Double Secret Probation

(HERE IS THE FOLLOW UP TO MY LAST VERY BRIEF POST - THIS IS THAT STORY FOR ANOTHER DAY)

The Cleveland Plain Dealer?

Is there anything more distasteful than me writing about my writing? It is like an extra helping of ego, like your being forced to watch me pat myself on the back for a job well done, while I simultaneously turn on the blinking neon light applause sign for you. 

If you find this all a bit too stomach churning, turn off this channel now. For the rest of you, hold your nose and come along for the ride.

While it is not four score and seven years ago, it is a decade and a half since I first began this exercise in having you read everything my mind could regurgitate. Since that time I have written well over 2000 pieces of equal worth to Shakespearean sonnets, informing you time and again that I have just struck gold. 

But impressing you has been insufficient recompense. I have chased the brass ring of media recognition since Time magazine made the grievous error of putting a snippet of my thought in their publication. It was but a pull quote about Roger Clemens and Congress, not an entire letter,  merely a sound bite. But it was more than adequate predicate to rev my engine to 10,000 RPM.

And when, in short order, the New York Times found my words concerning Warren Buffett and buying American of sufficient merit to sneak into their newspaper a star was born. Ok, not a star, merely an annoying little bald headed guy, but you follow where I am drifting.

But let me get back to the reason for this soliloquy. The Cleveland Plain Dealer. You see, virtually every newspaper to which I submit my ruminations has a warning label which reads, in essence, do not pass go and do not collect 200 (fictional) dollars from us more than once every 60 days. The reason, so I assume, is twofold. First to keep that paper from turning into your personal byline. Secondly, and more importantly, to keep the editors from having to read your drivel on a daily basis. 

But, when annoying habit morphs into obsession, neither rain, sleet nor restraining order will keep me from reading my name in print, somewhere, anywhere as long as they spell it right.

And, in recent weeks, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe have all decided to capitulate and publish various words that escaped my brain. Thus, when Jim Brown passed away a few days back, I found myself on double secret probation with virtually all the major outlets for my genius.

For the few of you not conversant with the derivation of "double secret probation" (and shame on you), I turn your attention to Animal House, a movie my intellectual doppelganger. In one unforgettable scene (at least to me) the wholly offensive frat house is advised by Dean Wormer of Faber College that it has been placed not just on probation, but double secret probation, for being, well exactly what it was. With the next transgression, it would walk the plank.

And so I searched for a place where my thoughts about Mr. Brown were not, like the actions of the storied Animal House, strictly prohibited from seeing the light of day. And what better resting place than the football home of the late, great running back. 

So what if this wasn't exactly the All Star game (just talking subscriptions, not meant as an offense to the fine folks of Ohio, unless of course they continue to lean Republican. Sorry, I had to feed my political beast a snack). Anywhere I could hit a home run would do just fine. Why should the world be deprived of my brilliance merely because a few venues had shut off my release valve? I would scour the planet until I located pay-dirt. Hello Cleveland.

What would be more meta than if I could convince some unsuspecting media outlet to publish this piece? I mean it would be as irony stapled on top of irony.  An inside look at an inside look at an inside look. An enigma, wrapped inside a riddle, stuffed inside a puzzle. Don't say I am not capable of wringing every last possibility out of a thought.

So, to the opinion pages of the best newspaper in the world (meaning the one that takes these words and does not immediately flush them down the nearest toilet), I have always loved you the most (to the New York Times, if you are still reading this, I am talking only to you). And to the rest of you, I hear your toilets flushing.

And just so you should know, you who have passed on this once in a lifetime opportunity (or at least until I decide to trample on this topic again in the future) have all been placed on double secret probation by the Dean. Call me Mr. Wormer (or, at least, Ishmael).