Bill's Notes

Won't you come to Florida for a vacation?
The tan developer beckons from the television
They know they got me because I'm an insomniac
Records, detergents, here's the latest Pontiac
The got me so conditioned now that
When they talk I just react
Why they throwing it all at me?

Hard sell pressure got to keep the motor running
Stimulate your need to satisfy something
You don't want to be the one who never gets in line
You don't want to be the one who's always left behind
Pick up that phone you're running out of time
Why they throwing it all at me?


I know you're worrying what will the people say?
I know you're worrying you've got bills to pay
Worrying will the backwash get you?
The undertow drag you out?

You don't want to be the one who never gets in line
You don't want to be the one who's always left behind
Pick up that phone, quick you're running out of time
Why they throwing it all at me?
Why they throwing it all at me?
Why they throwing it all at me?

This post is redacted. In advance. I was gonna say something, but I changed my mind. OK, I'm lying. Actually, what was here was a 32-paragraph real-life sex scene in which I invented an entirely new vocabulary to describe the act of sex intercourse, a vocabulary not silly, allegorical, metaphorical, sentimental nor clinical.

And you missed it! Bwahahaha!

That was my freshman year in college. The statement had the twin benefits of being extreme while being extremely ambiguous. I was not one of those let's kill all the leaders anarchists that assassinated so many told around 1900 (including President McKinley).

No, I was the kind of anarchist who believed that the government should be minimal and even periodically shut down and leave everyone alone. I've often said back in the day I was a liberal democrat, but that wasn't really true.

It was just that back then, like now, I wanted my freedom, and didn't want to take away yours, and I expected the same from you. And since back when I was younger, I was more concerned about social freedom than economic freedom, I was a Democrat. Later, after economic freedom became more important to me, I became a Republican. See, it all makes sense. Largely, your determination of Democrat or Republican is determined by whether you stress social freedom or economic freedom.

Plus, it was the Democrats who introduced PC, totalitarianism writ small, and have now attacked social freedoms in ways that I've never dreamed. Friggin' fascists, really, trying to take away my cigars and tax all my sins. Meanwhile, the GOP fights back. We have a effed up situation where in some states it's legal to ride a motorcycle without a helmet, but not a bicycle.

But we were talking about anarchy. By anarchy, I meant a spontaneous, natural order, a little like how we dreamed the Indians lived (except they didn't). Those with two, toss one into the communal pot. Those with none, draw one. Pretty simple. It would work if we didn't have greedy power-mad people on one hand and busybody killjoys on the other. Just leave me alone to drink a beer and read my book, you know? I don't tell you how to live. But it would never work. So I'm no longer an anarchist.

Interesting times. As in "may you live in"

Harry comes out against revision of blogging entries, and this time has a code of ethics to back up his point.

Harry's talking about me at one point referring to the person who practices "redaction." I hereby respond by turning over the rest of this entry to 19-year-old Bill:

1. I don't need your stinkin' rules, man. Just because someone wrote up some quasi-fascist policy manual doesn't mean I have to follow it. Man, I'm free as a bird, and that bird will never change. You're not gonna put me in your cyber-cage, dude.

2. We have the power to change these entries. We have the ability. We have the will. So we're gonna use it. You'll take my "delete" key away from me when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands. Anarchy now!

3. Go with it, bro. Don't embrace fear, embrace the change. It's like, man, we've broken through to a new place, and blogging allows us to add a "time" element to print previously unknown to any media except movies and music. How cool is that? It's part of the whole, artistry beauty thing. Don't dream it, be it.

Regarding former U of VA student Liz Seccuro's filing charges against her rapist, who contacted her via snail mail as part of Step Nine of AA 20 years after raping her. Here's my take on Step Nine if you are an unprosecuted felon:

1. Step Nine does not give you carte blance to contact people. If you're a rapist, do not contact your victim at her home address. To a victim, it feels like a massive invasion of privacy. Guess why? It is. Think about it. You're a rapist. Now you've just told your victim you the rapist knows where she lives. Not only that, you probably cyber-stalked her to get the address, and she's sure gonna be spooked about that. That's the message the letter sends merely by showing up in her mailbox. You've violated her once; the letter violates her again.

And guess what? Every society, including ours, has mechanisms for dealing with situations such as this without requiring the perpetrator to directly contact the victim. In some societies, it's the tribal chief. In ours, it's the justice system. Yes, the justice system is not just for victims, part of what the courts do is give perpetrators a chance to "pay their debt."

