Owen Meany

Today I learned that the best novel ever written is A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.

Okay, well, maybe the mantle of "best novel ever written" is given a little loosey-goosey here, but I'll tell you the following things:

1. Dave and Sarah are never getting this copy back. Ever. Because:
2. I'm going to read this again and again.
3. It made me weep like a baby.
4. I will never ever write anything even approaching something this good, though it's nice to have a benchmark to aim for.
5. I really like the name Owen.

It's a seriously good book. If I was an English teacher, I'd try to put this on the curriculum. It's a perfect literary book for non-literary people. Penetrable, you know?

I don't think I'm giong to read anything else by Irving. I know it won't be as good.

Watch your language

Today I learned you can't say ass to a baby.

Actually I learned it yesterday, but it was in an airport and I was unable to blog it in a timely fashion.

I shall leave the circumstances of how I learned this to your imagination.

I could be big in Japan

Today I learned that I've been going about this whole TV thing the wrong way. Or, to be more specific, in the wrong place.

Screw Canada, I should be making television in Japan. This is the kind of stuff I would enjoy creating.



Damn straight.

A Statement of Mission: What Is This Hamquackery?

This blog is for writing about the things I learn. And here I am, starting it off with something that's not about things I learned.

I mean, I've known for a while that to be a writer, one must write. All the time. It doesn't really matter what it's about; the more you write, the more you can write.

I know this. But I never really followed through on it. Until now.

This is my "write all the time" forum. And since it's easier to write when you have a theme to write about, I've chosen one. Like it says up there, I've chosen to write about the things I learn.

It should be easy. I learn new stuff all the time. And if I don't, well, this has the special advantage of forcing me to go out and seek new things to learn, so that I can write about them.

I'm feeling a little guilty about putting up an inaugural post without anything I learned in it, so I'll offer a nugget: I learned that all the good URLs on blogger dealing with variations on "things I learned" were already taken, but for some reason hamquackery.blogspot.com was not.

One day, maybe you're learn what hamquackery means.