Brainchild

Anyone wanna venture a guess as to what this week is?

National Breastfeeding Week?  No, that was last week.  National Scrabble Week?  Actually, yes it IS National Scrabble Week!  But while that surely deserves its own post, that's not what we're talking about today.

No, today we are talking about a week you probably thought you'd forgotten about.  A week as fundamental to your being as International Whistlers Week, or Bread Pudding Recipe Exchange Week.  A week that has ruined you for all other weeks.

It's NaBloSoFroDraWe!!!!!!!!!!

That's, uh, National Blog Something From Draft Week for you newbies, or those of you who don't have photographic recollection of a made-up blog holiday you might have read about once or twice, long ago.  (I'm thinking about shortening the name to make it easier to remember, since even I have trouble keeping the abbreviation straight.  NaBlo and FroDra are my two best ideas thusfar.  What do you think?)

The brainchild of wannabe-seminal-blogger Bone back in 2008, NaBloSoFroDraWe is the perfect cure for what ails ye bloggers during these dog (and often blog-less) days of summer.  Don't have any ideas for a post?  No worries!  Just reach back into your drafts, pull something out, then copy and paste for all the world to read.

Perhaps it's something you started but never finished.  Now you don't have to finish it!  Just click and post.  Maybe it's a personal post you're afraid could cause a schism between you and a family member.  Well, chances are you're gonna have a falling out someday anyway, so why prolong the inevitable?  Just. Hit. Publish.

In previous years, it has been brought to my attention that some bloggers don't have anything in draft.  As someone who has 111 things in draft, that seems like a foreign concept to me, but I can respect it.

This holiday is for the rest of us.  Those of us who thought we were ready to post something but once we stepped up to the blog urinal and saw all those people standing around, we got a little stage fright and couldn't quite pull the trigger.  It happens.  But today is the day to shed those blog inhibitions and just let it go.

(You had to know someday I would manage to work in a writing/urinal analogy.  I'm only surprised it took me this long.)

Still, some will say, and even I have said, posts that are in draft are in draft for a reason.  Well, as the always eloquent Biz Markie once pontificated, "Don't give me that.  Don't even give me that."

Besides, remember our slogan: "Someday we'll look back on this and cringe."

For those who might be interested, I dug into my drafts and posted something over at Poetry Wrecks.  You know, since it somewhat resembles a poem.  And also because I haven't posted over there since early spring.

Later, we may analyze why suddenly my blog has become all about obscure holidays and asking questions which I pretend someone else is answering.  Or... we may not.

And hopefully I won't have any more brainchildren, at least not for awhile.

"Shake it out, shake it out / Shake it out, shake it out, oh whoa /  And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back / So shake him off..."

On the third day of Blogust...

What? Two posts from Bone in four days? That can only mean one of two things: Either you've been joyriding in the DeLorean again and traveled back in time to 2005, or more likely, it's Blogust!!!

That's right, blogging friends. It's the month you've all been waiting for. Time to celebrate and procreate. Or, just create. So string up the lights and light up the tree, I'll be writing like mad for all the world to see.

Blogust -- not to be confused with Blog Lust, whatever that is -- is very similar to Blogtober which I invented last year. In fact, it's exactly the same, except I couldn't wait until October this year because, well, my blog was dying. The basic premise is that I'll make myself write for at least 30 minutes a day for the entire month, which will ideally result in a few more blog entries. Also, I'm hoping the increase in writing will carry on beyond the end of the month this time.

I should warn you. I'm already feeling rejuvenated, like I've discovered the blogging fountain of youth! Or it could be I've just had too much caffeine today. Either way, feel free to join in or just read along.

I'm also proclaiming this the 3rd annual National Blog Something That's In Draft Week. Or NaBloSoThaDraWe, as it is as commonly known. (Sometimes written as National Blog Something From Draft Week -- or NaBloSoFroDraWe -- especially in parts of Minnesota and Iowa, among certain nomadic peoples of the American southwest, and last year on this blog.

Boy, for someone who doesn't blog that much, I sure invent a lot of fake blog holidays. And if someday, perchance, I am credited as the person who saved blogging, well so be it.

Anyway, NaBloSoThaDraWe is a week I created back in two-double-ought-eight for the blogging lull which occurs for many of us during these dog days of summer. You are all invited to join in. I have no doubt that amongst the weeds and tall grass of your meadow of drafts, there is a radiant flower just starving for some blog-light. Also, for you history buffs, you can read more about the origins of NaBloSoThaDraWe here.

So Blogust and NaBloSoThaDraWe occurring at the same time! That's like having a full moon and a total eclipse on the same day!

