Quick Takes.

April 2024: Back in 1995, playing around with email for the first time, I created an list to forward funny things that had been forwarded to me. To protect the identities of everyone in the list I called it “Anonymous” and, because I’d learned about the Freethinkers from Mark Twain, I added that to the name. Then I started writing funny things of my own to preface whatever I was forwarding. Then a friend created a website and started archiving the pieces. Then I just stopped forwarding stuff because I wanted to focus on my own things and eventually it evolved into a blog, again with a friend’s help.

I’d read somewhere that the average life of a blog is three years. While I’ve never been able to confirm this I felt that, while I couldn’t pinpoint the exact date I’d started, I was close enough to say I’d now hit the twenty-nine year mark. It would only take one more year to bury the average.

May 2024: At this point I’d been playing the ukulele for a little over a year. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact date I started but that doesn’t matter because time is flexible and with almost any hobby there are a lot of different points at which you could say you technically started. So when asked what song I’d like to learn next I said “John Cage’s Four Minutes and Thirty-three Seconds.” This resulted in approximately forty-seven seconds of silence but I’m sure with practice I’ll be able to get through the entire piece.

June 2024: I remembered that this was the centennial year of the Surrealist Movement although with something like surrealism, which is more of a vaguely defined style than a single specific movement, there’s no way to really pinpoint the exact date. Even the first members of the Surrealist group claimed Hieronymous Bosch as one of their members and in 1924 he celebrated his 474^th birthday. Or at least he would have if he hadn’t died four hundred and eight years earlier.

July 2024: I finally decided this was the year I’d find the best milkshake in Nashville. I’d had this idea for several years, though I couldn’t pinpoint the exact date it came into my head, but I do know I always got distracted by the idea of whether I should include chain restaurants of focus solely on local places. Local places would be my preference, and I’d also keep in mind that “best” is subjective. And then I wondered if I should focus strictly on ice cream places or any place that serves milkshakes. And didn’t I also plan to do this with gyros?

August 2024: Team members Dave Casman and Joe Bertman came into the office and announced that all of Emily Dickinson’s poems can be sung to the tune of John Cage’s Four Minutes and Thirty-three Seconds and they were immediately told to get out.

September 2024: Conseils d’application: Répartissez le conditionneur de manière uniforme sur les pointes et le centre de vos cheveux. N’appliquez pas le conditionneur sue votre cuir chevelu. Laissez le conditionneur s’imprégner pendant quelques minutes. Rincez abondamment. Avertissements: Réserve a un usage extreme uniquement. Conserver hors de portee des enfants. Cessez de utiliser en cas d’irritation.

October 2024: This is a test. This is only a test. Please stand by. Do not adjust your television set. We control the vertical. We control the horizontal. Scarecrows and magic and other fatal fears do not bring people closer together. There is no magic substitute for soft caring and hard work, for self-respect and mutual love. If we can learn this from the mistake these frightened men made then their mistake will not have been merely grotesque, it would at least have been a lesson. A lesson, at last, to be learned.

November 2024: I decided to participate in “No Shave November” and by the end of the month had acquired what most people would describe as a “five o’clock shadow”. All right, technically it was closer to four-thirty, but it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact date.

December 2024: The final month marked the end of yet another year, although these annual reports get filed in April, and anyway time is arbitrary, wibbly-wobbly, and as soon as you focus on a single moment it’s already on to the next. There’s nothing to do but keep going and hope things will get better.

January 2025: Team members Dave Casman and Joe Bertman came into the office with the idea of finding the best place in Nashville to get Boston cream pie, New England clam chowder, Belgian waffles, Baked Alaska, Buffalo wings, Pad Thai, Swedish meatballs, Turkish delight, Vienna sausages, Black Forest cake, Swiss chard, Brussels sprouts,Chicken Kiev, Canadian bacon, and Eggs Benedict and were immediately told to get out.

February 2025: I would procrastinate if I ever get around to it. Anyway while digging through the backseat of the car in search of some ketchup I found my gym shorts and realized it was well past time to wash them. In fact I could pinpoint the exact date because there were a couple of receipts for a milkshake and a gyro in the pocket.

March 2025: I’d read somewhere that the average life of a blog is three years. While I couldn’t pinpoint the exact date I’d started, I knew it was close enough that I could safely say I’d been doing this odd little thing I called “Freethinkers Anonymous” for thirty years. It would have been nice to gather everyone who’s been with me on this journey together in one room, but you’re all so scattered, and some fell by the wayside. Many years ago—I can’t pinpoint the exact date—I read the Epic of Gilgamesh and found comfort in the idea that nothing is permanent. At the time I thought it meant that everything ends but as I’ve gotten older it feels deeper than that. Everything changes and as soon as you focus on one moment it’s on to the next, but as long as we’re here the important thing is to keep playing.