Blog backlog #1: bad ways to propose

By Todd Stadler · Monday, January 9, 2006 11:09pm

Sometimes, I look at my blog with misty eyes and wonder why I don't write in it as much as I used to. I tell myself that while I used to blog more, I also used to write a lot of bloggy fluff, and now that I've cut a lot of it out, I'm left with this ... which is pretty much nothing. Ah, but a more succinct nothing!

But I do have a collection of blog entries that I started at some now-forgotten date that I haven't posted. I really should delete them, but every time I read them, I think, "Well, that's kind of funny. With a little reworking, I wouldn't be ashamed to publish that."

The problem being, of course, that I never feel like reworking tired, old material. It's like chewing on a tire in the hope that some day it'll be tender. Or like trying to wrap your head around a hastily crafted, tortured simile until it makes sense.

So rather than rework it, I'm now relieving the guilt of my blog backlog (backblog?) by publishing an old idea as-is. Quantity, not quality. This, I believe, is more in keeping with the spirit of blogging.

This piece was written before Julia and I got married. At that time, it was obvious that we would get married, but I wasn't sure when. The inevitability of it all seemed vaguely unromantic, causing me to muse on even more unromantic ways to propose, below:

1) "Baby, I know I've been drinking a bit ... okay, a lot. But you look really hot tonight. And, um, [belch] doyouwannagetmarried?"

2) "Hey, um, I know you're driving right now, and I don't want to distract you from that and all. But, if you could just give me your hand ... no, the other one ... whoa, sorry, didn't mean to make you swerve like that. So, will you marry ... oh, turn left here ... whoops, just circle back, then ... me? Look out!"

3) "So, I've been thinking about us a lot lately. You know, about the future of our relationship. And whether, you know, we should break up or get married and that sort of thing. Because relationships can't last forever, of course. Most of them end with people breaking up. But sometimes they last a really long time and then end when one of the people dies. So I've decided after thinking about it that I don't want our relationship to end by breaking up. Because then we'd both be sad. But if we, I don't know, get married, then our relationship will just end when one of us dies, and then only one of us will be sad. Because the other person will be dead. Do you get what I'm saying?"

Ah, the humor of days gone by! Brings back memories, don't it?