Haggi, Schoepfer des Hartmuts

Hartmut Klotzbücher (siit Bilt)

ist drei Monate juenger als ich und ein Monat juenger als der Praesident der Vereinigten Staaten. Comicgarten Leipzig sagt von ihm, er habe "eigenwillige Ortografih." Und das find ich vernuenftig. Die Ortografih, meine ich. Das Alter ist auch ganz gescheit, aber ich und Hartmut Klotzbücher und Praedient Obama und Nastassia Kinski und Bono koennen eigentlich nichts dafuer, dass wir alle so ueberwaeltigend brillant und sexy sind. Wir hatten alle bloss das Glueck, zur richtigen Zeit geboren zu sein.

Ich bin nicht hierher gekommon um Caesar zu preisen sondern um noch einen Post in meinem Blog zu veroeffentlichen. Weil ich reich und beruehmt werden moechte, und weil man nie weiss, was fuer einen Quatsch von Blog-Post zum Renner werden wird. (Einmal schrieb ich, "Mehr ist nicht unbedingt besser, aber es ist mehr," und die Zeile schien eingen Leuten gut zu gefallen. Aber es scheint dass von dem Standpunkt des Reich-und-behuehmt-durch-Quatsch-Bloggens aus gesehen, mehr tatsaechlich auch besser ist. Hoffen wir.)

Und auch weil ich Haggi-Comics mag. Aber wie Ihr sieht, hab ich eigentlich nichts gescheites darueber zu sagen. Ich schrie ganz unverschaemt "HAGGI!" um Leser hierher zu locken, und jetzt hoffe ich dass mein Quatschen Euch lustig genug ist dass einige von Euch mir nicht uebel nehmen werdet dass ich "HAGGI!" geschriehen habe. Haggi ist nicht hier Thema sondern, wie zumeist in meinem Blog, ich. (Wie ein intelligenter Mann mir mal sagte, "Deine Posts kreisen primaer um deine Befindlichkeit." Nein, ich denke nicht, dass er das als Lob meinte. Aber ich bin was ich bin. Ich kann nicht ploetzlich der Mann werden, der mir dies sagte.)

Mam weiss nie -- nanu: ich weiss nie. Vielleicht koennen Andere es sehr genau voraussagen -- was fuer einen Blog-Post zum Renner werden wird. Wisst Ihr, welcher Post von diesem Blog dreimal soviele Pageviews hat als der zweitpopulaeste? Dieser, in welchem ich einen Author, und eine Zeitschrift die ihn veroeffentlicht hatte, grob schimpfte, weil ich hoerte, dass er ein Buch veroeffentlicht hatte, in welchem er behauptete, dass es seltsam waere, wenn Jesus existiert haette, dass 126 antike Geschichtsschreiber nichts von ihm geschrieben hatten. Den naechsten Tage sahe ich, dass mein Blog gelesen und kommentiert und gelinkt wird wie nie zuvor, dieses einen Posts wegen. Auch der naechste Tage schrieb ich einen zweiten Beitrag zum selben Thema. Ich hatte naemlich inzwischen die Liste von 126 angeblichen "Historikern" gefunden, von welchen dieser Hanswurst behauptet hatte, dass es seltsam waere, wenn es Jesus gegeben haeete, dass sie alle 126 nichts von ihn berichtete. Ich hatte die Liste gefunden, und in den zweiten Post zum Thema zerriss ich die Liste.

Wenn Du schon ein wenig von antiken Geschichte kennst, hast Du Dich vielleicht schon gefragt, ob wir ueberhaupt zur Zeit Geschriebenes von 126 antike griechischen und roemischen Geschichtsschreibern besitzen. Ich glaube, es ist weniger als 126.

Von 47 der 126 Personen auf dieser Liste besitzten wir zur Zeit gar nichts Geschriebenes. 4 aber erwaehnen Jesus tatsaechlich. Vielleicht 10 koennten irgendwie Historiker gennant werden. Usw. dies Liste ist erataeunlicher Quatsch, zumal wenn man erwaegt, dass die Zeitschrift, welche sie veroeffentlicht hat, Free Inquiry ist -- vor Jahrzehnten noch eine diskutable Zeitschrift, heute die Flagship der New Atheists. Und dieser zweiten Post ist naemlich der zweitpopulaerste Post dieses Blogs. Und hat rund 10mal soviele Pageviews wie der drittpopulaerste.

