Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Florida Trip: Part 1

Well, after work on friday I head down to National Airport to fly to florida for the closing on the house I'm buying with my brother and dad to fix up and flip. It's the best (read closest) airport for me to fly out from Plus it's metro accessible. The other airports (BWI and Dulles) have cheaper flights, but they are farther and I gotta' take a cab to get there (one day if I'm bored I'll finish the draft of the post I was working on titled "DC Cabbies: Scum of the Earth...or possibly lower").

Diet Coke of Evil claims there's two ways to tell a story. The short way and the long way. So DCOE style, here's what happened.

Short version: I flew down to Florida to do the closing on a house that I'm buying with my Dad and brother. It's a 2BR 1BA house that they want to expand into a 3BR 2BA(by closing up the carport) and sell for hopefully a lot of money. They needed my name to be on the title since my brother already owns 3 houses in his name and my dad's credit got screwed up in his recent divorce.

Long Version:

So I get to the airport and use this new e-check in. I got to pick my own seat, which was sweet. I inadvertently ended up sitting next to a fat russian guy who smelled like onions and whose rolls were spilling over into my seat. Which was not sweet. He had a portable DVD player with him and watched "The West Wing" reruns throughout the flight. If he hadn't been wearing headphones, I mighta been able to follow the plot. But I have seen the West Wing a couple of times and to be quite honest, it's better with no sound.

At the airport I went to the book store (Ollson's) to check out some of the book recommendations I had gotten from my imaginary friends on the interweb. I sometimes think about what I would do if I got bored with practicing law. And by "sometimes" I mean several hours a day. I decided that I could be a writer. There were so many books there and most of them looked/sounded crappy. I don't think I'll be the next Mark Twain, but I do think if I wrote a mediocre book it would be better than most of the stuff in that book store. Because I was bored and thought it would make a good blog entry, I wrote down some names of actual books I saw there. I think the key to getting published is to come up with a ridiculous title. They seem to fall into one of three categories.

Titles that ask idiotic questions:
Why Do Men Have Nipples? This was actually a NY Times bestseller. I don't know the answer, but if people will read a whole book about man nipples I think my writing will make me rich.
Are Men Necessary?For Maureen Dowd's sake I hope the answer is no. I feel bad for anyone that would end up married to this harpy. This was also a best seller, by the way.
Can a Guy Get Pregnant?I'm no doctor, but I don't think I'd have to be to write a book like this.

I think I could crank out a book like these a week.
Why We Don't Have Three Legs, By Tom Quixote
Does The Law of Gravity apply to Anarchists?, By Tom Quixote
Where Did I Put My Car Keys? By Tom Quixote (for those of you who can't wait 'till the book comes out, they are in your jacket pocket).

The Books Offering CommonSense "Wisdom".
Never Scratch a Tiger With a Short Stick This guy actually works giving speeches to corporations. Now I know that I should attend one of those motivational speaker gigs. I'll have blog material for weeks to come.
Sex With Kings Why is this Plural? Are there so many people having sex with multiple kings that they need to refer to a book for advice?
Your Cat's Just not That Into You . If even your cat doesn't like you, then I think you need more help than a book can give you.

My books of advice will have titles like:
Don't Eat the Yellow Snow, By Tom Quixote and maybe
101 Reasons Not to Set Fire to Your Genitals, By Tom Quixote and Evil Knievel.

By this stage in my career I'll have started co-authoring books.


The Books with Strange or Provocative Titles:
Sun Tzu Was a Sissy I bet the Sequel will be Genghis Khan was a Pussy.
The Dictionary of Corporate Bullshit "Corporate" is an important adjective, so you don't get it confused with the regular Dictionary of Bullshit.
The Sociopath Next Door I bet the guy he's talking about is Sudanese.
Not a Good Day to Die I agree with the premise. But some people apparently think that it is A Good Day to Die
The Best thing that Can Happen To a Croissant I think people are boring enough, do we have to read about the exlpoits of food items in a continental breakfast?

They were also selling a book by the Washingtonienne for 40% off. It's still overpriced. Because I'm good at math, I came up with a formula for deciding how much a book by a Congressional Aide that sold anal sex to low-level Bush appointees was worth.
Here it is:

Where X = the price of Washingtonienne's book,
then
(If X > $0 then the book is overpriced).

Tune in a couple of days for Part 2...or possibly Part 3 if this gets to be too long.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very funny!

I would imagine you would write something about ninjas...like "The Nija Guide to Stealth Relationships", "1000 Ninja spicy recipies" or even "Ninja dogs - how to train your puppy".

In the end, did you read any book at all?

Reya Mellicker said...

I think too many books get published. This is not a popular opinion, but really. Before typewriters, no one would have thought to publish a book called "Why do Men Have Nipples" or many of the others on your list. I'm not saying crap wasn't published before typewriters, but not as MUCH crap was published.

I love National Airport, for all the reasons you mention.

Brandon said...

You should totally write a book called, 'It Won't Kill You if You Touch It,' and talk about all those funny things people don't like to touch that make no sense, because, I mean, it wouldn't KILL them. I know I often find myself wanting to scream, 'God, would it kill you to touch it?,' but I think instead of screaming it would be much more effective to hand her a book titled, 'It Won't Kill You if You Touch It.'

Jess Riley said...

I hate to say it, because my book is coming out next year (*cue anxiety*), but Reya's correct. I recently heard that roughly 200,000 books are published annually. This might include self-pubbed titles, but either way, this doesn't give much hope to midlisters hoping to break out and get noticed. But in a way, it makes discovering a truly well-written book among all the dreck that much more rewarding. :)

HomeImprovementNinja said...

DCOE, thanks. And if I ever win on jeopardy because of that info on man nipples, I owe you one.

gui, I asked the idiot working there about the titles. SHe could only tell me they were there, but not where they were. In the end I ran out of time and found something that won the Pulitzer (Confederacy of Dunces) and I'm working on that.

reya, I agree. that's why I got a shot at something craptastic.

brando, that sounds like a good book, but i don't want to turn my blog into one of those dating blogs. my love life is pathetic enough when i keep it private.

jess, I'd prol'ly buy your book. I blogrolled you (oooh, that sounds dirty) so that says something.

Melissa said...

Yes, this was really really funny. Who knew you had a sense of humor? I'm kiiiiiiiiddding!!!!!!!

I'd like to read 101 reasons to not burn my genitals though, and it's follow up, 1 reason not to pierce your clit.

Ooh. That was X-rated.

Dan said...

Bottom line, if you're going to write a book about politics, you may as well just cut out half the words and include pictures. And by politics I mean anal sex.

brando said...

I'm really upset that there is another "brando" out there. What in the world?

I laughed out loud twice at your post. Well, actually with your post.

HomeImprovementNinja said...

velvet, there's no reason not to pierce your ummmm [blushing]. Damn catholic guilt!

the beligerent one. I agree. Although if you've seen any of the people who work on Capitol Hill, you will realize why people say politics is an ugly business.

brando, thanks. Since you're an ex-marine it wouldn't be fair to fight for the name. Why don't you guys settle this with Soduku at twenty paces.

E :) said...

My book title would be: "Why don't they make the whole plane out of the indestructable stuff that is used in the flight recorder?"

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