Happier, Brighter Me

Point taken.  I’ll try to be more bright and sunny in my posts…if only T.S. didn’t remove all of the happiness from my heart.  (Okay it’s not that bad, but it is slightly boring).

Nice use of dialect (Whattya)…it’s very Mark Twain of you.  But I think you know how I feel about words that aren’t in the dictionary (Reminder: I don’t like them).

As to your political reference…I’m afraid it largely went over my head.  I stopped paying attention to politics after Jessica Fletcher left Congress (Season One, Episode 10 “Capitol Offense”).  But I do often think that you sound smart.

And speaking of feeling smart…I’ve found that reading Tristram in public spaces makes me feel very intelligent…I’ll let everyone at the laundromat know that I’m a smarty by chuckling loudly and waving my copy of the book in the air and announcing “Oh that Tristram…avant garde literature really hasn’t come so far in the past couple of centuries” and then I throw conspritorial looks around as if to say “You all know what I’m talking about.”  Needless to say I’m very popular at my local sudsery.

My April resolution is to finish Tristram by the end of the month…do you think its possible?

Your Twin,

Jon

Accentuate the Positive

I feel like we’ve been emphasizing the negative in the ol’ Life and Opinions of…so far. We’ve had a smattering of positive comments, but by in large the comments have been skewing negative.

Some might attribute the over-riding negativity to the meandering and at times seemingly pointlessness directions the narrative likes to travel down. Others might say we’ve been conditioned towards negativity with seemingly endless negative smear campaigns that are the status quo in today’s political arena*.

Others might just think the book isn’t any good, and while I may tend to agree if you happen to ask my opinion during a particularly slow portion of volume 2. But, I am not ready to chuck the book wholesale.

But I realized there is one thing about the Shandyman that is undeniably great: He constantly reminds the reader how discerning and intelligent they are for reading his book. Just when ol’ Tritram is wearing on my nerves he kindly reminds me that I must be a reader of the highest quality to be reading his book.

Well played, Tristram, well played.

Now, I know if you’ve read the above this may sound a bit disingenuous, but I have to say it:

Dear Reader (or to be accurate perhaps I should just say, Jon),

I feel this is an opportune time to pay you a compliment that has been a long time coming. I’ve thought this since you first stumbled upon our blog, whatever route brought you here, you are no doubt a reader of the highest intelligence, and the fact that return again and again shows that you have a great curiosity that is so rare in readers today, and for that I really applaud you.

Your greatly indebted blogger,
Justin

(I figure, if its good enough for Tristram Shandy its good enough for me.)

*This is me trying to sound intelligent**.

**Whattya think?