Sallying Fourth with Cracklin' Rosey

It's day four, which means we're one tenth of the way to believin' and achievin' the 40 day crockpot goal.
I have to admit it - I'm excited!

Yesterday I went to bed having unloaded upon the world a barrage of opinions about a music video and my impression of the inner monologues of the band members featured within that video. I woke up today wondering if I had over spiced the stew, as it were, particularly by making mention of my love of Hall & Oates without making clear my close affiliation to the Maneaters of Greater Los Angeles (MOGLA), friend to the Maneaters of Greater Phoenix (MOG-PHO). Even worse, when I re-read day 3's entry today, I realized that it was fairly riddled with formatting and grammar errors, as well as sentences that made no sense but required 4 lines of the page (my specialty!). I wondered if I should try to edit past days' entries, or set a standard that only forward motion be allowed in posting. I was generally worried that mania on the page would become burdensome to the weary reader - and that's pretty much all I've got to give folks.

Then, quite fortuitously, I checked my email and found I had received more feedback from some kindly crocker-stalkers. And they weren't telling me to shut my face or winnow my minnows to bare bones! Amazing!

I realize that a stray blog-skimmer stumbling upon this might think I'm an 83-year-old from Witchita who's just become acquainted with computers thanks to an adult education class at my senior center, and may anticipate that tomorrow's entry will be something like,

"There's this thing called the blogosphere, which I thought was that secret project out in the desert for pod people, later a Pauley Shore comedy flop that re-ran on Showtime too much, but it's a world inside this computer!"

But I guess I am overwhelmed by encouragement, and thankful for those who are spending/wasting their time in this space.

The realization that "hey, it's ok to write imperfect junk sometimes," led to the realization that my dad is probably very right to compare me to Dumbo. And no, not because of my giant ears, weight problem, fondness for hats, addiction to peanuts, tendency to hangout with clowns, bouts of drunkenness and hallucinations (most aforementioned points of comparison also applicable, however), but because I think I need a magic feather to be able to do some things in life. And for me, it turns out magic feathers are comments that amount to "yeah, keep putting rambling bullshit into the world for others to read. It's really fine to do so. You probably should."

THAT realization triggered some part of my brain to travel back to my third grade classroom where we all listened to the record player before being dismissed, and remembering the seriousness with which our teacher asked us to contemplate the song she played that day - "It's Alright to Cry" as sung by Rosey Grier on the record "Free to Be You and Me." (and YES he is related to Pam!)

It's probably because the message of "yeah, it's really fine, let it out" is similar, and probably because that song is awesome, that I found myself rocking in time to the tune and headed back to youtube for more love.

If I had just changed the word "cry" to "write" in that song years ago, I probably could have skipped that grad school debt and just gone ahead and started a blog about how I can't believe anyone actually would read a blog from my head. To think, I might actually be to the "DUMBO'S FLYING!" stage of things by now instead of just perfectly comfortable crying! Ha. Better now than never!

And I did get a lot of great benefits from grad school, including many supportive clowns with whom I enjoy bouts of drunkenness and accompanying hallucinations before they remind me that

It's alright to write, writing takes the sad out of you, it's alright to wriiiiiiite!!!


Using part of the phrase "sally forth" today made me remember another realization I had, but long after third grade, long after I should have probably - the realization that popular comic strips were named after common phrases like "sally forth" and "frank and earnest" and "cathy."
"Ohhhhhh," was my thought at the time. Even the "wizard of id" and "for better or worse" seemed more clever to me that day.

So that is today's charge to anyone in the crock - what catchy, partially clever title would you give to your comic strip?

Fishfood for thought. My answer tomorrow!