Beagle Bugle
There is a book out there -- actually, more of a diary -- sitting in a cardboard box in the basement out there, collecting the dust of lost years and fending off the dank, day after day. In this diary are love letters. Love letters, written one after the other to the apple of her eye, the joy of her life, the one person that saved her from herself, gave her life, and breathed the giddy electricity of ultimate purpose into her soul.

The object of her affections is a one month old boy. Then two, then five. Tracking the new trials and ageless tribulations of bringing a son into the world, she writes to him without fail, sometimes every day, sometimes every other, but always when the time is right. She praises him, laughs with him, scolds him in this book, but always with the unconditional love of the pure heart of a mother. She wants him to know what it was like, and she wants him to look back years, eons later and see that he's not just her charge by quirk of biology, but that there is an intractible bond between them, that she's been his guardian, and his partner, since the moment his fontenelle brought forth into the atmosphere. The power of this, awesome enough to chisel mountains and orbit suns, runs free through the words.

One of the more apologetic entries in the book reads, "It's been awhile since I've written. I hope not to leave this alone so long again. It's been very busy lately, and I just haven't had the time to write to you like I want to. Please forgive me for this. And now again I must leave, because company is coming and I must get ready for them. But I will be right back after that."

This is the last entry in the book.

So, now you know where I get it from. If you check out the "BPMW" link on the main page you'll notice that my "daily musings" lasted about a week and hasn't been updated in over a year. But I will be right back after that.

The first entry on this page gave it its name. March 6th, woke up in the lap of luxury at the Ritz Carlton in Marina Del Ray and ended up furiously scribbling angry slang into my notebook while the silent dialogue of the actors in the inflight movie cheered me on. Yes, the healing must begin. So, it begins here. A new webpage.

It's come to my attention that there are a few out there (even those not related to me) who enjoy when I do this sort of thing. I hope I can live up to your exacting specifications in this latest round. In the first, though, remember that quantity must triumph over quality. For a while, anyway. Before you can paint the Sistine, you gotta draw a lot of dogs playing poker. A lot of dogs. Many many dogs. Got it? Doggies galore. A veritable canine cacaphony. A legion of Lassies. A bevy of Benjis.

Several Snoopies.

The goal here now is to do this "every damn day", as Mr. Cho would say. But you need to help. Like public television, we can't do this without you. So here's your job. If I ever miss a day, you must write to the following email address, and basically rip me a new one as brutally as possible for my transgression. The fear of this excoriation is just the kind of negative reinforcement that I need to really be a success. And this way, each and every one of you can point to this webpage and say, "Yeah, I had a hand in that." Even if the only hand you had in it was calling me a douchebag every few days. There's an old saying that goes, behind every great writer are several people calling him names and denigrating his whole existence.

You can do it. I trust you.

pinback@earthlink.net <- kick his ass!