Ich selbst bin gar nicht sicher, dass es einen historischen Jesus gegeben hat. Aber mir was klar, dass dieser Mann einen ungewoehnlich glatten Wahnsinn veroeffentlicht hat, in einer nicht ganz unbekannten Zeitschrift. (Letzteres war ein grosses Teil davon, was mich rasend machte. Wenn es nichts als noch ein unsinniges Blog-Post gewesen waere, von einem Nobody verfasst, waere es ja gar nichts Ungewoehnliches gewesen.)

Diese 2 Beitraege postete ich in diesem Blog den 29. und 30. September 2014. Ich dachte in Oktober 2014, ich waere vielleicht im Begriff, reich und beruehmt zu werden. Aber nein. (Ich dachte, Free Inquiry wuerde vielleicht zugeben, dass sie Quatsch veroeffentlich haben. Auch das nicht. Im Gegenteil, sie foerderten den Beitrag von Print-Ausgabe-only zu ihrer Website. Dies ist es, was die New Atheists von uns anderen Atheisten unterscheidet: sie reden unaufhoerlich ueber historischen Themen, ohne sich einen Dreck zu scheren, ob das was sie sagen Sinn macht.)

Reich und beruehmt bin ich noch nicht, aber jetzt bin ich vor allem wegen dieser zwei Beitraegen beruehmter als bevor dem 29. September 2014. Ihr glaubt es nicht? Michael Paulkovich heiss der Esel, der diese Liste von 126 Name verfasste. Googlet mal bollinger paulkovich.

Nee, aber Haggi ist grosse Klasse. Ehrlich. Sorry.

Random Thought

I've blocked a lot of people on Facebook -- no, really: a lot. No, really, you don't understand: A LOT.

If I were to unblock all of them right now, would traffic on my blog increase? (I link my blog posts on Facebook.) Would it increase enough that my lifelong dream of being a professional writer would come true?

There's one way to find out!

PS: 3 hours after I started unblocking people and 1 hour after I finished -- like I said, there were a LOT of them! -- the results are still inconclusive.

The Wrong Monkey Is Now The Most Interesting Monkey In The World

We never stop working to bring you a better monkey. Recently, as you may recall, The Wrong Monkey went 100% barnacle-free. And today, The Wrong Monkey has become the most interesting monkey in the world. I don't always drink beer. Thank you.

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.

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.)

The REAL Story About Why I'm the Wrong Monkey

The name seemed like a good idea at the time. But you've got to consider that I was kind of upset.

The time: 2008. The world was younger then, and so was Ronny Cox. (What? He was.) George W Bush made us all laugh with giddy joy at the thought of his administration ending soon. I mostly hung out at one Internet forum, as opposed to splitting my Internet-forum time pretty evenly between several. That's how I usually roll: one forum at a time. And this was a fine forum, full of sophisticated and polite people -- extremely polite compared to many if not most Internet cliques. And so perhaps I didn't see as clearly as I might have that I didn't fit in. This wasn't the sort of situation where one of the other forum participants was going to tell me, "Steven, twenty of us had a secret meeting and talked it over and held a vote. Four people abstained, two said they liked having you around and sixteen said they wanted you to stop posting here and leave us alone. So, if you don't mind... Skedaddle, please." That just wasn't going to happen. What actually happened was that someone said to me that I might like this other forum. And I took that to mean: "Steven, twenty of us had a secret meeting and talked it over[...]" and so forth.

And my feelings were hurt. And I did leave that forum and go to the other one, and instead of calling myself Steven Bollinger I logged into the new forum as The Wrong Monkey, because I had sublimated my sadness over not fitting in into anger and grandiosity, and was saying things to myself like, "I'll show them! I'll show them ALL! I'm going to be a huge superstar and they'll be sorry they dissed me, but it'll be too late! THEY DONE GONE AND MESSED WITH THE WRONG MONKEY!" All in all, it closely resembled the process by which Butters became Professor chaos.

That's the ugly truth. That's where the handle came from, and the blog name came from the handle. (Which is sometimes abbreviated as TheWM or TWM.)

Did I show them all? No, I don't think so. Not yet, anyway. Did I completely mis-read the first forum, and do sixteen of them actually miss me terribly, while only two are glad I left? Gee, I'd sure like to think so. It's possible. But I don't think so. Am I glad that I've been referring to myself for several years now as The Wrong Monkey? Yes, although at the same time I find it very strange and somewhat embarrassing, if that makes any sense.

