Dream Log: Nobel Acceptance Comments In Leftist Solidarity

Last night I dreamed I had been awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize IN Literature (just a couple of days away -- fingers crossed!!!), and that I was speaking on camera and into microphones all over the place, making comments that went over very well, extremely eloquent and stirring statements of solidarity with various Leftist figures of the past. Embarrassingly, I can't remember who any of those Leftist individuals were. Over and over, a picture of a group of Leftists would appear, and I would extemporaneously praise them, and the applause and excitement grew and grew from one interview to the next. I don't know exactly who it was I was praising, and I don't know know exactly where the photos of them came from -- it seemed to be mostly photos -- or how they were shown, whether it was on big video monitors or what.

In every one of those pictures, at least one of the famous, but now in my memory nameless Leftists looked somewhat like me: a little overweight, a little too heavy in the face, but very very wide and strong in the shoulders and arms and back. You needed a tractor pulled out of ditch pronto and had no livestock handy, Comrade, any one of us was your guy.

Just as I can't remember any of the names of the people I was praising -- except that I think Diego Rivera was among them. He fit the physical description. He was a big strong tractor-from-ditch-pulling character like me -- so I can't remember any of the details of what I said about them. But whatever it was I was saying, it was so brilliant and bringing down the house in such a complete way over and over, that I started to consider whether I should break my promise of giving a Nobel Lecture consisting of

"thnk yu verr mutch pleez"

and instead incorporate some of these rousing remarks into a somewhat longer Lecture.

I know that what I was saying in a general way was that all of these guys -- sorry, ladies, for the sexism, but it was guys -- were brave and principled, and that that inspired others around them also to be brave and principled, so that excellent and productive behavior spread like fire wherever they went. I compared them to the dog-eat-dog everyday life on the Right. Well, look at that: it seems I can remember a little bit of what I said.

I'm Not Going To Complain About Not Having Won A 2015 MacArthur

That would be neither dignified nor constructive. It's true that as I write this, the tagline of my blog reads, "I didn't win a 2015 MacArthur grant." But that should be construed in no way as a complaint. It's a simple statement of fact, and no more than that. I didn't win one -- that's the truth, no more and no less.

Of course, if OTHER people want to complain -- if they want to tell the MacArthur Foundation that I'm a tremendous genius and that they blew it again this year, and that aiding me would only be to aid mankind and other friendly animals and to make the universe better and more beautiful -- if others want to complain, then, naturally, there's nothing I can do about that.

Nothing at all.

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Office of Grants Management
140 S. Dearborn Street
Chicago, IL 60603-5285

Phone (312) 726-8000

Fax (312) 920-6258

TDD (312) 920-6285

General inquiries 4answers@macfound.org

Website www.macfound.org

???

About an hour ago, within the space of 2 minutes my blog got more pageviews than it usually gets in a week. Since then the traffic has been normal again. Wherever those pageviews came from, the source seems to have masked itself from Blogger's stats-gathering page. Any theories about what happened?

Mysteriousness.

PS: I also found out within the past hour that I didn't get a 2015 MacArthur grant. A total coincidence in timing? What would Nostradamus say?

As Far As I Can Tell, The 2015 MacArthur Fellowships Have Not Been Announced Yet

The suspense is killing me. If I win one, it will greatly increase my chances of winning this year's Nobel Prize in Literature. It would practically guarantee my getting at least a half-decent book deal. see Tom Petty "Ab-So-Lute-Ly Backwards" Law of Microeconomics.

A need a break. A huge one. Several huge breaks all at once. I need and deserve them. I'm brilliant and exhausted and seething with frustration and greed.

Day 3 Of My "South Park" Hold-Out And Already I Miss --

My South Park embargo.

-- and already I miss Timmy (For those of you unfamiliar with "South Park," Timmy is a little boy who is confined to a wheelchair and for the most part never says anything except "TIMMY!" The only exception I can think of is when he has a pet turkey named Gobbles, and says: "Gobbles." Timmy's relationship with Gobble's is one of the most movingly tender episodes I've ever seen in a dramatic depiction.), Jimmy (a little boy on crutches who, despite a very severe stutter, is determined to make it as a stand-up comedian), Butters, Twitch, "CRIPPLEFIGHT!!!" (Eh, just watch the show.), etc.

I have some serious issues with climate-change deniers. That doesn't mean I disagree with all of them about everything. Although offhand Parker and Stone are the only ones I can think of who aren't complete assholes in every way. Seriously, climate-change deniers tend to be racist, sexist, anti-union and just generally flat-out Republican. Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the creators of "South Park") are none of the above, except climate-change deniers.

Climate change, however, isn't the only issue upon which they're complete douchebags. They're also among that group of Amurrkins who are neither Democrats nor Republicans, which means, since Amurrka does not yet have proportional representation, that they're a good deal worse than useless politically. You know, when I think about this, and Stone saying that he hates conservatives but he hates liberals a lot more, it suddenly makes me miss the show a lot less again. Douchebags who take this sort of political stand in a 2-party system, without lifting a finger for the cause of converting to a multi-party parliamentary system like most modern countries have, resemble agnostics, inasmuch as they think they're smarter than all the rest of us, but they're not. Smug and above-the-fray doesn't mean you're smart, it means you're smug and stupid.

And this -- and, for example, Parker saying that of all the wonderful and absurd religions in the world, none is more absurd to him than atheism (Lack of religion ain't a religion, Trey, and "spirituality" is religion.) -- and some other stuff, makes me wonder if Parker and Stone are hopeless cases, whether there's just no talking to them. While the brilliant parts of their show, on the other hand, make me think that there must be some talking to them. (Enten/eller.) But to be able to talk to them face-to-face whenever anything about "South Park" pisses me off, I'm going to have to be extremely famous. One more very important reason why all of you reading this must praise and link it and this blog everywhere you can and tweet and re-tweet links to them and +1 them and dedicate Facebook groups and billboards to them and always tell everyone -- EVERYONE, not just friends and family and co-workers, but also postal carriers and people waiting with you in lines and waiting rooms and all of those complete strangers on all of those crowded sidewalks all over the world -- that I must win the 2015 Nobel Prize -IN- Literature. It's July. Time is running out. And I'm eloquent. If anybody can make Parker and Stone "come to Jesus," environmentally speaking, face it -- it's me.

Imagine re-edited episodes of "South Park," where the animation stops and we see a live-action 2-shot of Parker and Stone, and they say: "Yeah. We were total douchebags and morons to doubt climate change and mock people for trying to do something about it. They were struggling to save OUR lives too, and the lives of our children, and we mocked them for it. Steven Bollinger was able to cut through the muck of our smug, stubborn stupidity, to allow us to finally see this and other very important things. What a genius. If ever anyone thoroughly deserved a Nobel Prize -- well. Back to the show, but first: be sure to vote Democratic, and to be real watchdogs on Democratic politicians' voting on environmental issues!"

