Inspiration

                                   INSPIRATION                                                                                             Ernie felt like the Jack Nicholson character in the movie The Shining. The empty pages of his composition book mocked him. He needed inspiration. He had a deadline to meet.                                                                                                                                                            He re-read Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski. This left him thirsty and lusting for pasty blonde bar floozies. He re-read Catcher in the Rye, which inspired him to search furiously through his closet for his old hunting hat. He re-read Hamlet. This merely couched him in deep melancholy and provoked bad thoughts about his deceased mother.                                                                                                                                     He re-read Gone with the Wind, which frankly left him not giving a damn about even writing the great American novel. He re-read Helter Skelter and ended up humming endless Beatle songs and carving crucifixes on the foreheads of his daughters Barbie dolls.                                                                                                                                                     He re-read Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea which inspired him to gorge himself on fish and chips and go to the video store and rent Jaws 1 and Jaws 11. He re-read Moby Dick. This convinced him, “Why look for the whale, when the whale is his own reflection in the mirror?” He re-read Crime and Punishment. This led Ernie to walk aimlessly around the apartment with a broomstick draped across his shoulders, wearing only a loincloth.                                                                                                                                   He re-read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and spent the entire day trying to screw in a light bulb. He re-read Vincent Van Gogh’s biography, Lust for Life , which prompted him to cut off the ears of his daughter’s Beanie Babies and play outside with an Etch-a-Sketch in a driving snow storm.                                                                              He re-read Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine and got violently ill after drinking an entire bottle of cooking sherry. He read Shirley MacLaine’s biography, which left him convinced he’d authored Beowulf in a past life. Exhausted, he pretended to read James Joyce’s Ulysses, and passed out on the couch in a stream of unconciousness.                                              

PS, I didn’t underline the book titles because my typing skills suck and my wife doesn’t like me a whole lot today. English majors please forgive me.

PPS – The wife has now fixed the problem.  Still not sure I like him much today. - LC