13.  Snookered

 

Q:  One meaning of snooker it to snooker yourself.

      To leave yourself in bad shape.

      Behind the eight ball.

      You can’t see any way out.

      You have snookered yourself.

      You write about snookering yourself.

 

A:  Malcolm X said you have all been bamboozled.  Hoodwinked.

      I think the American dream hoodwinks people.

      I think the constant mental rutting distracts us.  The advertising and entertainment.

      They are distracting us.

      It’s a distraction.

 

Q:  The advertisers made Marshall McLuhan withdraw his book.

      They want to own the language.

 

A:  When you go to work for a corporation you sign a nondisclosure/intellectual property agreement that gives them the contents of your head.

      Anything you think belongs to them.

 

Q:  You looked up Out Your Backdoor in a search engine and got hits on sites for anal sex.

      That got you a visit from Corporate Security.

      They don’t want you surfing porn sites on the net on company time.

 

A:  A computer at work is like a telephone.

      You can’t keep people from using it for personal business.

      They order things online.

      They read articles in hobbyist magazines.

      They chat with their coreligionists.

 

Q:  Potter said giving you a desk and a typewriter was like putting Frank Pitts in charge of the hogs on St. Joe Point.

 

A:  They have to put somebody in charge who knows the hogs.

      That’s one of the sorrows of working at home.  Being retired.

      You have nobody to rip off but yourself.

 

Q:  You can write anything you want to and you don’t want to write anything anyone will buy.

 

A:  That’s about it.

      Who wants to read about money nightmares.

      No job at The Unemployment.

      Rejection letters written by a moron.

      There is no gatekeeper.  We snooker ourselves.

      The really well-trained dog jumps through the hoop without being asked.

 

Q:  George Orwell sais that.

 

A:  George Orwell was astute.

      He worked as a journalist.

      Saw how they did it.

 

Q: I saw Nick Nolte interviewing himself, a program called No Exit.

      He saw journalists were whores.  Particularly paparazzi.

 

A:  That’s why I made Sporting Life a paparazzo.  I see YEAR 41 as being like No Exit.

      An interview with myself.

      Only unpublished, due to lack of interest.

      Self-published.

      On the web.

      Sporting Life is a blogger.

      YEAR 41 is a blog.

 

Q:  How does it end?

 

A:  That’s undetermined.

      We don’t know how it’s going to end.

      We will surprise ourselves.

      That’s the theme.  How’s It Going to End?

      How else can The Truman Show end?

      You can’t have Truman going through the fence.

 

Q:  You can drive over to Seaside.

 

A:  Seaside is a movie set.

 

Q:  Last book was Blue Highways.  Sneads and Grand Ridge.  Hot sauces and pepper vinegars.

      This book can be blackened grouper.  Organic grits.  $8 a bag.

 

A:  Upscale yuppie gristmills.

      It’s all a grist mill.

      It’s all grist for my mill.

      Grits and grunts.

      I can get by on grits and grunts.

      The grunt is a saltwater panfish.

      The conchs in the keys lived on them during the Great Depression.

 

Q:  Sneads and Seaside, compare and contrast.

 

A:  That’s right.

      POTLICKER JOURNAL and SNEAKING PAST THE GATEKEEPER form a pair of books.

 

Q:  You could call SNEAKING PAST THE GATEKEEPER WEBLOG (BLOG), or LOG OF A BIG HAT.  Or LOG FROM THE SEA OF CORTEZ.

 

A:  SEASIDE BLOG.

      BLOGGING FROM SEASIDE.

 

Q:  Seaside probably want to control the use of their name.

 

A:  They’re a town, man.

      Down and Out in Beverly Hills.

 

Q:  DOWN AND OUT IN SEASIDE.

 

A:  Down and Out in Shoreditch and Hoxton.

 

Q:  BLOGGING ABOUT SEASIDE.

 

A:  POTLICKER JOURNAL and SEASIDE BLOG.

      Together, they form Roots Music.

 


 

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