Imagine it -- and then help me win that Nobel. For the sake of the planet. (And so that I can get a platinum Rolex Daytona and other cool stuff.)

I Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Really Want The 2015 Nobel Prize -IN- Literature --

-- a lot.

Look at it from my point of view for once:

I'd receive a million bucks or two. (The amount of the prize goes up and down from year to year.) That would be nice. Really nice. Very, very nice.

It would also make me famous. You might not think so from how smooth I am in the written version, but I'm autistic and I have a lot of very serious difficulties when it comes to socializing. I get somewhat lonely sometimes. I think that being very famous would help me meet people.

In addition to the large cash part of the Prize, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature would, presumably, help me to get some of my writing published in book form, and it might even possibly help me to sell lots and lots of books. This would lead to me receiving even more great big stacks of money. Which would be great.

If Hemingway deserved one then I definitely deserve it more. I'm not even going to debate that. Sorry, Hemingway fans, but this one is clear-cut.

Besides being a brilliant writer, both my Mom and my therapist agree that I am a very good person.

I've always wanted to be a huge success. Up until now my siblings and step-siblings have been making me look very bad in the success department. You have no idea.

GIVE ME THE DAMN PRIZE!!!!!

Thank you.

Outstanding Articles Which Have Been Published So Far Talking Me Up For The Nobel Prize -IN- Literature

It's always possible that some have been published but haven't yet come to my attention, but the only such articles I know of are ones written by myself. And I won't lie to you, that's a little bit discouraging. But faint heart never won fair lady, it's always darkest before the dawn, if I don't believe in myself why should I expect others to believe in me, once more into the breach, yada yada.

Let's start with a piece which appeared in March in the prestigious blog The Wrong Monkey entitled Let's Get Serious And Get Me the 2015 Nobel Prize For Literature. Well, first off, it's got a nice straightforward title, right to the point. It underscores how winning the Nobel Prize -IN- Literature is basically a 2-step process: 1) A writer writes wicked cool outstanding poetry and/or prose -- so, yeah, I got that covered already, and 2) others recognize the outstanding nature of what the writer has written. They spread the word. The piece begins with a discussion of the Tom Petty Ab-So-Lute-Ly Bass-Ackwards Law of Microeconomics, which at first glance might seem to undercut my case: I actually need that Nobel, and Petty's Law states that someone's need for something is in inverse proportion to their chances of getting it. But if you stop your consideration of the matter at that point, you may be completely missing the entire point of Petty's Law: Petty formulated it in order to encourage others to break it, to work against the Ab-So-Lute-Ly Bass-Ackwardness. Laws of economics are completely different from those of physics in their great degree of mutability. You can break these laws and very often you should if you can. Petty's Law states what is and should not be. Awarding me the 2015 Nobel Prize -IN- Literature would not merely break Petty's Law, it would resoundingly smash it. The economic consequences would be breathtaking.

In the same article I also vow that when I win the Nobel, my Nobel Lecture, in its entirelty, will be thank yu verr much pleez, and mock Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway, who of course deserves it.

Moving on: in April, in the same prominent blog, The Wrong Monkey, there appeared the essay You Are Feeling Very Sleepy... In retrospect, it occurs to me that this article, in addition to serving the purpose of hypnotizing readers of The Wrong Monkey and filling them with joyous determination to ensure that I win the Nobel, can also be read aloud by those readers in order to hypnotize still others.

Thirdly, we come to a marvelously-crafted piece of prose entitled Apparently Some Of You Still Need Some Convincing That I Deserve The Nobel Prize In Literature, published in May in a brilliant blog known as The Wrong Monkey. Written by me. This article underscores both the urgency of people's action on behalf my winning the Nobel -- even more urgent now than when the piece was first published -- and some of the reasons why it's important that I win. Such as how badly I want certain things I can't afford at present, things like solid-platinum watches. Res ipsa loquitur; however, I suppose I could add that although I mostly refer to platinum wrist watches, because wrist watches are mostly what are made today, especially for the high end of the market, I would have no objection whtsoever to owning platinum pocket watches. Nor to gold watches. I think rose gold is pretty cool.

And of course, all of the over 700 posts which have appeared on the blog so far solidly make the case that I am brilliant and deserve the Nobel, and the world deserves to know such quality writing better, and winning the Nobel will aid in that noble cause by making me much more famous.

Excelsior!

Return Of The Son Of You May Already Not Be A New Atheist, Or: Atheists Against New Atheists Chronicles, Part Whatever

To be entirely clear. I'm not entirely joking when I suggest that it might be nice to have an atheist brand with big scary capital letters to publicly oppose the New Atheists. I don't seriously expect such a movement to be named after me (although that too would be nice), but I simply don't want Dawkins and Harris and their flying monkeys to monopolize the public presence of atheism. And of course selling as many books as they do would be groovy. (And the Nobel and yada yada.) Surely the number of atheists who see the gaping holes in the New Atheists' education is large. Maybe most of them aren't joiners, but if I (and others) can offer something which is explicitly atheist and emphatically Not THOSE Atheists! it might have some sort of unity -- and perhaps even some usefulness -- as a movement. Movements like these may seem rather European to some of you Amurrkins, but what's wrong with that? and in case you haven't noticed, a lot of my audience as well as a lot of what I read is already European -- if not downright Australian, Asian or Latin Amurrkin.

Realistically, I think something along the lines of "Not Those Atheists!" has a much better chance as a brand than "Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel Athesists." I'm assuming that many others share my 2-stage experience of learning that there was a thing called New Atheism and thinking: Oh, good! and then getting to know it and thinking: Oh, no! No, no, no! This won't do at all! NOOOOOOO!!!

Some might be quite reluctant to identify with any atheist movement because it is, strictly speaking, impossible to know with certainty that there is no God. And of course you're right about that, but God is no different in that respect than anything else: strictly speaking, no one knows anything with absolute certainty. And yet, in my opinion at least, the verb "to know" has not yet become completely useless, and until it has I will continue to sneer at agnostics and to behave as if there's no reason to debate the existence of God. And it's not as if you have to pay memberships dues or sign a loyalty oath or actually do anything at all about any of this. You will not be literally branded with hot irons, rest assured.

