Posted November 23, 2008

At the request of many readers, I have been searching for a way to make these essays more interesting. There are many ways to do this, however most of them require my actually sitting down and working on each essay. It's not that I have anything against work, it's just that I became a writer to avoid it, and it seems a shame to give all that up just to earn a living.

Fortunately, there are many ways to make an essay interesting without too much effort. The easiest is to put sex into it. Even that can require some work, so I put sex into my essay by not putting sex into it.

Confused? I'd explain it to you, but it's too much work.

Hah, hah, that's just my little joke. Of course I'll tell you what I mean. That's my job. Not wanting to work is different than being out of work.

Let's say I want to write about an experience I had writing in Starbucks, a topic with all the stimulating appeal of a Lumesta moment. Until I tell you that I had a hard time concentrating on my writing because the woman sitting across the room had these very large...gazebos. In fact, they were the biggest pair of...gazebos I'd ever seen.

Gazebos, huh?

If you're a man, you're probably thinking, "Wow. Just how large could those gazebos be that Jay can't say 'breasts'?" If you're a woman you're probably thinking, "How dare my husband use this essay as an excuse to stare at some woman's gazebos."

I could be a bit more descriptive and say that she had two large gazebos, but then you may spend all your time ogling this essay and never get around to reading the Web site credits, which my friends insisted on and are now angry because they can't get past the gazebos, either.

I know what you're thinking. Jay is a rude, sexist, immature pig. And the only reason you are saying this is because I'm writing about some woman's gazebos.

Shame on you.

As it turns out, this woman is a landscape architect and she is showing a client a model of his new back yard. Complete with gazebos.

Please do not tell anyone, but I have let you in on the big secret of why writing is not a real job.

The less you do, the more interesting it becomes. All I did to make you, my reader, happy was to figure out a way to get "gazebo" into this essay (10 times so far). If I told you this woman was designing a back yard, you'd never have been staring at her gazebos (11 times). Instead, you'd be searching for "food" on Google and staring at some butcher's Porterhouse (1 time).

Naturally, writing about sex is a cheap trick.

Easy, but cheap.

Fortunately, as a classy writer, I don't have to stoop to such a low level.

I only have to NOT write about sex.

Did I mention that when this woman stood up, she bumped her gazebos (12 times) and they jiggled around until they hit the floor?

Too bad they didn't land on somebody's Porterhouse.

©2008 Jay Douglas