Today, More Than 2 Years After I started This Blogspot Blog With Ads By AdSense --

I have discovered that I can, indeed, have some input into the sorts of ads which appear on my blog. In case any of you have been thinking that ads for Scientology and psychics and dating services for Christian singles don't harmonize very well with the content of my posts -- I've been thinking the same thing. Today I discovered that I can do something about that. I've found a place where I can request that certain categories of ads be blocked.

Now, if I could also find a way not just to block some types of ads, but actually to suggest types of things which might be successfully advertised here -- books come immediately to mind. And, for instance, art-house movies. Fine stationary -- well, that'd be extra-special. I'll keep looking for such a thingy. Sorry about being so slow to do something about the psychics and so forth. And I should add, I don't know yet how effective what I've done will be. IT is, um... Well, I'm not a genius at IT. Some people on the autistic spectrum have a real knack for this sort of thing. But, clearly, not me.

Still: excelsior!

PS, June 14: Still not doing so well with blocking the ads by psychics, huh? Hm.

I suppose it's possible that one and the same person could like my blog, and want to hire a psychic. (Whether someone could understand my blog, like it, and want to hire a psychic -- well, I'm always saying that the word "impossible" is overused. But that would be one remarkable person.)

Take the Awful Existential Weight of the World From My Shoulders, Please!

Today someone asked me about the phrase "The Wrong Monkey," and I explained that I came up with it at a moment when my feelings were hurt because I felt that a clique was snubbing me a little bit. I meant it in the sense of, "I'll show them! I'm the wrong monkey to be snubbing! They'll be sorry!" It was completely empty bluster. I don't believe I ended up showing them anything in particular, but the name "The Wrong Monkey" stuck as an Internet handle, and later also became the name of my blog.

I explained all this, and the lady who'd asked me said that I had told the story in an amusing way, but also apologized for laughing at what she imagined to be a painful episode in my life. I didn't feel it was like that: the pain was slight, brief and long since forgotten, and I got that cool name out of it. This story was almost all upside. But what she said reminded me of some stand-up comics I've known.

I'm not a good stand-up comic. I found this out in the early 1990's when I tried to make a career out of it. Now, I can sometimes be very funny one-on-one: sometimes someone I'm talking to will be amused by what I'm saying, and I'll be able to really feel their amusement, to grab it, and spontaneously keep it going, and growing, and often get that one person laughing so hard they can't stand up any more and they're wheezing and begging me to stop.

What I didn't realize until I finally tried stand-up comedy is that a comic has to do that with an entire group of people at once. Which, for me at least, is a totally different thing. In retrospect, it seems that it shouldn't have surprised me that I can't work a room, because I can't make just anybody laugh -- it's only a few individuals, here and there, now and then. It's not something I can do whenever I want.

So anyway, I worked some comedy clubs, and bombed, and I hung out with some comedians and got to know them a little. And there's a range of personality types among them, but many of the funniest ones are just brutally downbeat offstage, horribly depressed and pessimistic. Now, I've had my battles with depression. But not like these comics. You know that episode of Seinfeldwhere George has started dating a woman who laughs a lot at the things he says, and he asks Jerry not to be funny around her, and Jerry happens to be sitting alone with her in the diner and has just finished a long spiel about how horrible and pointless life is, and she asks him what he does, and he replies, "I'm a comedian!" ? Well, that's especially funny if you know a lot of comics. Funny, because it's true. Offstage, a lot of them could give Bleak Jerry a real run for his horribly-depressed money.

One of the most memorable moments from the time when I failed to make it as a stand-up comic came when I was watching another guy on stage, a much better comic than I'll ever be, a guy who night after night felt the collective funny bone of an entire roomful of people at once and manipulated it unmercifully, made them laugh so hard that they fell out of their seats and cried, the way I can sometimes do with one person, and offstage -- oh my God! That poor guy, you don't wanna know.

The moment I remember was a few seconds into a big laugh he'd gotten. I've long since forgotten the joke he told that got that laugh going. What I remember was what he improvised to make that laugh bigger: he said, "Thank you. Thank you for laughing at my pain."

Okay, that might not seem like such a brilliant thing to say. You may have heard comics say close to the same thing several different times -- maybe exactly the same thing, word for word. Because it's an honest and succinct summing up of what a lot of comics do: bare their horrible anguish for the amusement of the general public.

Because I knew that guy a little bit, I knew how completely sincere he was being when he said that. I think that was when I realized I wasn't going to make it as a comic. Because I wanted to be that kind of comic, but I wasn't nearly unhappy enough.