Postaday for January 2nd: Be the Change
What change, big or small, would you like your blog to make in the world?
I want the world to read more. And that’s it. I could probably volunteer for some literacy program, or donate funds to some book drive, or research and support politicians who’s foreign policies include humanitarian efforts to improve education worldwide But I’m lazy.
Or arrogant or conceited or megalomaniacal. Or whatever. I mean, I want people to read what I write. And laud me with praise. And ask me where my genius comes from. And throw flowers at my feet. Roses. Thorns and all. Gobs of them. Piles and piles. Florists profits skyrocket. Band-Aid stock through the roof cause of all the scratches I get. From the thorns on the roses thrown at me. Gorgeous women and heads-of-state gnashing their teeth and tearing their hair out in a frenzy as they try to throw more roses.
But there aren’t enough. A black market rose-industry pops up. People start selling other flowers as fake roses. Or make them out of felt and paper. One enterprising young man makes a mint selling roses he made out of aluminum foil. The aluminum foil market goes belly up. People can’t cover their casseroles anymore. Casseroel stocks plummet. Casserole corporation CEOs commit suicide in droves. Good riddance. Their spouses (mostly wives, a few husbands) wither and develop alcohol problems. The go to AA, meet some one nice. Most of them are nice. One of them is not nice.
He’s a spy. He’s been watching Scandal too much. Thinks he’s seducing a court stenographer. Is actually seducing the widow of the CEO of Tuna Suprisicon, who killed himself with a shillelagh. How does one even do that. Just because the government of Burmese put in an order for 10,000 units and the CEO was so thrilled he invested half of fiscal 2016’s profits in R&D. But that damn kid and his damn aluminum foil roses bought up all the stock! Just so the Daughters of the American Revolution Auxiliary club could get two hundred thousand dozen fake metal roses to throw at my feet!
Newspapers are writing about these piles and piles of roses— and people are reading the papers. Bloggists are blogging about the Rose Mountain at Bukkhead’s Feet Meme, tweeting and Pintersting and Tumblring— and people are reading. C students are becoming A students from all the reading, the improved critical thinking skills that frequent reading brings.
Terrible human beings who hardly read at all are reading more often, craving new sources for reading material, eschewing their one-newspaper-town’s only rag, discovering alternate points of view and abandoning their skin-deep racism and sexism and homophobia. They start voting with their hearts and not their yellow spines. Good women and men get elected. Campaign finance fraud is a thing of the past. Trillion dollar corporations with no PACs to dump their money into decided to dump money into libraries for the tax right-off.
Libraries grow to the size of super-malls. Teenagers hang out there. They tease the trailer-park trash for reading Dan Brown. The trailer park trash read books by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and find peaceful ways to show the rich kids the evil of being too judgmental. They sing songs together in the food courts. They pool their resources to buy more roses to throw at my feet.
The rose things starts to become a problem. I can’t write, there’s so many roses. In my office, choking up my hallways, I can’t even get to the bathroom, which means I’m forced to reduce my seven Mountain-Dews a day diet to three or four. I grow weak from a lack of caffeine. I don’t write as much. I’m not read as much. The thrill is gone. I spend more time with my wife. We go on vacations. Barren places where there’s no vegetation.
The Australian outback. The sky’s a funny color. An alien lands there. He (yes he, not it) tells me the sky’s a funny color because the earth’s tilted. All those roses. I’ve literally changed the world. Now his alien buddies don’t want to destroy it anymore. I have saved the earth. I have changed the skies forever.