Some of you enjoyed the way that I slipped Jeff Foxworthy into the previous post. Speaking of Foxworthy in this context: to many jackanapes on either side of the theist/atheist divide, there is only one crucial fact about Foxworthy: he is a Christian. The jackanapes will either be Foxworthy fans or despise him based on that one fact, the same way they divide up the rest of the world: Them that's with us and them that's agin us. To me he seems like someone who sort of fell ass-backwards into a billion dollars, on the basis of one stand-up routine, or one 2-liner pattern for a routine. As David Spade has put it, "If you, mumble mumble mumble, then it is within the realm of the conceivable that you, bla bla bla bla bla." But I don't begrudge Foxworthy that. I begrudge Dan Brown his billion dollars but I don't begrudge Foxworthy his. (For the record, Foxworthy insists that it is not his money, but the Lord's.) It's a good 2-liner pattern. It's iconic. People get mad at Jackson Pollack because he got rich splattering paint. I think Pollack is great because we look at the world differently because of the way Pollack splattered paint.

And my point was: I didn't stop thinking about Foxworthy after: "he is a Christian." And if this doohicky I'm plugging ever does amount to a movement, it will be a movement which is about not ceasing to think at some certain point.

Has there ever actually been such a movement? I'm not asking at all rhetorically, I'm wondering out loud.

So be sure to vote for me,

Sincerely,

yr Pal

You May Already Not Be A New Atheist

In this recent blog post I discussed finding a brand name, an identifying term with big scary capital letters, for atheists who are not New Atheists, and who wish to make it clear that they are not New Atheists, but do not want to resort to calling themselves something like skeptics or non-believers, as this would make it somewhat less than 100% clear that, although they are not with the New Atheists, they still are atheists.

Of all the names I mentioned in that previous post, the most gratifying to me personally would be the Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel Atheists, because that one is all about me, me, me and what a great writer and deep thinker I am, so deserving of fame and fortune and crate-loads of free platinum watches, and also how I like lolcats.

On the other hand, the Not Those Atheists! with an exclamation point every time, would be much clearer and to the point, not to mention much less unwieldy. The point being: We're atheists, but we're not them.

So for the time being I'm going to call us the Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel atheists.

But of course, not everybody has deeply studied the question of who is and who isn't a New Atheist. One still very frequently encounters the question, Hey Steve, what the Heck is a New Atheist anyway, and how is it different from an "Old" Atheist, and what's yr dang problem anyhow?! A few examples will help you see whether you are a New Atheist, or a Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel Atheist, as we've decided to call ourselves.

Let's take the issue of pictures of Muhammed. If you enthusiastically take part in competitions to draw the most insulting picture of Muhammed, you may be a New Atheist. (Or a snake-handler. Or a New Atheist and recently a snake-handler.) If you support the right of any yahoo to draw a picture of Muhammed, but you want to make it clear that you still don't have to LIKE 98% of the pictures, or 98% of the yahoos drawing them, you may be a Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel Atheist.

If you already happened to know that there actually are many Muslim pictures of Muhammed, then chances are that you're not a New Atheist, because New Atheists and studying history tend to be like oil and water. Here's a 14th century Islamic drawing of an interpretation of Isaiah 21:7, showing Isaiah’s vision of Jesus riding a donkey alongside Muhammad riding a camel.

That's one of several Islamic pictures of Muhammed from a Newsweek article by Christiane Gruber with the to-the-point title The Koran Does Not Forbid Images of the Prophet Obviously, there is some disagreement about this among Muslims, just as there is some disagreement among Jews and Christians about whether God has forbidden the making of images, all going back to the 10 Commandments and that thing about not making graven images.

If the thought of Muslims debating things like making pictures, and having wildly divergent opinions about such issues, strikes you as odd, that may be an indication that you're a New Atheist. If it strikes you as odd and/or downright appalling that people who rant and rave about Muslims day and night know so little about them, you may be a Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel Atheist.

Similarly with images from Christianty: if you can't get enough of pictures of Jesus or the Pope having sex, this would indicate the likelihood of your being a New Atheist, and if you defend the right of people to make and show such images while finding them excruciatingly tedious, you may be a Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel atheist.

If you like Christian and Islamic art -- Gothic cathedrals, illuminated manuscripts of the Bible or the Koran, Byzantine Mosaics --

-- etc, that sounds much more like a Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel Atheist than a New Atheist. Knowledge of ancient languages, and/or of quite a few modern ones, appreciation of art -- that sounds like one of us. "Modern art is a fraud!" sounds much more like a New Atheist. Extensive learning in any of the so-called humanities is more indicative of a Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel Atheist than a New Atheist. Many New Atheists are scientists for a living. But learning about science or even being an advanced scientist will not turn you into a New Atheist, if you don't have an unwarranted contempt for the humanities.

Oversimplifications on historical, literary and artistic subjects sound more like New Atheists. One of their favorite ones is to say that the Bible is fiction. The Bible is over 60 different books, written over perhaps as long as 1000 years, by maybe more than 60 different authors. But New Atheists are less likely than Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel Atheists to grasp that some parts of the Bible are much more factual than others, and much, much less likely to be comfortable with such plain facts as that we cannot yet completely separate the factual parts from the legendary ones, the plain fact that we don't know how much of the Bible is accurate history. Ambiguity, uncertainty, grey areas: New Atheists often seem extremely uncomfortable with these.

If there is currently more than one vehicle up on blocks in your front yard -- oh, I'm sorry, never mind, that's Jeff Foxworthy. That's a completely different thing. Nevermind.

New Atheists are many times more likely to be Comic book fans than are Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel Atheists.

If the thought of burning Korans pleases you, there's absolutely no way that you're a Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel Atheist. New Atheists (again, just like snake-handlers) sometimes burn Korans, or cover them with garbage and excrement and proudly photograph their work, etc. New Atheists as prominent and as Islam-obsessed as Richard Dawkins have admitted that they've never read the Koran and never intend to. Others lie and say they have read it. (Dawkins, I'm almost 100% sure, has never burned a Koran. But I've also never heard him speak out against Koran-burning.)

Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel Atheists think that theology is pretty stupid, but we think that book-burning is appalling too. We have realized that just because someone is an atheist, just because he or she rejects all theology, is no guarantee that he or she is not a gibbering idiot. Conversely, we have seen how people can embrace the theology of one -- or more! -- religions, and still, somehow, be very bright and knowledgeable most of the time. For us, a person's religous belief is NOT the most important factor in whether or not we find that person intelligent, or interesting or nice or otherwise good to be around, it is not the most important factor in whether or not we fall in love with them or have children with them or go into business with them.

A Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel Atheist is in some cases a person who, when he or she first learned of the existence of atheist groups, was overjoyed and assumed that he or she would fit right in, and has been immensely disappointed. He or she may have assumed that atheist equaled more intelligent, or more tolerant, or more cultured, and found out that in many cases it means none of the above. Presumably, some of you currently think you are New Atheists -- or think that Dawkins and Harris are awesome. Same thing, whether you apply the New Atheist label to yourself or not. Or the movement atheist label. Same thing -- and will gradually figure out that you actually are Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel atheists.

New Atheists are much more likely to sound like Crusaders. Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel Atheists are much more likely to have read Runciman.

Apparently Some Of You Still Need Some Convincing That I Deserve The Nobel Prize In Literature

(It seems it's "in Liturature," not "for Literature." "In Literature" sounds strange to me -- but that's okay, it's their prize and they can call it whatever they want. Just seems kinda strange.)

Why do you still need convincing? *turning toward those of you who are convinced* I know! Good question! *turning back toward the general readership* Whatever the bizarre reasons may be, I've examined the stats for this blog, and some of you aren't yet convinced -- because if you were, you'd be excitedly talking non-stop about how awesome I am and how deserving of the Nobel Prize, and linking my blog and tweeting and emailing about it and putting the blog's address in print ads and billboards and so forth, and if all of you were doing that, it would show in the stats. If Oprah and Chris Matthews and Larry King and David Letterman and Harold Bloom and Conan O'Brien and Rachel Maddow and GA Wells and Bruce Springsteen and William H Gass and Barack Obama had all given my blog rave reviews on the same day, it would have shown in the stats. That's all I'm going to say about the stats right now because the stats are the confidential bidniss of me and Blogspot, and our bidniss ain't yo bidniss. No offense. It's gist bidniss.

Anyway -- the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature will be awarded 5 months from now, maybe even a little bit less than 5 months, and I've examined the statistics for this blog concerning the volume of my readership, and if current trends continue, I will have to be considered a dark horse for this year's literature prize. It's not that more popular = more likely to win the Nobel. Don't worry, Dan Brown will never win it. Neither will Stephen King or John Grisham or any of those other Bozos who can't write worth a tiny speck of poop and are always clogging up the bestseller lists, making the interaction between good writers and discerning readers much, much more difficult than it should be. Only a handful of people need to be aware that my writing exists in order for me to be awarded the Nobel -- the handful of people who actually award the prize. But getting those people to read this blog and/or the manuscripts of my 2 complete and still-unpublished novels is easier said than done. I've researched the award process a little in the past 2 months, since I published the post Let's Get Serious And Get Me The 2015 Nobel Prize For Literature, and it appears that literary editors of leading publications, and maybe also some people such as prominent critics, give some input to the Nobel folks as to who they think is worthy, among the writers of their particular country. Makes sense: it's a big world, hundreds of countries in it, the Nobel people need some help organizing the competition. And of course Nobel laureates of previous years also have a big say in each new prize. And as I mentioned back in March in that previous post, most winners have already been at least somewhat famous before they win. A few of them have been among those rare birds, bestselling authors who also don't stink as writers.

I don't know any Nobel laureates personally. Nor am I personally acquainted with the editors of The New Yorker or the Kenyon Review. Obviously: if those folks were aware of my existence, they would be clamoring to publish my work, and as yet they are not. I need to get some people's attention. I need to get onto their radar.

The way I've imagined this happening is that my blog would go viral, and become one of the most widely-visited blogs of all time, and far and away the most popular one in the history-philosophy-belles-lettres category. I'd go to bed one night, sleep the sleep of the just for having written well and done other good and noble deeds all day, and rise the next morning to find that I'd become famous overnight, that my blog had broken the Internet and that so much media would be camped out on my street, hoping for a snapshot of me or a word with me, that the police would have to be called just to unblock the street enough that it would be possible for my neighbors to drive on it and get to their jobs or wherever they needed to be.

For the sake of sanity on my block, I would have to move out. Luxury hotels would be jostling each other for the opportunity to comp me, Rolex and Omega would each try to outdo the other in giving me a greater number of gold and platinum watches, in the hope of it being more likely that one of their watches would be seen on my wrist than one of the competition's watches. Same with free clothes and many other items. And of course the quantity of free books, every publisher going all-out hoping for a blurb -- the quantity of books would be simply cuckoo.

But not nearly as crazy as the bidding war between publishers for the right to publish my works. Even before I had an agent, headlines would claim that the bidding had reached 8 figures -- and those headlines would be accurate.

And so forth. I'd be so famous that I'd be famous just for how famous I was, like Dan Brown or Justin Bieber, and just as in their cases, that would make me even more famous.

That's how I picture this going, but of course that's not the only way it could go. The editors at the Kenyon Review or The New Yorker or whatever, the people at some other rag could find out about me before I'm completely famous, and they could be a part of the process of making me famous, rather than my blog just going viral before any of them have a chance to act.

There are various ways this could go. I could actually get published by means of a publisher or periodical or agent getting back to me about one of my submissions or queries. Anything's possible.

But again: we've got 5 months to make this happen, people! 5 months or maybe even a little bit less. Talk, tweet, email, link, go, go, go!!!

Things I've Been Called To My Face

Skinny, fat, Big Guy, ugly, Stretch, a tall thin man, fatass, okay-looking, cute, gorgeous, Zitface, guy with a sweet scarred-up face and big cow eyes, young man, old man, man, a real man, strong as an ox, not a real man, my man, man, kid, a bear, Snuggle Bear, hey you, kid, a writer, an actor, a saxophonist, the janitor, the groundskeeper, Mr Bollinger, Sir, Professor, a terrible singer who can't stay anywhere near on-key for more than six bars or so, an historian, a philosopher, an enigma, a phony, pretentious, extremely boring, silly, serious, sensitive, insensitive, crazy, extremely sane, gentle, an Asperger, autistic, a genius, an idiot, very smart and very dumb at the same time, a freak, a pothead, a drunk, an alcoholic, a great alcoholic in my own right (this was at an AA meeting), the leading contender for the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature, a novelist, a blogger, a volunteer, a Volunteer (in the sense of having attended the University of Tennessee at Knoxville), Next!, The Wrong Monkey, Steve, Stevie, Steven, Stephen, Stefano, Étienne, Stephan, Steve-o, Steverino, the Steve-Meister, Steve-Man, Tom, The Human Zit, weird, interesting, a Donald E Westlake fan, a Joseph Heller fan, a Thomas Pynchon fan, a William Gaddis fan, a Heinrich Boell fan, a former Heinrich Boell fan, someone who finds Heinrich Boell both great and terrible, a Peter Handke fan, a former Peter Handke fan, a Padgett Powell fan, a Barry Bonds fan, an Alfred Doeblin fan, a Jimmy Jackson fan, a Nietzsche fan, a Jarious Jackson fan, a Steven Runciman fan, a Sloterdijk fan, a Schopenhauer fan, an Adorno fan, a cat person, a dog lover, King Pong (a 7 year stretch without losing a single game of ping pong), a dancing machine, a punk rocker, an old punk rocker, a weirdo, a burnout, a loser, someone who will never amount to a sack of shit, someone who'll be a big success in whatever field he chooses, a space cadet, Dream Weaver, Bitch, Pretty Boy, Clint Eastwood, James Woods, Cate Blanchett's secret boyfriend (Okay, no one has ever called me that to my face. As far as I know I'm the only one who ever called me that), an atheist, an atheist who's dared to take on Paulkovich (as if that required daring), a secret Christian or Muslim pretending to be an atheist, a mythicist (correctly), an historicist (incorrectly), an amateur Latinist, that guy who can't stand Cicero for some reason, that guy who's afraid of moose, a Yankee, a Gringo, cool, tough as nails, weak, brave, cowardly, hey Batter Batter Batter, a good baserunner, a right fielder, ninth in the batting order, ein Arschloch, esse, homeboy, home fries, buddy, pal, Sweetheart, my frent, Cool Steve.

