Volume 3, Issue 12
June 7 - June 20, 2001

A DATE WITH STEPHANIE AND BOBBY:
HURRY TO ENTER

You've only got until June 14 to enter the contest to have dinner with Stephanie Glenn and Bobby Black. Just send an e-mail with the following information: 1) three things you like about Go-Go, 2) three things you don't like about Go-Go, 3) where you usually get Go-Go, 4) name, age, address. Two lucky winners will be selected at random June 15, and notified via e-mail. Good luck, and hurry!

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY POINTLESS

Yeah, this is a good job. Every other week I get a huge space to fill with whatever thoughts or opinions my mind creates. What could be better? A free soap box; a bully pulpit only one in a million humans are fortunate enough to enjoy.

Or so you might think. Until you have to confront writer's block head on. Yes, the dreaded writer's block. The bane of the blank page. The complete absence of thought. In writing classes, instructors invariably force the afflicted to just write whatever comes to mind, just keep the fingers moving until the deep recesses of memory are jogged enough to cough up a topic, a subject, a character, a story, anything. Well, that's fine for the casual writer, or the author who toils in solitude with no deadline breathing down his or her neck. Me? I've got two choices:write something, or print up a whole bunch of white space.

Or ... who said this must be filled with the ramblings of the damned? I know what will spare me this odious task! I know what savior will come to occupy my lonely prison of newsprint! A gigantic picture of Shaft!

Alas, my Shaft is not gigantic enough. Stupid writing instructors. What good would it do me, with the time of press at hand, to babble on incoherently until some magical thought gave me another gleaming, perfect column? They weren't anticipating this particular quandary -- how could they, when only one in a mil-lion 'enjoys' this task? Still, with no bet-ter advice at hand, here goes nothing:

The sky is blue, the sun is shining, I'd rather be outdoors enjoying some of this entertainment instead of writing about it, only 400 words to go, can I really comma splice like this? New sentence. Fuck it.

New paragraph. Hello, this is your new friendly neighborhood paragraph, ready to deliver topic sentences and transitional phrases right to your doorstep. Now is the time when we quote. "In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree." Now is the time when we support the quote with analysis and explication. And here comes, barreling like a barrel over Niagara Falls, the concluding sentence ... fuck it.

I'm suddenly afraid for my little useless diatribe here. Will it make it past the copy editing stage? Will proofreading reveal the folly of this waste of time and space? I can imagine the battle now:a bespectacled warrior thrusting with his red pen as the column dodges nimbly away, fingers in ears, tongue spitting and hissing like an unmanned fire hose. The melee lasts well into the night, as the sweating editor keeps attempting to cross out the stray fragment here, the meaningless drivel there, and yet the column remains intact, ready to go out into the world and prove just what a lazy, idiotic, vapid creature this magazine's chief writer is. We can't let them see weakness! Ho, ho! Man the canons and begin full assault me mateys! We're a-blowin' this page to smithereens, and a-plunderin' its decks of jewels and lasses!

--Chris J. Magyar