A Reminder and a Question

Today's the day, goils. Business on the Rocks w/a Twist. 5:30 at di Fratelli, 211 Broadway, Paducah. Talk shop, drink drinks, woo!

On a darker note...my second post in as many weeks has disappeared. The first time it happened to my Whatever Works post. In it, I'd posted video (from YouTube) of the trailer to this latest Woody Allen movie along with my own commentary. Gone within a couple of days. The second time, just this morning, my last post, recommending "A Life in Pictures", a documentary on the work of Stanley Kubrick, similarly disappeared. Poof! I'm guessing this disappearing act may have something to do with the fact that the two contained video that may not have been licensed for the purpose. I have no way of telling this, of course, when I grab the "embed" code available on nearly all YouTube videos. It sucks, but I could deal with it, except that, along with the video, they take what I've written as well. The writing is gone from my blog as well as from my internal folders. And nary a word from Blogger.

The incident drives the point home that, while all the stuff I post here seems like mine, and feels like mine, it is all subject to the whim of Blogger, the website and free software that makes it all possible. This seems like the world's happiest partnership until they put the smack-down on you. Taken separately, these blog posts are completely insignificant work. Seldom is the time I hold a post in a draft folder over night. For the most part, I write, I hit publish, I forget about it. Taken as a whole, however, it is a near five-year snapshot of my life that I don't have in any other form anywhere else, except held by Blogger. It's something, that if I think about it, at the very least, I'd like to pass along to my son and prospective grandchildren if that proverbial piano falls on my head (and, you know me, it will; and I'll only be sorry I can't blog the details afterward).

Lately, I've gone back and read through some of my archives. Something I've never really done before. While, in practice, I feel like I share only a small (even tiny) fraction of my life here, when I read back I'm surprised at the amount of stuff I HAVE written about. It's a lot. And, in many cases, it's much easier to read between the lines than I would have supposed. There's some Material there, in places. Stuff that, were I to spend any real time on it, I may be able to work into something more. For instance, my marriage. Holy God, what a gold mine of material. Just a first blush thought:

“Searching for Sasquatch and other Stories of a Marriage”

Chapters to include:
-Your Hair is Too Clean and Shiny
-Don’t Meet me in St. Louis (Please)
-This is SO Nacho Cheese
-Thanks for your Honda
-My Chainsaw Fell on your Furniture. Repeatedly.

Even I kinda want to read that book.

I don't have a wrap-up for this because...I don't know. It's certainly my own fault I haven't kept a record of my postings; it would have been easy enough to save them to an external hard drive before publishing or even printing each and throwing it in a notebook. It's still possible, I suppose, to grab it all but...what a bitch. The deletion of my posts just feels so...1984. I have no reason to think that Blogger will ever go away or that it has any particular interest in my very insignificant blog. At the same time, I have to ask myself, for a lot of reasons, is this the best forum for my writing? And also realize that, were I to get serious about it, and put at least as much work in on producing something publishable as I have on tossing off blog posts, I might very well have something in a few short years.

Things that make you go "hmmm".