In and around living my life and blogging, I have made various and sundry attempts to sell something I have written. I have also entered writing contests. Two of the latter were the Wergle Flomp bad poetry contest and the Bulwer-Lytton contest for penning the worst opening line for a novel. I regret to report that not only did I not win either contest, my efforts did not even merit a (dis)honorable mention.

I don't know how to feel about that. In the Bulwer-Lytton competition, I thought my lines were convoluted enough to rate something. Here are the three I submitted:

1) He was of Bunyon-esque proportions when he rode into town - and even before, though no one saw him until he entered which rendered his size moot - besides which his physicality was not to be confused with the foot complaint that contributed to his surly disposition and brought him to the town in search of a good cobbler or podiatrist.

2) The flies were everywhere - or perhaps not, since Smilie was not and could not be everywhere, he being no god - not even one of those deities worshiped by remote tribes in the Amazon or obscure Pacific island peoples - but then nobody worshiped flies so far as he knew, even if they were everywhere.

3) There were three of them circling out there with evil intent though Knavely did consider counting the two-headed one twice.

Mind you, I have no objections to the winning entries. Rather I wonder if my bad writing was not bad enough or not good enough. And it ties me in mental knots.

My Wergle Flomp effort (limit one entry per contestant) was an entirely different matter. I honestly did not expect to win, both because I am no poet and because a vanity poetry publisher REJECTED my "poem" not once but SEVEN times!

You are reading that rightly. I submitted one poem to a vanity poetry site and received SEVEN rejections. Even the folks behind the Wergle Flomp poetry contest admitted they had never heard of such a thing.

Should have made me a lock to win “worst poem” award, right? Wrong. Not even a (dis)honorable mention did I receive, though here I believe I can understand why.

Firstly, the Wergle Flomp folks expect a contestant to not only submit a bad poem to a vanity publishing site or company, but they expect the “poet” to receive notice that his or her submission is a semi-finalist in a poetry contest as a come-on to induce said “poet” to purchase the anthology in which his or her effort would appear. My entry tripped and fell on that first hurdle. Indeed, it must have picked itself up and then fallen seven times on that first hurdle.

More tellingly though, I believe that to bastardize poetry, one must have an appreciation for good poetry. I do not have that. Instead, much of the poetry I read in my various English classes of long ago was sheer torture to me. I just didn't get it, sometimes not even when a teacher or professor attempted an explanation. So, while many of the entrants in the Wergle Flomp contest chose to take off on Whitman or Sandberg or Frost, poets held in some regard, I chose Joyce Kilmer's anatomically-deranged "Trees", a poem I hated and probably the only one that sticks in my mind. Need I add that poetry critics also hold the original in low regard?

Will I try again? So far as Wergle Flomp is concerned, probably not. Oh, with effort, I could probably conjure up something that a vanity publisher would assure me shows great promise - and wouldn't I love to see my words in print? However I suspect that my attitude would once more show through. Besides, I figure a guy who can take an entire paragraph to say hello stands a far better chance of winning the Bulwer-Lytton contest. I jsu wonder if that is a worthy goal.

One day in the not-so-distant future, I may disappear. My voice may never again be heard nor my words be read. It will be involuntary, should it occur, but it could happen. All I need do is to raise my nuisance value to an unacceptable level in the opinion of the powers-that-be.

Relax. I am not setting off on some ego trip here because if the truth be told, it could happen to anyone. Even in America. Perhaps especially in Bushmerica. All that is required is a suspicion of possible ties to a terrorist organization or to "an enemy of the state". Publicized arrest and detainment can follow at which point, as a suspected "enemy combatant", a person becomes a nonentity.

Hell! By the simple logic of the Six Degrees of Separation game, that makes everyone on earth a potential suspect. If you or I or anyone else can go out six people and connect with Kevin Bacon, then by taking a different starting point/friend/family member/acquaintance, we can probably establish the same sort of connection to and with that notorious hermit, Osama bin Laden.

In my case, I work with a young woman who is originally from Somalia. She is Muslim, as is the case with many Somalians and her family was/is well-connected there. Somalia is one of those countries with suspected ties to al-Qaeda. Ergo, someone might make the tenuous connection between a Lone Wolf and al-Qaeda.

The trick then, for me and for others, is to fly below the radar, to be no more than a minor nuisance to those who wield great power. Blogstream is a suitable place to do this. Here I can lose myself among nearly 30,000 other bloggers and blogs, which is but a drop in the blogging bucket in its own right, and I can say things such as that the American public is so caught up in inconsequential matters such as "reality" television that it scarcely notices how its collective and individual rights are being stripped away. I can make a statement that Americans should not be surprised should some "national emergency" arise during which Bush and company will suspend the elections scheduled this November.

I can do this because, whether such predictions prove true or no, hardly anyone will notice. My nuisance value is not that high. Besides, enough of the American public can be bought off with promises of bread - as in tax rebates - and circuses - "who will show up and emerge as favorites on the next season of American Idol?" that it will not worry about voices of dissent falling silent. And at least with "Idol", they can retain some illusion about influencing the results whereas "everyone knows" the political process is so much B.S. and makes no difference anyway.

