The curse of couch cushions being so absorbent

I get these great ideas for blog post throughout the day. They are brilliant ideas and would make the best blog posts of all time. If you read these gems you would have no choice but to agree.

Sometimes a send myself an e-mail to remind me of my flash of genius. Sometimes I use my little memory trick of turning my watch around backwards, which forces me to remember throughout the day why I turned my wristwatch around. Sometimes I scribble a note on a piece of paper. And many times I just make a mental note, telling myself that I just have to write about that.

Then I get home. Fix some dinner. Deal with the dishes. Check my e-mail, catch up on a few odds and ends, get engrossed in mind-numbing television. And before you know it, the enthusiasm and energy to be brilliant is gone.

Oh, sure, I still want to be brilliant, but I find I no longer remember how.

So I watch more mindless television and then go to bed.

It's like all the genius gets absorbed by the cushions the moment my butt hits the couch. I guess that's what I get for carrying by brainpower back there.

Ode to a dream job

Sometimes I wonder what I would do if I wasn't a journalist. I used to be fond of saying, "I can always pump gas," based on my experience working for my dad when I was a teen. One of my jobs was servicing the airplanes, pickups and other rigs around the place. That involved pumping a lot of gas.

For a decade I had to stop saying "I can always pump gas," because it didn't make since to anyone in California when I lived there. California had self-service gas stations. Everyone pumped gas in California.

Now, I suppose, I could use the line again as a born-again Oregonian. I don't think my creditors would support the career change though.

But I may have found it. I have a new dream job.

I want to be a copy writer for Del Taco tray liners.

Seriously.

On my way home from work I decided to stop off for dinner someplace where I could get a taste of California. I have been eating at home primarily lately, and frankly, my cooking skills leave something to be desired. I needed a change. There is one Del Taco restaurant in Salem and it reminds me of SoCal. For several years I lived just a few miles down the road from Yermo, Calif., the birthplace of the Mexican fast food chain. Although, as I recall, Barstow tries to claim for Del Taco's founding. If you've ever been to Barstow, you'd understand the people there need to be known for something beyond being a piss stop between L.A. and Las Vegas.

I was never a big fan of Barstow, but I loved the California deserts. The Mojave, with it's Joshua trees, the Colorado, with it's palm trees and mountain vistas. And warm, no, HOT sun and dry air. It was nirvana, and I needed a little reminder of that Eden to start my weekend.

So there I was, enjoying my soft tacos and daydreaming about the desert when I look down and there, on thin paper lining a plastic tray, was my key to a new career aspiration.

Whoever wrote the "Ode to the Bold" as part of Del Taco's "Go Bold or Go Home" campaign may have the best job ever.

Here's an excerpt.

"Here's to the pioneers. ... To the first to look a bull in the eyes and say, 'Yea, I'm gonna ride that. And with one hand.' Here's to the uninhibited. ... The lovers that honor one another with tattoos, The streakers. And the mooners. Here's to the brave. To those who can't karaoke, but karaoke anyway. ... Or objected at a wedding that needed an objection (thank you, thank you, thank you). Here's to the rule-breakers. ... And all the 4s out thee who married a 10. Here's to you, our customers. ... For you are the bold."

Made me feel like a stud for just eating a taco. I'm glad a went for the Del Scorcho sauce.

If you are going to go bold, you have to go all the way.

I kept the tray liner. I'm thinking of having it framed.

I wonder if the tray liner writer job comes with any pirques, like free combo burritos?

In search of the profound through beer and blogs

I feel the need to write something extremely profound. To exhibit wisdom through well-chosen words. To engage people in dialogue that chances minds and alters beliefs.

What I really need to achieve these goals is a ghost writer. Or maybe beer.

Hopefully Google/Blogger don't implement a Blog Goggles system like they have with their Gmail Mail Goggles. Stringing words together is enough of a challenge after drinking or late at night, don't ask me to do math!

Reaching for the breaching

I've had this urge. It's a craving. A pull. A need. It's a hunger that I have been unable to fulfill.

I've had this urge to write. Not a work of fiction. Not something related to my job. Something more personal. But I haven't been able to start.

It's sort of like when I have insomnia. No matter how tired I am, there are times when I can't bring myself to even try to sleep. It's been like that. I haven't been able to bring myself to write whatever it is in the middle of the whirlwind swirling around in my brain.

At so many points in my life, writing has been my solace. My therapy. It's as if the words flowing out through the ink from a pen, or that are tapped out through the stream of consciousness on a keyboard carry me like a river on some great expedition of self discovery.

