BMA Magazine - From The Bossman - A Note On Procrastination

I never (which is to say, perhaps not NEVER; ‘never’ is one of those words that can either be lightly used and easily disposed of in its colloquial form, like a supermarket’s own brand tissue, the kind of ‘never’ our politicians would use - ‘Oh, I would never do that!’ which is to say that they would, indeed, do that, and with the frequency that the word ‘often’ or even ‘serial’ would be the more accurately terminology.

I’m no talking the serious ‘never’, the never-with-a-capital-N Never, the all caps NEVER, the italics never if you will; the weighty ‘never’ that holds true it namesake and echoes through the eons of time, echoing on and on, a perinnial contract of a word, existing past time as mountains are formed then erode and form once more, whole civilisations are started, built, reach their zenith then collapse over and over, and yet still the ‘never’ holds fast like the legendary Shield of Aegis, repelling all those who would defy the promise of never, fending off naysayers, doubters, and antagonists.

So yeah, not that ‘never’, not capital letters - at the front or all the way through - nor italics; that’s some heavy duty ‘never’ going on right there. I think we’re more comfortable in the flight-of-fancy version; the one that you can take out for a spin, knowing full well you can hand back the responsibilities of owning a proper Never after a short drive around the proverbial block. Far more comfortable in our little bracketed off version of ‘never’, which is what I was trying to say at the start.

Speaking of which, don’t forget we’re still in a brackets here, or ‘parentheses’ if you want to appear posh; it’s hard to gauge who you want to ‘talk to’ when it comes to your writing, your Ideal Reader as Stephen King puts it - which in his case was his wife - especially in this mag, the beloved-by-all-ages entertainment spectacular and champion of all things Canberra arts and the people who make it that is BMA Magazine.

I mean, everyone knows the term ‘brackets’ but I prefer ‘parentheses’, but if you don’t know what that means then one could come across as being unnecessarily verbose in some lame attempt to assert some kind of intellectual dominance, which is far from what I want to achieve… I’d almost go as far as saying I’d never want that, hahaha!

But seriously, it’s like swearing; I love a good swear in writing, a well-placed, properly earned swear that really punctuates emotion and gets a point across, or takes you by surprise - fuck! - and evokes laughter, but I understand they’re not everyone’s cup of tea, and fair enough, but I mean just now, that cheeky f-bomb back there, utilised hopefully to prove some kind of point, that right there will put people off, possibly even turn an advertiser or two away in disgust, and GOD only know we need every cent we can muster In These Times™.

...Sorry, where was I? Ahhhh yes, the brackets. Parentheses.

We’re still in it, maaaaaan. Just because we’ve safely piloted through the asteroid field of multiple paragraph breaks doesn’t mean we’ve broken out of the parentheses-brackets field, which is quite exciting, really, kind of like that old episode of Seinfeld, well, they’re ALL old episodes of Seinfeld now aren’t they, to the extent that people in their 20s cock their head to the side like a confused kitten at the mention of it. Gosh, that makes you feel old.

But anyway, as I was saying, we’re like Kramer and the car dealership guy where they run the car past the fuel empty gauge and keep right on going, a scene which in itself was a reference to Thelma and Louise with the little handhold gesture and everything, you probably knew that already and I’m over-explaining, like I said it’s hard to know your Ideal Reader when you try to appeal to all.

But yeah, we’re well past that now; the ‘empty’ light has been shining for some time so best to end this soon… “Listen to me. When this column rolls into that dealership, and that tank is bone dry, I want you to be there with me when everyone says, “Allan and that other reader, oh, they went further down the column than anyone ever dreamed!”

Or, my friends, OR... we could go even deeper! Maybe do a bracketparentheses inside a parentheses-bracket! Really Inception this shit (sorry, swearin again…. Ooooo! There it is! The hallowed bracket-within-a-parentheses… this feels weird; you could easily get lost in here. But you know what? I’ve never tried going three layers deep, so let’s see what happens (HKGIYSIYCCKSYCUCS))

Gah! I think I broke it! OK, that’s it, I’m getting out of this nightmare. Come with me if you want to live, or at least get out of this and do something useful with your life. OK, we’re resurfacing; gotta go slowly go we don’t get the writer bends coming up, nearly there, OK! In three… two… one…) procrastinate.