Google Thought That ToDAY Was My BIRTHday!

So I fire up the ol laptop this morning, open up Firefox, and Google is spelled out of birthday cake and party favors. I'm thinking, What? is it Google's birthday? I mouse over the logo and it doesn't say "Happy Birthday, Google!" It says "Happy Birthday, Steven!"

What?

My first thought was that they had me mixed up with some other Steven Bollinger -- there's more of us than you might think -- so I clicked on the logo expecting to see the search results for Steven Bollinger, the prominent and wily Texas Democrat, or one of the several leading Steven Bollinger, MD's -- but no, I was taken to my very own Google+ page. I clicked on my profile and saw that my birthday had been given as May 4, 1986.

This was very confusing for a while -- then, slowly, very slowly, I remembered that some time ago, before allowing me to do something or other, Google insisted upon learning the date of my birth. I guess I was kind of grumpy at the time -- Hard to picture, right? Me, grumpy? -- and felt that they didn't need to know, but they wouldn't let me proceed without the info, and so finally I lost my temper and just filled in a random date.

So, now, my Google+ profile correctly gives my birthday as June 17. Google very politely left it up to me whether or not I would put the year of my birth on my Google+ profile, and I declined.

Almost a month and a half until June 17. Still time to plan for something extravagant. You know what I want -- that's right: a freakin Nobel Prize in Literature. And I know, I know, millions of you are now wailing at the screens of your computers and mobile devices and the screens of the computers and mobile devices of libraries and of your employers and friends, "But Steven! I can't give you a Nobel Prize! I'd do ANYthing for you, but THAT's not within my POWer!" And I say and I say again to you, it IS within your power to tell others how incredibly awesome this blog is, and how much finer this world will be once I've won that Nobel and am dating someone like Scarlett Johansson or Reese Witherspoon and am the unoffical 2nd sidekick to Conan O'Brien (Andy Richter's words, not mine!) and also guest quite frequently on Kimmel, I'm a big Kimmel fan, and am up to my neck in free platinum Omegas and Rolexes. It's within everybody's power to spread the Good News.

I apologize to my religious relatives if those last 2 words seemed blasphemous. I just meant them to be funny. I hope it goes without saying that none of this -- none of this post, none of this blog, none of most of what I say or do -- needs to be taken especially seriously. (Except for the part about me WANTing the Nobel. I really, really want it. Do I deSERVE it? Did Eyvind Johnson? Did Joyce and Freud and Doeblin and Borges deserve not to get it?) As the name of the blog implies, I'm just an eccentric monkey banging away on a keyboard and hoping that life doesn't squash me today so that I can bang away on a keyboard some more tomorrow. A monkey who -- okay, a 2nd thing is also meant quite seriously -- needs and will gratefully take all the freakin help he can get.

So, Google, or you NSA guys or whoever else is reading along here and is actually in charge of these things -- if the false birthday info was the reason my AdSense got cancelled and I can have it back now, that'd be swell.

Seriously, though, it's currently not millions of you wailing at screens, and that's kind of the problem. A Nobel Prize; Andrew Wylie acting as my agent; you, my readers, telling others about my blog -- any of those things would help a lot. PLEASE HELP ME!

So, to sum up: birthday June 17, silly monkey scribbling away, attempts to make you smile or laugh, want Nobel, need help!

I Haven't Watched Charlie Rose In Over 30 Years

One of the best jobs I've ever had was also one of the worst in that the wages were exploitatively low: $80 a week in 1995-96. I was an usher in a theatre showing Steve Martin's play Picasso at the Lapin Agile. (Movie stars' salaries make headlines, but there are a lot of low-paying and even non-paying jobs in show business, and the producers and studio execs who make more than movie stars and manage to keep their finances out of the news make money off of the movie stars, and the people being paid very little in non-union jobs, and the people not being paid at all. Unionize.)



I could've gone home when the play started, but night after night I stayed and watch the play. It was incredible. It's set in 1904, in the Lapine Agile, a bar in Paris where Picasso hung out at the time. Albert Einstein was never there, but this play is not strictly realistic, and in this play he pops in. 1904 was shortly before he published the papers on relativity and photoelectronics which made him famous. In the play the proprietors of the bar have a ridiculously, hopelessly, unnecessarily complicated system of bookkeeping, which it seems they will never untangle, but young Albert quickly does some amazingly complicated math in his head to help them out. Then people ask him to tell them about himself. Instead of saying he's working on academic papers, the way he puts it is that he's writing a 70-page book about "everything." Someone asks him how many people would have to read his book for him to consider it a success, and he gets the same abstracted expression of his face that he had just a little while ago when he was doing the complicated math in his head to his the bar's owners with their messed-up accounting; and after a while he answers, "One. But it has to be Max Planck."

That doesn't make Einstein as different from other writers as some might think. Sure, all other things being equal, the more people who read my blog, the better. But one person reading my blog, or something else I've written, and then commenting favorably on it, could make me a successful writer all at once -- if that person is Oprah Winfrey.

Or possibly if it were Charlie Rose. I'm not entirely sure about that. Like I say, I stopped watching his shows 30 years ago, because the way that he constantly interrupted his guests, not only verbally, which was bad enough, but also by waving his great big stupid hand in their faces for them to shut up, was driving me mad. So why did I watch his show to begin with? Because he had very interesting guests. And I gather he still does. I gather this partly by channel-surfing past his show and seeing the face of some extremely-interesting person -- as interesting as Cate Blanchett and Salman Rushdie and 4 different Presidents and Harold Bloom -- and partly by hearing extremely-interesting people talk about having been on his show in venues other than his show. Does the amazing list of guests make me want to repent and give Rose another try after 30+ years, see if he's become somewhat less unbearable? No. On the contrary, it make me angry that all of those amazing people continue to prop this jerk up by appearing on his show.

