yawp

(originally boasted 2/4/2013)

I am a writer.

I was the one with balls enough to suggest things like submarines and space travel when nobody else would. When everyone laughed and pointed their fingers at me and called me crazy. Don’t give me that hogwash that scientists or engineers developed these things. Long before the technology existed to make these things a reality I was the one putting the original idea into people’s head. Those dullards have no imagination. Sure they write when they are working but they’re not writing. Why do I sound a little pissed off? Maybe for the same reason that hands brush my teeth but my teeth never do anything for my hands.

I and I alone provide step one. Without my food for thought the world would be that much hungrier.

After I have presented an idea I then have to sell it. I have to light the fire under the number-crunchers and accountants. Well actually I have to light the fire under the people who make money off such ideas and then they will do any fire-lighting that needs to get done. Math is needed but no amount of math will start the ball rolling. Without me there to show people the benefits of these crazy notions they would be sitting as blueprints in some bankers vault.

I alone do this and not only that but I describe the smoky back rooms where all the people behind the people sit and decide such things far more flattering than they are.

Accountants and bankers are the reason that I need to then move quickly to step three: provide cautionary tales involving these new advancements.

Once everyone is on board the train can move pretty quickly and, more often than not, too quickly. I realize that it seems like a pretty big about-face but the truth is that people can’t be left alone with a good idea for too long before they screw it up. That’s the irony behind everything, the very engines that create are also the forces that conspire to destroy. Society is nothing but a big dumb kid playing with his dad’s loaded gun.

So I need to step in again and throw some cold water on things before they get out of hand. You think it’s a coincidence that almost every book or film ever made involves the technology somehow getting out of hand? It’s not. It’s also no coincidence that the government is always the ones that want to step in and use nuclear bombs to fix everything despite the fact that every scientist asked says it’s the wrong approach to take.

Sometimes we writers are rubber and sometimes we’re glue.

I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking about robots and artificial intelligence and cloning and nanotechnology and going through the steps in your head.

And finding I’m absolutely right. I came up with all that shit. Show me any invention and I’ll show you a cave painting, scroll or book that predated it by at least 50 years. I was using a wheelbarrow a decade before Wheelbarrow Industries started cranking them out.

And then you wonder why I have such swagger?

Because every time I sit down I could be writing the future. Your future. Or rewriting it. Try that on for size without getting a big head why don’t you?

You won’t be able to and what’s worse is that you won’t be able to describe why because you’re not a writer.

I am a writer and all the businessmen and teachers and you in particular can kiss my enormous throbbing ass.