River stones and broken bones, scattered on the hill

I'm not a big one for "purple prose," which I see too often. Overly wordy, too many adverbs, just trying to let you know they have a quiver full of 25 cent words, and they know how to use them.

I see this in a lot of bloggers, many of whom have book deals. It makes me cringe.

Name names? OK. Here are two very popular blogs:

Click here for Opinionistas. She could be good, but she strikes me as somebody who is Trying. Way. Too. Hard. Ironically, she was a New York lawyer for a year or two and blogged about her experience in a huge law firm. When she was doing that, it was good. And it was linked here... but not anymore.

Also, check Mimi In New York, the English girl with an elite education and superior intellect (according to her) who moved to New York and became a stripper. Christ. She all but says, "The night was sultry. The kind of night where the sidewalk shimmers with the heat of a million souls, throwing off waves of steam, obscuring the blood-orange full moon with the hot hot heat of the heat. (Did I mention the moon was full?)

Would you kindly shut the fuck up?

(They both have book deals, by the by. I don't. They also each get ten times the traffic this place does. So, what do I know?

I could be all wrong, but why let that get in the way of a good rant?)

Christ, read those posts and tell me they're not spreading the cheese just a little too thick.

And completely forgetting about the bacon.

(No fucking bacon? What the fuck?!)

I think they don't give the reader enough credit.

If you want to read someone who does it right, read Quagmire, IF HE WOULD FUCKING POST SOMETHING- HINT, FUCKING HINT.

But also check out Jason Mulgrew, a fellow BC grad who maintains The Funniest Blog on the Net. Click and read. Click and read. I guarantee your work day will never be the same.

(Jason actually has a book deal and a sitcom deal. I'm telling you, he is fucking funny. I went back and read his entire blog. It's killer.)

I believe in the Elmore Leonard/Chuck Palahniuk/Charles Fucking Bukowski school of thought.

Say what you have to say, and then shut the fuck up.

I write these posts, then I go back through and trim. I take out half the words. If there is dialogue, you don't need to expound like an overfilled douchebag.

Example:

"Fuck you," he growled through clenched teeth, like a starving wolf protecting his hard-won kill.

My version:

"Fuck you."

I think you get the point.

Well I am just a monkey manI'm glad you are a monkey woman, too, girl

I would like to live part of the year in Costa Rica... but which part? I certainly wouldn't want to miss the Montana winter or early spring, my most favoritest of seasons. Summer down there would be too sweltering. OK... Mid-April to end of May, and October-November in Costa Rica. The rest of the time in Montana.

Of course, I will have to spend a winter or two in British Columbia, with a snowboard and a helicopter at my disposal.

Since such things get pricey, I have made an earnest and informed decision to win the lottery.

Oh, and embark on a career as a high-end art thief.

I also have been working really hard with a team of Japanese scientists and Sottish wizards to discover the cancer-fighting, heart-attack preventing, cholesterol-reducing properties of combining melted cheese and bacon.

And that is just in my spare time.

I also have plans to sit by and laugh heartily at New York elitism. (And, to a lesser degree LA, Chicago and San Francisco elitism.) Cramming a massive sea of humanity into a small geographical area causes individual members of said sea to experience strange phenomena.

Apparently, living elbow-to-asshole with millions of others on a sea of concrete, bathing in exhaust fumes and the stench of human effluvia, combined with the availability of thai food at 4 a.m., museums they never actually visit and fabulous broadway plays entitles these people to feel superior to the denizens of the rest of the country.

The "flyover states," if you will. Apparently, New Yorkers haughtily disregard everything between Brookyn and California.

They do, however, reserve the right to view Californians with mild disdain even whilst tipping their collective caps to the Californians' mad paving skillz and the sheer genius of sticking 9 million people in a fucking desert.

And, while New Yorkers admire the Californians' ability to squander natural resources at a staggering rate and shit them out into the ocean at an equally staggering rate, they feel the Californians have ultimately fall short of New York, since they failed to actually stack all those people right on top of each other... plus they think their pizza sucks, because you can't fold the slices in in half or something like that.

I don't know about you, but I acknowledge the inferiority of all the places I have lived to New York. I yearn wistfully for the ability to pay a couple hundred bucks to see a man in tights and pancake makeup sing his lines instead of speaking and get down on one knee for a grand, jazz-hands finale.

In the meantime, I'm going to nip on down to my favourite shoppe and stand in the queue to by some new tyres for my lorry.

Chip chip cheerio, old boy!