Dear Hope Nation,
We’ve been living through heavy times. Hard times. Times that try men’s and women’s souls. For today, I’d like to lighten up a bit. What follows is complete and utter nonsense. If you’re looking for a serious piece on recovery, on hope, on mental health, please look elsewhere on the Hope website (http://www.hopefornhrecovery.org/a-daily-message/). There are more than 40 (50?) (60?) other letters to read there.
You’ve been warned.
The secret to having good ideas is having a lot of ideas and discarding the bad ones. Titles have always been difficult for me. Whether for songs (“Out-of-Town Tuna Fish”), albums (The Sound of One Mind Snapping: Songs from the Zen Baptist Tradition), poems (“Drowning in the Fountain of Eternal Life”), stories (“Let Me Begin Again”) or novels (What Trouble Looks Like, On Account of Because, A Cult of One), I’ve always agonized over titles. Believe it or not, the above are what was left after I’d thrown out the bad ones, of which there were many.
On the eve of my 60th birthday, I had a chance, thanks to Andy Ryan, Duke Mulberry and “Sicker than Most,” I had a chance to live out a childhood dream. Because Jessica Lange was older, married and living in Minnesota, it wasn’t THAT childhood dream. Still, I had a chance to do five or seven minutes of stand-up. My entire schtick was reading off this list of rejected book titles. Slowly and very deadpan.
- Winnie the Pooh Goes to War
- Exfoliating with Steel-Wool Panties
- Things to Eat When You’re Out of Food
- The Catcher in the Lye: Baseball Players Who Were Poisoned
- Theoretical Knitting
- Your Rights in an Elevator
- Why Does Mommy Smell Like Cat Food?
- The Wonders of Warts
- When Bad Things Happen to Bad People
- 125 Things to Do Each Morning Before You Get out of Bed
- How’d He Do That? A Magician’s Guide to the Gospels
- Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of Off-Brand Scotch
- The Little Golden Book of Necromancy
- Fortune Cookies: Satan’s Baked Good
- Hanukah, Chanukah, Hanukkah—The Brady Bunch Goes Orthodox
- Read Your Way to Eyestrain!
- How to Keep a Secret—A Care and Feeding Guide
- My Little Pony—Pets for Midgets, Dwarfs and Other Little People
- Hearing Perfume and Tasting Corduroy: How to ‘Hack’ Your Senses
- Alibis for Everything
- Toenail Clippings: Not Just for Breakfast Anymore!
- A History of History
- Dream Your Way to Sleep
- If You’re So Rich, Why Ain’t You Smart?
- Negotiating Your Way into Heaven: Loopholes Edition
- A Hole in One and a Garrote on the Other: Murdering Siamese Twins
- Crimes You Didn’t know You Could Commit
- I Wish You Wouldn’t Do That and Other Things to Say When a Gun is Pointed at You
- Learning to Walk without Moving Your Lips
- Seven Secrets of Successful Beggars
- The Constitution, a Guide for the Handcuffed
- Space Travel on a Budget
- A Dog in a Tree Has Nowhere to Pee But Down and Other Business Advice
- A Farewell to Arms: Living with Amputation
- The Pampered Hostage
- Don’t Take a Breath Until You Read this Book!
- The Old Man and the C+: Telling Your Dad You’re Not Very Smart
- Should Recovering Alcoholics Remove Their Red Wine Birthmarks?
- Future Lives Therapy
- Breeding Dogs vs. Bleeding Dogs: The Case for Enunciation
- How You Take Your Coffee Predicts How You Will Take Your Life
- The Dummy’s Guide to Developmental Disabilities
- A Smuggler’s Guide to Body Orifices
- Changing Your Eye Color with Bleach: A Doctor Speaks Out
- Whatever Doesn’t Kill You Can Still Leave You Paralyzed
- Asparagus and Urine: A Scratch-N-Sniff Book
- Change Your Fingerprints and Change Your Plea
- Cleaning with Fire
- Dental Problems You Can Cure with Pliers
- 31 Ways to Attract People
- 32 Ways to Make People Leave You Alone
- Ankles: How Many Do You Really Need?
- A Kid’s Guide to Adultery
- An Adult’s Guide to Kidnapping
- Diarrhea Diorama: Art Projects Using ALL Your Senses
- This Hurts Me More Than It’s Hurting You: Suing Your Victim
- The Little Golden Book of Arson
- The Bobbsey Twins and the Lindbergh Baby
- A Book of Common Slayers: Obscure Murderers
- Toaster Recipes for a Crowd
- Recipes for Things That Are Not Food
- Why Just 26?—The Lost Letters of the Alphabet
- How to Grow Taller Using Just the Items in Your Wife’s Digestive System
- Lose Weight through Not Eating
- Why Does Daddy Cry?
- What Happened to My Old New Daddy?: Parenthood in an Age of Serial Monogamy
- Virgin Martini Recipe: How to Make Ice
- Queen Victoria Never Ate Pasta: The Case Against Globalization
- It Was Just a Tap: An Emergency Guide to Hiding Bruises
- Claim Your Last Meal Now!
- The Idiot’s Guide to Primary Colors
- No Atheists in Foxholes: Killing the Nonbeliever Combatant
- Things to Do When You’re Trapped in a Hole
- YIKES: 27 Things to Be Afraid of
- A History of Flashlights
- The Snickers without a Toothbrush Diet: Lose Weight Through Losing Your Teeth!
- I Want Your Used Q-Tips!
- Some Things to Hide in Your Socks
- Time Travel Tips for Ghosts
- Rabbit’s Feet are Only the Beginning: Talismans Made from Pets!
- Songs That Can’t Be Hummed
- Drink Your Way to Sobriety!
- Things You Can Accomplish without Leaving Your Chair
- Things to Make You Feel Old
- Untraceable Wedding Day Pranks
- Our Bodies, Our Shelves: Home Decorating with Surgical Waste
- Home Tongue Repair
- Acid Flashbacks as a Legal Defense: Walls Melt and So Do Jailhouse Bars
- “In My Day” and Other Phrases to Repel Teenagers
- It’s Not Murder if He Survives: Home ICU Construction
Most people can come up with good book titles, even if they can’t write good books. It takes a true artiste to create a bad book title, or so I tell myself when I can’t come up with a good one.
You matter. I matter. We matter.
Keith