A. Don't sell your Diesel. B. One ride at Fisher's Ford. C. One ride at Wister. D. That Rev is way too long for you. You must sell it and your Diesel immediately and pre-order the new Molan from Jeremy at OOO. While you're at it, move to Hot Springs, get an engineering degree, fake your age so you can join the Corps of Engineers, and kiss whatever brown hole you have to in order to get assigned to Remmel Dam so you can control the flow at Rockport.
I have this DVD of one of Eric Clapton's drug resort fund raiser concerts. I've watched it about a thousand times. I especially like the little commentaries between the sets like the one in which Carlos Santana slanders Greatest Guitar Player to Ever Walk the Earth John Mayer by saying that, "He had to go through Clapton to find himself," as if the center of the blues guitar universe moved to Fairfield, Connecticut because John Mayer went through Eric Clapton. Get real!
I am no John Mayer. If I ever do find my artistic self, which seems extremely doubtful considering that, after nearly four decades, I still have absolutely no inkling of my artistic self, it will be pretty obvious who I went through to get there. More likely, I'll just continue to write in the exact style of UF Mike, or as close as I possibly can, because I am incapable of building my own style upon the concrete foundation UF Mike has provided me along with supporting structures from the few other authors I've connected with in some way. I don't even know how to mix the mortar. Take my post from yesterday. Other than substituting polyethylene for spandex, there isn't a subatomic particle of an idea within it that wasn't stolen directly from my friend, UF Mike. It was plagiarized in every way that a blog post can be plagiarized. I know it. UF Mike knows it. If you've read Mike's blog for more than one day, you know it. Everybody knows it. That said, I also know it is a seriously good blog post. It is good because my years of brutal, ignorant writing practice, practice that began long before I ever stumbled upon this author Michael Little who has his own town in Pennsylvania, has prepared me to successfully mimic the exact style and content of a really fucking good blogger. I am proud of the post, but I am no John Mayer.
Kenny Wayne Shepherd is no John Mayer, either. He tried to go through Stevie Ray and got stuck. Kenny Wayne Shepherd sounds more like Stevie Ray than Stevie Ray. When I hear Kenny Wayne Shepherd play, I think, "Shit! Stevie Ray is living in that dude!" Kenny Wayne is good, but he is no John Mayer.
The key to self-acceptance is being able to distinguish hard limitations from soft ones. I will never become an NHL defenseman because I lack the athletic ability to do it and I'm too small. Those are hard limitations. I will never be the Greatest Guitar Player to Ever Walk the Earth because I am tone deaf. That is a hard limitation. It's not looking good, but I'm not yet prepared to say that I'll never be able to write well in my own style. I'm not convinced that I'll never be able to transcend UF Mike and Krakauer and Balzac and finally become myself, but I'm not going to endure the angst of not knowing forever. At some point, I may allow myself the peace of accepting yet another hard limitation. At some point, I may have to admit that I'll never be any better at blogging than Kenny Wayne Shepherd is at playing guitar:
is a wonderful time to regret. I am regretting right now. With regret that runs as deep and as wide as mine, there are any number of life decisions I could be regretting, but right now I'm focusing on just two. I'm trying to decide which of these two regrettable decisions is more regrettable. The first is my decision to go to sleep on my stomach with both arms extended over the pillow and my head turned completely to one side. The second is my decision to wake up at 3 A.M. only to discover that I had fallen asleep on my stomach with both arms extended over the pillow and my head turned completely to one side. It's a question of pain. Right now, I'm having pain and not sleeping. If I had slept till 5:40 when my alarm was set to sound, I would also been in pain, perhaps even more pain than I'm in now, but I would be beginning a task that is intrinsically painful. The pain of going to sleep in a bad position would pretty much dissolve into the much greater pain of grinding out a lower-middle class living in America. As it is now, I feel the pain of sleeping in a bad position very acutely, and I regret that. But not that much.
There's so much to do. I need to cut caribou meat into strips and hang it on wooden racks to dry. After that, I poach salmon. On the off days, I dig potato roots and store them as fuel so I can melt water in the winter time. I desperately need to stretch some new polyethylene over the kayak frame I made from whale bones. And then there's going out day after day looking for a seal to club, usually coming back empty and cold. It is very tiring. Some days I'm so exhausted I just stay in my wikiup all day reading Balzac and watching videos of Neil Young singing "Pants on the Ground."
We will soon be issuing a press release responding to the recent Wall Street Journal article calling DMG Gibberish Solutions, "...a Class II boater and Class V poster." While we do not dispute the facts of the article, we must take immediate action defend our image. Our business depends on it! Starting today, DMG Gibberish Solutions will cease the posting of lame kayaking photos on its web site or in its printed media. A lame kayaking photo is one showing a kayaker on flatwater or easy whitewater with no humor, irony, or interesting background features. Close-up portraits are allowable as long as the face fills at least a quarter of the frame. I realize this will make production more difficult given that none of us ever run anything but Class I and easy Class II rivers. One strategy would be to scan the banks for deformed trees or unique geological features and take photos highlighting yourselves and those features as if you encountered them on the pool below the waterfall you just ran. Another would be to take zoomed-out photos of yourselves scouting dangerous rapids you have no intention of running. One important point is to never name the river where the photos were taken. Everyone knows the Mulberry is lame. That's why people call it the Dullberry. Nothing will undermine our hard-earned Class V brand image faster than posting pictures from the Dullberry on this web site.
It is important that we continue to develop our kayaking skills so that someday we can start running difficult rapids. In the mean time, we must do everything we can to maintain our inflated brand image as a competent boater. Our business depends on it!
Dave Renfro, CEO
Maximum security document. May not be physically or electronically duplicated in any manner. Not for distribution outside the big room. DMG-54310X