I hope I've made the intensity and unreasonableness of my dislike for Charlie Rose vividly clear.

Still, I suppose that Rose could make me famous. Not Oprah's Book Club-famous, probably, but he could give me a huge boost. I think sometimes about whether I would refuse to appear on his show. I know, I just finished denouncing a teeming host of wonderful people for appearing on his show. I also suspect that I've made it impossible that Rose will ever want to interview me, with this post, if it wasn't already impossible because of other things I've said and written. But maybe Rose is a very magnanimous guy. Maybe he doesn't interrupt nearly as much. Maybe he's stopped with the waving of that big hand in his guests' faces.

(The fact that the guests were so great, even 30 years ago, was what made the interruptions so unbearable. You can understand that, right? I tuned in to watch -- say, Steve Martin, or Ted Kennedy, not to watch Rose talk about Martin or Kennedy while they struggled to get a word in edgewise. Hot tip, Charlie: if you're fortunate enough to have a great speaker appear on your show, LET HIM OR HER SPEAK YOU BIG GOON!!!)

Whether or not to grit my teeth and betray my principles -- and maybe take a strong prescription pill or 3 -- and go on "Charlie Rose" -- that's the sort of dilemma I want to have. And just like the Tom Petty Ab-So-Lute-Ly Bassackwards Law of Microeconomics, the more likely it is that I will ever have a chance to appear on the show, the less likely it will be that I will have any incentive to do so, because, although Charlie Rose could single-massive-handedly make me rich and famous, it's unlikely that he would want me as a guest unless I were already rich and famous, or at the very least, already speeding toward rich and famous.

Anyhow. Whether Oprah or Charlie are ever involved at all in my career rise, or even if they both actively oppose my rise because I've criticized them, if they're petty that way -- the more people who read my blog, the better. I'm doing everything I can think of to get the attention of the publishers and agents and other people who could help my career, including asking my readers, repeatedly, begging them, to mention my blog whenever and wherever they can. My ambition is naked. Yr darn tootin it is. I'm not trying in the least to hide that fact that I want to be a huge, huge, huge success. I know that some people advise those who are ambitious to hide their ambition, to pretend to be humble, and even pretend not to want honours and promotions. (But take the honours and promotions anyway of course, just pretend to do it unwillingly and with protestations of unworthiness.)

Whatever. I'm going a different way. It's one less thing people can accuse me of being insincere about.

You Are Feeling Very Sleepy...

...very pleasantly relaxed. When I've counted down to 1 you'll be completely hypnotized, 5, 4, 3... 2... 1. You want me to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. I'm your favorite writer, you find my work to be deep and important and witty and charming all at the same time. "Sparkling prose" is a very overused phrase, but my prose truly sparkles. I am wise, I am always full of sound advice for the world. The thought of me winning the Nobel makes you very happy. You think that it is strange and wrong that my work has not been published in books and in magazines like the New Yorker and the Atlantic and Vanity Fair and Redbook and Harper's for many years already and that it is not on the bestseller lists. What would be proper and just would be if I were often referred to as being like Dan Brown or Stephen King (in terms of the sales of my books), except that I'm a good writer. If you're a publisher of books or periodicals you want to publish my work, if you're a literary agent you want to represent me, if you're Oprah you want me to be in your Book Club, if you're Conan or Jimmy Kimmel you want me to be a frequent guest on your show. Whoever you are, you want to talk about how good my writing is and how everyone should read as much of it as they can. You want to talk and write about it as much as you can, wherever and whenever you can, to whomever you can. Reading this blog makes you happy. Thinking about my writing makes you happy. Talking and writing about it, spreading the word about it, makes you even more happy. The thought of me winning that Nobel Prize in Literature, this year if possible but if not this year then just as soon as possible, makes you blissfully happy. When I've counted back up to 5 you'll be wide awake again, you'll feel great, rested and cheerful, and you'll start spreading the word about me with a verve and conviction you've seldom felt in relation to any cause before this. 1, 2... 3... 4... 5.

Fun Facts About This Blog

1) I published my first post about Michael Paulkovich on the 29th of September, 2014, and my first post about Justin Bieber on the 19th of March, 2015. In the first 48 hours after they were published, the post on Michael Paulkovich received more than 100 times as many pageviews as the post on Justin Bieber.

2) On the 28th of March, 2011, I made an experiment to see if I could get more traffic on the blog by pandering to mass tastes than by doing what I usually do, with a post entitled Cute Baby Animal Pictures! whose texts begins: "In this post I'm going to pander to mass tastes." and after that consists mostly of baby-talk, like: "Widgiewidgiewidgiewidgie! Who's a pwecious liddle fing? Who's my liddle pwecious?" interspersed among 6 photos of baby animals, 4 of which have disappeared. The photos were linked from the web rather than uploaded by me.

"Cute Baby Animal Pictures!" has received about 40 times as many pageviews as the average Wrong Monkey post, second all-time on this blog only to my aforementioned first post on Michael Paulkovich. It continues to be one of The Wrong Monkey's most popular posts week-in and week-out, despite the missing photos. But it was the only such attempt I have made to pander to mass tastes. This blog's lowered potential commercial success has been literature's gain -- or it has been literature's loss if you prefer to look at it that way. I'm just glad you're reading my blog, I'm not going to try to tell you what to think of it.

3) One of The Wrong Monkey's all-time most popular posts has been the ironically-entitled Why I Stopped Reading The Watch Snob, and I have no idea why so many people have viewed it. Nobody has commented on it, so I've gotten no clues that way about what's aroused people's interest. I haven't been able to find it linked anywhere. I repeat, this post is ironically-titled. I haven't stopped reading The Watch Snob, I think it's a good column, I actually learn things by reading it. Also, it's witty. Also, as I've mentioned on that post, The Watch Snob and The Wrong Monkey sound like a pair of super-villains teamed up to thwart Batman & Robin.

But I don't know why people are reading that post. For all I know, the Watch Snob's online presence might be popular beyond my wildest imagination, and people find my post just by mistake. For all I know, people who dislike the Watch Snob surf to my post thinking I'm a kindred spirit. Sorry about that, if that's the case.

