Q: Why do Cindy Crawford's flights never take off?
A: Because she's a runway model.

I suspect there are more current, younger supermodels these days (probably not many older supermodels, for that matter) but I haven't heard of them. Either I've fallen out of touch with mainstream culture, or celebrities these days are famous in more niche circles rather than having the ubiquitous superstardom of a Michael Jackson. (whynotboth.gif) I have no clever ending to this tangent.

THINGS FALL APART, THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD

As it turns out, one of the difficulties of creating things is keeping the quality consistently high all the way through, especially towards the end. Endings are difficult to do correctly, which is why many authors as they approach the end of their very long unfinished serieses opt to die instead.

Even within a single book, many authors will write a book with a clever premise or interesting story but just don't manage to stick the landing. This includes the book I was reading a couple weeks ago, as well as my own novel which I wrote 20 years ago. For that matter, I often don't have a good ending to topics I bring up in this newsletter. Or hell, Debbie will tell you that I frequently trail off in the middle of sentences because I just...

I don't know. What I do know is that this section header reminds me that I wanted to share my version of the classic Johnny Cash song I rewrote with that poem in mind:

Life is a burning thing
Falcons can't hear falconers sing
The best lack conviction's fire
The worst burn with passion's ire

Things fell apart, center cannot hold, it's dire
I went down down down and the blood-dimmed tide grows higher
And it turns, turns, turns, the widening gyre, the widening gyre

I'm happy to share it; it's the Yeats I could do.

OH NO IT'S APPLICABLE

I started typing this newsletter and then got distracted by reading about the world (always a terrible idea these days) and now it's harder to follow through and finish this. Follow-thru (which I guess is what you call it when you can't follow through spelling through)(the first part is easy, but those last three letters, ugh.) is always difficult, and it's difficult to keep things going.

I was discussing this with a friend the other day, who has set herself a goal of working on a thing for the year (matchmaking)(a striking choice) but very wisely put the time limit on it to not keep doing it forever. Even good things can't last forever, and over time many things we were once excited about become chores that we do out of a sense of duty until that too fades and it all falls apart.

Ideally, we recognize the lack of enthusiasm BEFORE things hit rock bottom, and rather than getting to that point of being miserable and hating everything, we can recognize when the fun is gone and it is time to

PIVOT

We're about to have a metric trouserloade (you can tell it's metric because it's got the e)(I was originally going to go with 'metric fucktonne' but didn't want to be vulgar)(I won't even tell you how much I enjoy paralipsis)(aka praeteritio)(aka Johnny 'Winkwink' McGurk) of snow and I am very much not looking forward to shoveling it out at arse-o'clock Monday morning which I will nonetheless be doing.

As long as we're all going to be stuck shoveling, I have some song suggestions for the occasion, or more specifically, a column about how to write a parody song about shoveling snow:

• How To Write a Parody Song

Step 2: FIND A HOOK

The easiest way to find a hook is to find the thing you want to say, and then find a rhyming word in the chorus and/or title of a popular song. Our topic is, "I hate having a driveway full of snow to shovel." So what rhymes with 'shovel'? 'Hovel'! Let's make a big list of all the popular songs we know that feature the word 'hovel':

...

...

...okay I've got nothing.

At this point you might be tempted to be flexible and pick a different word to rhyme with. If we just look for rhymes with "Snow", we'll find a billion songs because it's one of the five main vowel sounds. And sure, you could write "There's No Business Like Snow Business" but it would mean having to adapt rather than rigidly sticking with our original plan.

Step 3: BE INFLEXIBLE

As all creative artists know, whenever you think of an idea, you always carry it out exactly the way you originally thought of it and never have to revise anything. So we're going to find another rhyme for 'shovel'...

Okay, I've got a great one: 'lovel'!

If you're a language expert you might notice a small problem, which is that 'lovel' is not a real word. But 'love' is a real word, and more importantly, features in the titles and choruses of many popular songs! And probably no one would notice if we just stuck an extra syllable at the end, especially if we pause for a second to be really subtle about it.

Now that we've got our word, we just need to come up with a list of songs where we swap it out for the word 'shovel'.

Step 4: CHOOSING YOUR SONG

Here are some options for our song:

* "Crazy Little Thing Called Shove...el"
* "All You Need Is Shove...el"
* "The Power Of Shove...el"
* "Whole Lotta Shove...el"
* "In The Name Of Shove...el"
* "You Can't Hurry Shove...el"

No, you'll just have to wait.

WAIT NO MORE

This concludes our broadcast day and also this edition of my newsletter because I am tired. As always, I thank you for reading, will be back in two weeks with another column, and while I don't love the low temperatures, I hope that one day all of American can be as cool as Minneapolis. Meanwhile, I lack the commitment to even finish the giant mug of tea I poured myself.

Should Have Gotten A Minnesoda,
Seth