Truthfully, I cannot say that the Bush Company would go so far as to suspend elections because they do not need to and that would be a risky undertaking even in a country of sheeple. They do not need to because their cohorts in the "liberal media" will sow enough seeds of doubt that when John McCain surprisingly wins the next election, few will question the results. ("America is simply not ready for a black president.")

Does anyone believe that the next administration and/or Congress (assuming it has not been dissolved) will really undertake an investigation of all that the current administration has done? Does anyone really believe that if such an investigation were undertaken, it would be more than a whitewash, even if "high crimes and misdemeanors" were found?

I submit that a Lone Wolf would stand a better chance of becoming the next "American idol".

I confess up front that my participation in sports always left something to be desired. I may have dreamed of one day pitching for my beloved Pittsburgh Pirates, but the reality was that there was little market for a guy who stood barely 5'10", weighed 128 pounds, was legally blind without coke bottle glasses, and had a "fastball" that could be timed with a sundial. Basketball was no better because in those pre-contact lens days, the only protection afforded my eye wear was a nerd strap that kept my glasses from slipping down my nose. And my dad made it abundantly clear who would shoulder the financial responsibility for replacement should I be silly enough to drive the lane and take an elbow to the face. Besides, this white man truly could not jump.

Football? Don't make me laugh. (See physical description above and tell me where I would have played.) Oh, I did duff around with other "minor sports" but none held my interest so much as the big three. And the only ability I ever possessed/developed was running - of necessity as much as or more than by design.

When I was growing up, all of my friends and my brother had bicycles. I did not. So when they decided to go on some excursion or another or simply to an athletic field, if I wanted to go and participate, I ran. Then we played whatever game or sport and then I ran home.

I hated running. Not because I could not do it, but simply because I equated it with "no bicycle". Worse, despite all of my accidental training, there were always guys who were faster at measured distances. About the only thing I could ever do was run until the other guy gave up.

Eventually, of course, I learned a sort of benefit of all that running. When I enlisted in the Marine Corps, the Drill Instructors loved the fact that I could complete whatever distance run they set for training with energy to spare. Others, including our platoon guide on (the fellow who carried our platoon ensign on a pole) were not so "fortunate". He and several others lagged on the run, became stragglers who might not pass the final physical fitness test because it involved running three miles in a prescribed time.

Our Drill Instructors' solution was to station me at the rear of our platoon formation to exhort and encourage the stragglers. At this I was a rousing success, not because I was a mobile motivational speaker but because, as that platoon guide later said, "I figured if you could run the last mile backward, I oughta be able to run it frontward."

Later, during infantry training at Camp Lejeune, our company commander was a race walker who turned our forced marches into near-death experiences. He regarded the marches as exercise for his competitions and would strike out encumbered only by uniform and cartridge belt with '45 pistol and canteen of water. We, his trainees, had backpacks, bedrolls, rifles, and cartridge belts - over 60 pounds of gear apiece - and were expected to keep up. Because I could, he rewarded me with our 22 pound field radio leaving me with the feeling that I was going to tip over backward should I try to straighten up.

I had visions of myself as a human turtle, lying on my back, unable to right myself. I told someone that and he noted that my posture on the forced marches did sort of resemble a turtle, albeit one that moved quickly. Thus was born "Speed(y) Turtle."

The nickname did not last but my reputation did. At further postings, a friend who was an avid runner tried to persuade me to give up my smoking. beer-swilling ways and train to compete. This was after I finished second to and within hailing distance of him on a 3-mile run for which my training consisted of putting on my gym clothes on the day and running.

"Think what you could do if you trained," said he.

I did, for roughly as long as it took for him to utter the sentence, and then made some flip remark about how I would rather they made beer-drinking an Olympic sport with weight classes as in boxing, of course.

Now, in an every four year ritual of reflection, I watch Olympic events and wonder what might have been had I followed his advice. And the inescapable answer is, if I had ever made it that far, I would no doubt have come up against a bunch of guys from other countries who also did not have bicycles when they were growing up.

I missed that imagined camaraderie, born of shared experience. That is what I truly missed.

Is it just me or is Blogstream slowing down? Lately it seems that when I click on a blog title to pay a visit, the screen takes way too long to load. Same thing with writing and posting to my blog, getting to and through the comments, and trying to leave comments on the blogs I visit. Everything is slo-o-o-w, as though somebody has poured molasses into the system.

If I were on a dial up connection, I could understand, but I'm not. And I try to keep my computer up to speed with regular maintenance and security checks. So I ask again, is anyone else experiencing similar problems?

Here we are, another day, results of another study. This one states:

"Low levels of vitamin D may raise a person's risk of premature death."

So there's such a thing as "mature death"?

I can hear it now, the supreme eulogy. "Ah, he died at exactly the right time."

Makes us sound like walking cheese or something. Aged to absolute perfection.

Call me presumptuous or fatalistic, but from my perspective, whenever someone dies, that's his or her time to go. Nothing "premature" about it.

Yeah, yeah, I know what those researchers mean: get sufficient vitamin D and you'll live however long you are supposed to. Barring accident or catastrophic illness or homicide or ...