In an effort to make myself appear more hip, more cosmopolitan, I'm thinking of telling associates I'm "based in LA," which is a mere five letters from factual. Home is LA-trobe. I'm not deceitful, but guys like me just don't have time for second syllables.

• I'd like to have one night a month where we go out to dinner with another couple with the incentive that whomever talks the most pays. The social pressure to yap and be witty would vanish. We'd learn subtle new ways to communicate. Restaurants would be more peaceful. But in the end, the idea is self-defeating. The very notion of a no-talking dinner would give everyone something to really talk about.

• Getting all your news through a palm-sized screen you keep in your back pocket means most people will never even get a glimpse at what we used to call The Big Picture.

• If everyone on the planet awakens tomorrow to see in the mirror a third ear had overnight grown on their forehead, will you take it as an Almighty sign we need to start listening to one another or will you drop whatever you’re doing and dash out to buy a third noise-cancelling ear bud?

• Talking to a woman in the bar last week. Told her I was a writer. Said she loves to read. I asked her what genre. "Oh, I love murder mysteries!" she said. I told her everything I've ever written is a murder mystery. And it's true. It's a mystery why none of my books are a commercial success and the realization is killing me.