Complex Numbers

Revisited: "Another Saturday Night"

Archaeologically excavating the bones of the midden heap that is my blog, we come to this early attempt at an entry from near the end of November, 2007: "Another Saturday Night" 

The title comes from an old Cat Stevens song, but it was one of his more popular ones, so I guess I figured people knew the reference. That's the problem with reference jokes: not everyone is in on it. Though one could make the same observation about any joke that doesn't involve things we all share. Like farts. But fart jokes aren't funny.

I say all this because the whole entry was about me racking my brains for a Comedy newsletter editorial. I've done thirteen of those a year ever since the year I wrote that linked entry, and while it's sometimes easy to find a topic, I'm often stumped until the looming deadline forces me to just pick something, dammit. And not jokes about impending deadlines, either; that only worked once. Or maybe twice. I don't know; I'm certain I repeated many topics over the years.

Which reminds me, I need a Fantasy newsletter topic today. What will it be? I don't know yet; it's not close enough to the deadline for me to feel enough of a sense of dread, which is when my brain finally wakes up.

Anyway, from that entry:

Thing is, I didn't start out to be funny - I started out to write science fiction.

The two are, of course, not mutually exclusive, but one risks being accused of ripping off Hitchhiker's. Unless you're a Star Trek writer; they do a great job at jabs with Lower Decks.

A common trick in science fiction, one which goes all the way back to its roots in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, is to write in the Alien Observer.

Ugh. The naïveté of youth. Half of this entry is embarrassing to me now, being so obvious. I guess it was new to me at the time.

So I won't paste more of that. I'll just note that, when I was done, I realized I had written myself into an editorial, assuming a few changes. It's been so long, though, that I don't remember if I actually used it or not, and can't be arsed to go back that far in the newsletter archives. It may have been the first time I turned a blog entry into a newsletter editorial, but it certainly wasn't the last.