I have the distinct impression, a feeling, that I'm coming up on some sort of turning point. A new phase. Like I want -- need -- to do something bold. But I need to write it out to figure out what that thing is.

I've done a little research for a blog post I want to do based on something I found online a few days ago. It was something that reminded me of my dad and family and my early childhood. I've bookmarked a few sites that I want to link to in that post. But that isn't the story I feel the need to tell. It's not the source of the craving. The urge.

This post ain't it either. I thought maybe if I started trying to explain the feeling that the source of the feeling would reveal itself.

If only the words would come. The right words. Then maybe I could find what I'm looking for.

17 Across: Triumph, but just barely

Something is wrong with the universe. I just finished a New York Times puzzle.

Maybe it's one of their easy puzzles, I don't know. But that was pretty weird.

I know a lot of people in my line of work -- newspaper journalists -- that are crossword puzzlers, but I never picked up the habit. One of my exes was something of a fanatic about her morning routine, which included doing (or at least starting) the puzzle out of the morning paper. Sometimes, I would pick up a half-finished puzzle and try filling in a few blanks, but I would usually lose interest in short order. I'd get bored, or frustrated, or be unsure of the spelling of some word and have no confidence of writing my guess in ink, so I'd toss the paper aside and do something -- anything -- else.

I don't know what possessed me to even start working on a puzzle today. But the lifestyle section of a paper from a few days ago was sitting here next to me and I picked it up and dove into the Sudoku puzzle. Those things, I'm mildly addicted to. In fact it's become part of my bedtime routine to do a few puzzles to empty my brain of other thoughts. I have a Sudoko game loaded on my iPod and I can do puzzles on there for hours until I either get tired of the games or get too physically tired that I doze off.

The Sudoku puzzle in the paper wasn't much of a challenge and I whipped through it pretty fast. I still had some time to kill, so I decided to try a few clues on the crossword. I got more clues than I expected and just kept going. Next thing I knew, all the squares were filled in.

I have a bit of a complex about writing out words, particularly longhand. I'm not a confident speller, and grammar isn't my strong suit either. I used to hate being called up in front of the class in school to write anything on the chalkboard. Maybe that's why I didn't pursue writing earlier in my life. I enjoyed writing but didn't aspire to study it or try to make a living with it because of the stigma about spelling. I took some newswriting classes in college because I had to to pursue my interest in newspaper photography as a major. But I figured the longest thing I'd every have to write was a photo caption after college. It turned out, I was wrong.

Thank God for computers and spellcheck programs. Still, I need an editor (as may be obvious from my posts).

That's my core paranoia. What if the other word folks around me will discover I'm an impostor. That I'm not a word person. I started off in journalism as a photographer. There was no conscious plan to become a reporter/editor. Years ago, when I was between jobs, I had an opportunity to work as a reporter on a fill-in basis for a paper that had a vacancy. The voyage to the word-side was supposed to be temporary. As an ambitious (and poorly paid) reporter, I aspired to move up and became an editor.

Now, after nearly 18 years working as a writer and editor, I'm finding that maybe I'm a little bit more of a word person than I've ever really bothered to give myself credit for being. Most people I've worked with in my career have only known me as a word guy. They don't know that my own self image is that I'm a picture taker who's pulling a fast one on everyone.

It's funny to wake up one morning and realize the person in the mirror isn't the person you thought you'd find. Sometimes you expect to find a Sudoku puzzler and discover a crossword puzzler instead.

The thingy's busted

I think my writer is broken. Every time I try to start a blog post, whatever I'm writing turns to mush and I either just leave it as a draft or delete what I have and start over. With more mush.

That's the only explanation I can think of. Something has to be broken. It couldn't be that I have nothing relevant to say, could it?

Nah, that can't be it.

My writer-thingy must be broken.

Write or wrong?

I was looking around online and found out that there is a new chapter here in Salem for the Willamette Writers group. I've never really considered myself I writer, even though I do some writing now and again. But for some reason I am intrigued about possibly attending one of the local chapter's gatherings.

If nothing else, it may be a way to meet some new people in town.

I guess it depends on what the people are like and what sort of stuff they talk about at their gatherings. So far they've only had one gathering it looks like, which took place this month.

If anyone stumbles across this blog and knows anything about that organization, I'd welcome any information you have about it.

The group may not be a good fit for me, as I think most of the people in that group are more aspiring poets or authors, and I'm more of newspaper writing hack. And, as I said, I don't really consider myself a writer. I mostly fly a desk and tinker with other people's writing. So it may not work out. But I'm still intrigued.