2. Step Nine does not permit you to make things worse for others so that you can ease your conscience. Did you get drunk and sleep with your best friend's wife? Guess what: You can't damage their marriage so that you can feel better about yourself. Some burdens you just have to flat-out carry. In fact, part of your penance is to carry that burden, quietly, without complaining. If it's too much and you want to whine about it, find a therapist.

3. Unless you can really empathize with others, that is, really put yourself in their shoes, don't even try to attempt Step Nine with that person. That state of empathy takes a long time for an alcoholic, maybe a couple of decades. Any attempt at minimizing, or bad motivations, will be obvious. And piss the victim off.

4. Whenever you do Step Nine, do not give the victim the problem of justice. For example, don't say, "I'll do anything you want to make up for it." Why not? Because you've just made justice her problem, not yours. It's not her job to come up with the 12 labors of Hercules for you. It's not her job how to figure out how to make things right. It's yours.

5. You will not "get drunk" if you fail to do Step Nine. While AA has a lot of great things about it, there's this underlying belief that unless you do all the steps, you'll get drunk again. It's not true. That's an excuse people use. The only step you need to do perfectly is Step One. Do the first five steps — that is, clean up, do your moral inventory. Then cope.

6. You may have done things while drinking that are felonies, for which the statute of limitations has not run out. You have to make a choice: Do you do your time — or not? Follow your conscience. If your conscience tells you that the solution is to live your new life best you can, to do good, then do that. If your conscience tells you that you have to pay for your crimes, then do the following:

A. Contact a defense lawyer.
B. You and your attorney go down to the police station together. Because you know what? The police do want to hear directly from you.
C. Think about any accomplices. Are you going to send others to jail to ease your conscience? It depends on the situation. Keep this in mind.
D. Guess what? The justice system provides a time for criminals to apologize to their victims. Usually, it's right before sentencing. And if you think about it, that's the best time for Step Nine in such circumstances. More important, the victim has control over whether to show up or not, whether to speak or not.

My two cents. YMMV.

I once called Salon's Gary Kamiya the worst professional writer in the world, bar none. Now I take it back. Here's a fine piece on my current profession, editing. [Not sure the link will work. If not, sign in for a one-day guest pass.]

Good editors work with and not against a writer. They calibrate how aggressively they edit according to how good the writer is, how good the piece is, the type of piece it is, the kind of relationship they have with the writer, how tight the deadline is, and what mood they're in. But an editor's primary responsibility is not to the writer but to the reader. He or she must be ruthlessly dedicated to making the piece stronger. Since this is ultimately a subjective judgment, and quite a tricky one, a good editor needs to be as self-confident as a writer.

As readers here have pointed out, my posts usually get shortened by about a third in subsequent re-writes. That's because I can usually be an editor to my own writing, and taking out excess words and side issues makes the essential point stronger. [Pats self on back.] That said, you can't be afraid to "edit in," too.

However, I often simply have no time to do a real editing job here at Bill's Notes. So a lot of stuff is in pretty raw form. And as Hemingway once purportedly said, the first draft of everything is shit.

When it comes to editing, there are really three different tasks, and they use different parts of your brain.:

1. Proofreading. Yes, this is a form of editing, and an important one. Good proofreading, however, is like rebounding in basketball: largely a question of effort. Yes, skill and natural talent are important, but largely, it's a matter of forcing yourself to concentrate and find errors.

2. Line editing. I also call this copy editing. It's about improving sentences and story organization. You go over the copy and put words together that belong together, remove passivity, unsmother verbs, front-load sentences that are incorrectly backloaded, spot missed opportunities. Sometimes, it's about wholesale reorganization. Sometimes involves some light questioning of the writer to remove ambiguities and some holes in the story [the latter involves details, not conceptual problems. See next section.]. It's not rewriting, however. "Rewrite" is a separate skill.

3. Conceptual editing. This is the big picture stuff, when you sit back in your chair and think the big thoughts. This involves taking on the story as a concept -- examining and assessing the idea, spotting holes and help focus the story as much as possible. You determine the validity of the supporting evidence, challenge the thinking and conclusions, and do all you can to shore up the concept and make it as strong as possible for the readers.

There are also other necessary skills, especially headline writing and rewriting. For some reason, these also got dumped on the editor's plate.

In my 20 some years in editorial, I've heard the same feedback regarding my editorial skills from almost all my bosses: Many people are better than me at one of two of these areas, but few are as consistently good at all of them. I'm sort of an editing pentathlete [pats self on back again]. You'll find better proofers, better line editors, better headline writers, better rewriters and better conceptual editors. But usually they won't be the same people.

But all this said, I'm really a writer, not an editor, anyway. Which is a whole different set of skills.