Harold’s been wonkifying up Wetmachine lately, almost to the point of upsetting the delicate bullshit/wonkosity ratio that I, as Wetmachine circusmaster, have so studiously sought to maintain down the cascade of years. Time for some drastic action to keep our ph right.
Over on another group blog (which shall remain nameless) on which I hang out from time time time, a recent confessional thread has prompted people to fess up to embarrassing things from their adolescence, such as the fact that the first album they ever purchased was Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” or the Bee Gee’s “Saturday Night Fever”. That discussion inspired me to relate the tale of a post-adolescent piccadillo of my own which appears below the fold. To borrow a sentiment, if not the precise line, from Charles Dickens’ alter ego David Copperfield, whether this tale will make me an Internet hero worthy of your esteem and cross-linking, or whether it will make me more deserving of your open scorn or silent pity, these paragraphs must show.
One night, nearly thirty years ago, while drunk, I wrote a letter to the writers of Howard the Duck, a quasi-popular, quasi-cult Marvel comic book about a cynical, wise-cracking, cigar-smoking guy from a universe where everybody is a duck, who was stranded here in our universe one day when “the cosmic axis shifted”. The writers’ response, two months later, has immortalized me in bathrooms all over North America (and for all I know, all over the world).