Check out this work of genius I scrawled on a Starbucks bag yesterday. I don't know if this gag has been done before. Seems like Gary Larson would have to have thought of it. Or somebody. Maybe this is the most common one-panel dinosaur gag in the history of one-panel dinosaur gags. Anyway here you have my version.I also have a joke I made up. Here it is:
Q: What do you call someone who has sex exclusively with homeless people?
A: A hobosexual!
Let's see how many people comment about that one.
Anyway, I'm busy at work on the final edit of Zen Wrapped In Karma Dipped In Chocolate, my third book, which comes out from New World Library in February. This is the critical edit, the one I cannot change any further after it's been submitted. So I'm paying careful attention.
Which brings me to another rant I've always wanted to post. People sometimes ask me to make a list of my favorite Buddhist books. Problem is I don't read many Buddhist books. Most of the stuff on the shelves at the Buddhism section of the local Books-R-Us bore me to tears. I have a lot of reference books that I check when I'm writing. But most of those I don't read for fun.
One of the things that irks me about a great number of the books sharing shelf space with mine is that so many of the "authors" there don't actually write anything. They lecture and their students make tapes, then the students transcribe the master's words of wisdom and make them into a book. In some cases this is OK. Like when a teacher dies and students want to commemorate what she said. I also still like all of Shunryu Suzuki's books, which were made in this way. A few good books put together in this manner do manage to slip out. In these cases it's usually stated in the introduction that the book is the transcription of lectures.
But when someone makes a career out of "writing" this way and makes no effort to let folks know he's never actually sat down and written anything in his holy life... Well, let's just say I'm not impressed. These "writers" exist on the same level as airhead starlets who "write" their tell-all autobiographies by sitting next to their swimming pools and babbling into a tape recorder then letting a real writer turn it into something that they can make a zillion dollars on. Feh, I say! Feh!
Maybe I'm just cranky cuz I've been slaving over this thing for so long. And because I've worked so hard at making myself look like a shit-head in this book.
Back to work!
