The One With a Buttload of Obscure References

Briiiing. Briiiing.

"Hello?"

WAKE UP CALL!

Well, here's a fine how-do-you-do. It seems that in order to win contests and be published, ONE MUST SEND OUT SUBMISSIONS! Don't that just beat all? Imagine my surprise to read that in my enlightening comments yesterday. I KNOW! I can hear you mouthing it quietly at your computer screen, too. What's this? You have to send out submissions? Except for the enlightening squad, of course.

Perhaps they've tried to drop this subtle hint all along, and it bounced right off my pointy little head. All that time I expected success to come tap tap tapping on my chamber door while I lay nap nap napping in my blue recliner. Well, forevermore!

I suppose I've been lax in pouring my efforts into this writing thing. My little hobby. Regarding myself as just a frumpy high school teacher with a bad haircut and questionable fashion sense, counting the days until retirement. Okay. YEARS until retirement. So many years of hearing that those who can't DO, teach. And that we don't deserve that king's ransom we are served on a silver platter while we sit around all summer eating bonbons on the taxpayers' dime. I don't even like bonbons. But people seem to like my writing.

To paraphrase Sheryl Crow, "Teaching is what happens while I'm making plans." Yeah. My job will go on. But I can kick my writing up a notch. Don't cost nothin'. Okay, maybe I had a little help in the paraphrasing department there from Emeril Lagasse and John Belushi. Still. I can do better. Short of poking me with a pointy stick, I don't know how my blog buddies can motivate me more.

To date, I've been happy as a puppy with two...Hold it! I didn't even watch City Slickers. I don't know where that came from. Anyhoo, I've been happy just to write my blogs and make people smile. Like Dewey and his Poopy Dance on Malcolm in the Middle. But I'm putting a stop to all that. I swear, as fans of Gone With the Wind are my witness, that I shall make a concerted effort to waste less time and write more thingies suitable for submission. Even if it takes the sacrifice of snorting more Diet Coke. And by snorting, I mean in the manner a grandpa might grab his ten-year-old grandson by the neck and wave a pint of peppermint schnapps under his nose, chuckling, "Take a snort of that! That'll put hair on your chest!" Not in the manner of a certain actor actually snorting coke off a porn star's behind, chuckling, "WINNING!"

I vow to make this my New Year's resolution: send out several submissions per month. I know that's not many. But it's more than I have been sending. Baby steps. (Thanks, Bill Murray.) Indeed. That's my number one New Year's resolution. For 2014. No! Joking! For this year.

Excuse me. I've got some writing to do.