(OK, so upon further research, it turns out that a lunar eclipse can only occur when there is a full moon. Who knew?)

Now without further adieu, let's get it started. On the third day of Blogust, your true Bone gives to you, his entry for NaBloSoThaDraWe. It's a piece I like to call "Facebook Stranger." I have a tune in my head that goes with it, but it's hard to convey a tune with a keyboard when one doesn't know how to write music.

Facebook Stranger
by Bone
from the unreleased album Take Heed 'Cause I'm A Lyrical Poet: Words Without Music
(For NaBloSoThaDraWe 2010)

I've never met you or I haven't seen you in twenty years
I guess we can catch up on the past that we don't share
Not sure why you friended me, I'm thinking of clicking deny
But then if I do, it makes me question what kind of person am I

Facebook stranger, you're no friend
All these pseudo-social decisions, will they never end
You've got mafia wars to fight
And what you loved about Glee last night
I don't really care to read again
Facebook stranger, you're no friend

I doubt you'd even stop to speak if we passed on the street
Yet you send me these friend requests at least every other week
Not sure why you friended me, what's the point of it all
Do you really want to poke me or am I just a number on your wall?

Facebook stranger, you're no friend
All these pseudo-social decisions, will they never end
You've got mafia wars to fight
And what you loved about Glee last night
I don't really care to read again
Facebook stranger, you're no friend

"You better put on the Hammer, and you will be rewarded. My beat is ever boomin' and you know I get it started..."

Ye olde dog days

Apparently, I mention the dog days of summer in a post every July. Last year, I tied it in to National Blog Something That's In Draft Week, or NaBloSoThaDraWe as you most likely know it. I may still have to do that in the next few days. After all, I'm nothing if not cyclical...

I always figured the phrase "dog days of Summer" had something to do with how dogs mostly just laid around in the shade or under the porch looking for relief from the heat. Thankfully, in these progressive times, we have Wikipedia. Else I may have gone my entire life thinking that and thus never knowing the true origin of "dog days."

According to Wikipedia, it has something to do with Sirius--not that satellite radio people--also known as the Dog Star. In olden times, people would sacrifice a brown dog at the beginning of dog days. Why brown? Well, that's what I'd like to know. Unfortunately, Wikipedia didn't say, which pretty much can be taken to mean no one alive today knows the answer.

On a related note, we had a brown dog when I was growing up. Just wandered up one day, which is how we got most of our pets. I named it Brown Dog--there was sort of a clever descriptiveness to it, I thought. We also had a pet named Whiskas. It was a cat. But I digress.

While sources differ on the exact dates of the dog days, they roughly run from early July through mid-to-late-August in the northern hemisphere on planet Earth. And so, these are they.

Maybe they also could be referred to as the Blog Days of Summer. Because it seems that while physically I've been doing lots, my mind has mostly been lying around under the porch hiding from the sun. Thus resulting in an even greater lack of blog posts than usual.

I figured that I would try and catch you up on all that's been going on in Bonetropolis the past couple of weeks with a series of bullet points. But then I thought maybe that sounded too violent, so I'll just continue in paragraph form.

Last week was the birthday of someone very important to my existence: he who bore me. We commemorated with dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Then Dad regaled us with tales of what it was like when man landed on the moon, which occurred the day before his birthday, coincidentally.

Sunday, they left on a two-week cross country trip to the Grand Canyon. Currently, they are in Flagstaff, Arizona. He called Monday from near Dallas. It was raining. "Don't you have some way of checking the weather radar on the Internet?" As if I know a secret trick no one else knows.

But I suppose it's kinda nice to feel like he still needs me now and then. They grow up so fast.

Speaking of, Nephew Bone has been doing well. He is walking upright with the skill of someone six weeks his elder. He'll be a year old three weeks from today! And I thought time flew before. Oh, and he also swallowed a leaf. Don't ask how we know.

Meanwhile, yours truly has just been doing the usual--work, sleep, running, pondering my eventual retirement from competitive Scrabble, and of course, golf. This past weekend, I came within 18 inches of my first ever hole-in-one. That would have been the single greatest moment in my life--not to be confused with the greatest nine minutes of my life.

So, that's the story from Bonetropolis. The dog days are almost over. Hopefully, my mind will soon crawl out from 'neath the porch of no ideas to once again frolic through effervescent fields of minutiae and skinny dip in streams of hilarity.

"Babies squalled as August crawled past old folks in the shade. The weather vane was stuck, and White Oak Creek would drop, when dog days came around..."