4) I'd very much like it if each and every one of you would talk me up for the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature. That's a stone-cold fact: I'd appreciate it very much indeed! Especially if you happen to know -- or be -- extremely-influential people in the worlds of publishing and literature. I want that Prize, I want it bad. That's a fact. You know how Roger Daltrey sings on "Magic Bus," "I waaaant it, I waaaant it, I waaaant it[...]" That's how I feel, it's how I am all the time. Fame? I waaaant it. Fortune? I waaaaant it. That Prize? I waaaaant it. A date with Reese Witherspoon, if she's single? I waaaaant it. A platinum Daytona with an ice-blue dial? Why yes, thank you, in fact I'll take two of those! Yeah. Yeah! I want a whole bunch of all of that! Desire makes me strong and improves my posture.



5) In "Him With His Foot In His Mouth" by Saul Bellow, the title character and narrator, who realizes that on many occasions in his life he has been more candid than was either prudent or kind, says to one character whom he hopes will give his university a grant, who at a banquet has been telling him for hours on end about all of the money she has given to artists and other deserving people, when she mentions that she plans to write her memoirs, asks her: "Do you plan to use a typewriter or an adding machine?" and says to a family member attempting to involve him in a court case which he regards as nothing better than rank extortion, and who says to him, the narrator, the artsy, literate one in the rough-and-tumble family: "You're the one with the words" -- Ah say Ah say this one wit his foot in his mout, this artsy one, he replies: "And you're the whore with nine cunts!" But it's a fact that Bellow wrote this high-minded piece of frankness after he'd published several huge bestsellers AND won that great big Nobel Prize -- the very same one. That's a fact. So if his ghost or his fans want to look down their noses at me for wanting a whole bunch of stuff they can, pardon my French but they can all go sit on it!!! That's a fact, that's exactly what they can do! ("Him With His Foot In His Mouth" is a great story, the title story of a great volume of stories. I don't know what to do with the fact that such a beautiful writer let himself be politically seduced by the neocon Mephistofeles.)

On Tuesday, March 24, At 9PM Eastern Time, CNN Will Air A Show About Atheists

In some circles I travel in, the title of this blog post contains no new information. The people in these circles are all atheists, and they have all known about this upcoming special report on atheism for some time already, and they all are besides themselves waiting for Tuesday evening to hurry up and arrive and they can see the show and love it or hate it, as the case may be. Love it for acknowledging that atheists exist and aren't monsters, hate it for inadequately representing the particular kind of atheist they are, or what have you.

If they show atheists who, like me, deplore the actions of the New Atheists/movement atheists, the movement atheists will be furious -- but whatever, they're always furious. It's tiresome.

If they devote some time to me and my blog, and if as a result I become rich and famous, well, that'll be really neat. (Wouldn't hurt a bit with Nobel Prize campaign either.) I'm not holding my breath about this, because snippets of interviews with Dawkins and others done for the show have already been circulating for a while, and they haven't interviewed me. If they want to interview me: every reader's comment on this blog is moderated before being published. If CNN wants to contact me they can leave a comment with their contact info, nobody else will see the contact info. (If they want to be absolutely super-careful they can write "PERSONAL" at the top of the message, but that really would be overkill.)

I don't think they're going to mention me.

It's clear that they're going to look at some New Atheists/movement atheists. The question uppermost in my mind is if and to what extent they will cover atheists who, like my own wonderful self, are at odds with the New Atheists and don't want them to be thought of as representing us. New Atheists seem often to think of themselves as synonymous with atheism in general. It really would be too bad if this misconception were to spread beyond the New Atheists.

CNN Special Report: Atheists

What I Like (Art) And Dislike (Theology) About Religions (Plural)

Generally speaking, I dislike the religions least with which I am least familiar. I'm not saying there are no differences between religions, because there certainly are, but the more I learn about a religion, the more depressingly obvious its similarities with other religions become. The religion I disrespect the least at the moment is Sikhism. I know almost nothing about it. Almost everything I do know about it comes from one TV show hosted by Anthony Bourdain and another one hosted by Michael Palin, in which they take part in a festival held at Sikhism's Golden Palace. Looked pretty cool on TV.

I can often enjoy religious art if there isn't anybody in my face pushing theological nonsense on me. (And for the bazillionth time, you Buddhists: Buddhism is a religion, your nonsense is religious, and please keep it outta my face! Thank you, namaste!) I love Byzantine mosaics. If you're ever in Venice, you should step inside St Mark's, and if you're ever in Ravenna you should step inside St Vitale's, and look at the mosaics. Probably you'll love the mosaics, cause probably you're not dead inside. I guarantee that going to those churches and looking at the mosaics will not be a waste of your time, because probably you'll love the mosaics, which are made of glass, not stone, and are lit from sunlight shining through them. If you don't like either the 12th-century mosaics in St Mark's or the 6th-century mosaics in St Vitale's, if you really are that dead inside, then you'll know that you don't like any mosaics anywhere and never will, and you'll never have to waste one more moment of your life looking at or thinking about mosaics.

You're welcome. It's a pleasure and an honor for me to educate the public like this. And it will be even more of an honor and privilege, and I will be able to do it even more effectively, if you can imagine such a thing -- I know right?! -- when I win the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature, so, c'mon now, talk me up! Let's do this! Thank you.

I am somewhat familiar with ancient Greek and Roman literature, which constantly makes reference to the Graeco-Roman pagan religion, but I don't know if I can honestly say that I'm familiar with that religion. Ancient Greek and Latin are inaccurately referred to as dead languages, because many people still read and even write them. They're not dead, and they're not going to die soon. Besides those fluent in those languages, millions of people, maybe hundreds of millions, are familiar enough with stories from Classical Greek and Latin that they could name half a dozen Graeco-Roman deities off the top of their heads. Hollywood keeps making blockbuster movies based on those ancient stories. You know why? Because they're great stories, that's why!



Still, I think it's fair to say that Graeco-Roman pagan religion is dead. We still have stories from that religion all around us. What we do not have is active adherents of that religion telling us in all seriousness that we must practice that religion for our own good. I don't know how seriously that religion was taken by most Greeks and Romans before Christianity killed it. Certainly, some people took it all very seriously and literally. But I suspect that even in the ancient Graeco-Roman world, many people didn't take it seriously, and that as time went by it was taken less and less seriously, and that this made it much easier to enjoy. Yes, animals were sacrificed to numerous Graeco-Roman deities, including many deceased and living Roman Emperors, right up until the time when the Christians forbad it, and tore down the temples where the sacrifices were many and the deities praised. But how many of the people attending these pagan festivities took it all literally, and for how many of them was it primarily a good time and a chance to meet people?

