Update

I've been away from this thing for a while, but oddly enough, it still gets a ton of hits, so I guess I owe people some kind of update. It's only fair, right?

Things have been moving pretty well for me, careerwise, for the past couple of years. Right now I have a really cool job doing something I'm pretty good at, and I've been promoted multiple times since leaving "The Life of a Shitbag" behind. Not that there was anything wrong with being a professional shitbag, but I'd had enough of it and it was time for me to start using my mind to make a living for once. Best move I ever made. I always made fun of you people for working in your cubicles and your crappy offices, but now I'm doing that, too, and I couldn't be happier, at least professionally.

Now that I have some perspective on it, my story really is kind of cool. A professional jerkoff -- a "two-pump chump" as my friend Adam once called me -- starts a blog, which gets him a book deal (the culmination of which, let's face facts, sucked...but still), which lands him a job in the publishing industry (and a nice office). What the fuck is that all about?

Anyway, thanks to all of you who've inexplicably hung in for posts that haven't been coming. I've been thinking a lot lately about trying to get another book published. I'm definitely a WAY better writer than I was back then, having done this professionally for a while now, I have a better sense of how things work in terms of putting the shit together, and, most importantly, I have a much firmer grip on reality. Book deals don't grow on trees. Mine was such a weird surprise when it happened that I thought I was entitled. I wasn't, but the finished product was something written by someone who obviously started on third base and thought he'd hit a triple.

If I knew then what I know now...

But you know what? I know now what I know now, and I'm better at this now than I was then, so I'm definitely looking forward to doing more in this business. Things could definitely be worse.

Also, I had a dog growing up, and today would have been his birthday. He was cool.

Whisper

You’ve got this dog, right? And this dog you’ve got keeps taking shits on the rug. He’s shit on the rug so many times that you don’t even bother cleaning the damned thing anymore. You take it outside, shake off his steaming pile of crap, bring it back in and lay it out where it’s always been. And then he shits on it again. And again. And again. And then he barks at you like it’s your fault.

So you rub his nose in shit immediately after he does it again, and he thinks to himself, “Man, this sucks to have my nose rubbed in shit like this. I’ll never do this again.” But the next morning, he shits on the rug again. And you rub his nose in it again, and this time he takes it even harder. He understands the cause-and-effect here. “How could I have been so stupid,” he asks, “to have taken a shit on the rug again? This blows!”

And then he does it again. And gets his nose rubbed in it again. And thinks it sucks again. And forgets again and does the same fucking thing until you drag his sorry ass down to the pound and leave him there to be somebody else’s problem, because who needs a dog that can’t stop shitting on the rug?

Crazy how shit works.