We can say at the very least that the pagans allowed people to say that they thought there was nothing at all supernatural going on and that nothing in religion could be taken literally by any serious person. People said and wrote such things and weren't punished for it. When the Christians took over people were killed for casting doubt on Christian teachings, doubts which often were to do with very minor differences in doctrine and didn't come anywhere close to open atheism -- and they continued to be killed for such dissent until the early 19th century. This killing for religious dissent was one of the things Napoleon wanted to erase from Europe, and actually did erase. Napoleon wasn't anything like the thoroughly, shallowly egotistical monster which traditional monarchist propaganda somehow still very often succeeds in portraying him to have been.

Before Christianity took over, there surely were a few pagan zealots who could be as tiresome as the zealots of any other religion. And in long-remote times (and occasionally not as remote as the Greeks and Romans themselves liked to believe, see Frazer's Golden Bough),



say, earlier than 500 BC in Rome and 700 BC in Greece, the zealous believers and priests had wielded gruesome power and it was all very, very serious indeed. But by 400 BC some Greek philosophers were openly doubting the existence of any and all supernatural things, and by AD 0 Greeks and Romans were joking about such things, and if anybody was upset enough to want to kill such mockers, they certainly didn't have the power to do so. Mocking Rome's political authority was a different matter altogether, of course, but religion, all religion, religion per se and any and all belief in the supernatural, could be openly doubted without Rome feeling that it besmirched her political authority. Supposedly the Emperor Vespasian joked as he was dying in AD 79, "“Vae, puto deus fio” ("Uh-oh, I think I'm becoming a god.") The point is not whether or not Vespasian actually said something like that, and also not whether any Popes ever said similarly blasphemous things -- I suspect that a few of them have -- but that an anecdote indicating that an Emperor who was worshiped as a deity had thought that religion was nonsense became public in the ancient Graeco-Roman world without anyone at all appearing to have gone all to pieces upon hearing it, whereas a similar anecdote about an irreligious Pope would have caused quite an uproar indeed.

To me, this seems to indicate that the ancient Romans took religion much less seriously, and to me, that's close to saying that very many of them didn't believe in religion or the supernatural at all. Of course, here as always and everywhere, we can only guess what others truly believe. We can only infer from their actions and statements as to their beliefs.

Daydreaming About Extremely Expensive Watches

Lately I've been looking at pictures of expensive mechanical (that is: wind-up, no battery) watches and daydreaming about being rich enough to afford one. Just today I was looking at some of these pictures, looking at the ways some of these watches have of showing the time in more than 1 time zone at once. Looking at these pictures on my laptop.

And it occurred to me that a mechanical, no-electricity computer wouldn't be able to do very much. At all. Certainly wouldn't be able to show me pictures of watches costing more than I've ever made in a year. Gross. And my laptop, about as simple as new ones come, can show me the time in all time zones, and that's just a teeny-tiny part of a small fraction of what it can do. And then it occurred to me: the most advanced current mechanical computers: that's more or less what extremely-expensive watches are. Plus a lot of gold or platinum in many cases.

As regular readers of this blog know: I'm a pocket watch enthusiast. Not particularly interested in putting a watch on my wrist. I have an automatic (self-winding, no battery) Timex that I bought at a yard sale for 2 bucks, and I've occasionally worn that on my wrist, but never for as long as a day all day long. It's just uncomfortable to me. I don't know whether this is a neurological issue related to my autism. I also don't wear rings.

Not very long ago, all the extra features which often come with expensive watches, like multiple dials and stopwatches and whatnot, didn't interest me much. I just wanted big Arabic numerals, 12 of them on one dial and no Roman numerals or dashes or dots referring to numbers, and of course I wanted extremely accurate and precise and durable and rugged timekeeping. Basically, I wanted a Hamilton 992B,

but as far as I know, no 992B's have been made in the past 45 years. I started researching expensive new pocket watches, and I haven't been able to find many new high-end ones. Patek Philippe offers a couple of gold pocket watches in the $30,000 - $40,000 price range, and Bell & Ross

makes a few that sell for around $2000-$4000, and other than that, I don't know of any really good new pocket watches. The selection of good new ones, as far as I know, isn't vast. There is a vast selection of other new pocket watches, and in the case of some of those I'm not at all sure how well they're made, and in the cases of many others, I'm quite sure that they're cheap crap. It seems that there is this thing called steampunk, whose adherents often carry hideous-looking cheap wind-up watches which are meant to evoke the Victorian ("steam-powered") era. They don't evoke it for me. Generally speaking, watches which were actually made in the Victorian era look much better to me, and a lot of them are still running and keep better time than a lot of this new stuff. Anyway, because of steampunk and maybe because of other factors too, suddenly there are many new wind-up pocket watches for sale, some in the grotesque steampunk style and some which much more closely resemble regular watches. Some have a few superficial resemblances in appearance to things like the 992B, but they gain or lose more than 30 seconds a day. (That's not good. Less than 30 seconds every 6 months, when we spring forward or fall back, would be more like it.)

I must underscore that I'm not really well-informed about all of the new inexpensive ($10 to $500 dollars or so, that's not a typo, it's 10 with 1 zero) watches. I don't know whether there is inexpensive quality stuff somewhere in there amongst the dreck. One can only hope. [PS, 2017: Among other quality low-priced watches, there is the Seiko 5, widely regarded as the most watch per dollar or Euro that a person can get these days.]

Back to me daydreaming about being rich and able to afford a top-notch new gold or platinum watch.

Since there are so few high-end new pocket watches, I've been looking at high-end wristwatches. And I've actually begun to grow intrigued by all the fancy stuff which didn't appeal to me not long ago. Fancy stuff referred to as "complications" by the makers of extremely-expensive watches. Lately, to my own surprise, the complications and offbeat designs have begun to intrigue me. Accuracy, precision and reliability continue to be what I want most, but I'm changing to an attitude where I might actually like some complications too.

And more recently than that it occurred to me that just because a big heavy gold or platinum wristwatch has a band, it doesn't mean that I would have to wear it on my wrist instead of carrying it in my pocket. Of course I could carry a big heavy hunk of precious metal and precision horology in my pocket if I felt like it, even if it came with a big glorious heavy precious-metal band usually used to wear it on one's wrist.

If I could afford such a thing, that is. So let's keep talking me up for that Nobel Prize, everyone, shall we? Thank you! You know, once I'm a Nobel Prize winner, and able to actually buy a gold Omega watch (or platinum? Does Omega make platinum watches? I'm having trouble finding them if they do), I might not have to buy one. Because of the Tom Petty Ab.So.Lute.Ly Backwards Law of Microeconomics, winning a Nobel Prize might actually make me rich and famous enough that Omega would give me a new gold or platinum watch.

And wouldn't that be cool beans with awesome sauce.