⚡ January 14, 2014
A Rainy Afternoon in January 🔥
I’ve come back out to the hut to see if it’s warm enough to heat the room with electricity, which is expensive. I won’t stay too long – just until dusk – but I will get a lot of thinking and planning done out here in what is a true artist’s studio.
We got another one of those letters on Saturday. And then we did another episode of Future Theater Radio, our ever-building safety valve of the airwaves. I talked about the letter a little bit, mostly to ask for suggestions – anything – about what to do, what to think.
As it stands right now, right here in the gray-scale middle of a sunless but warm January day, our license to use the trademarked letters “UFO” together on our magazine is in danger of being revoked. And why? After ten full years of issues, from #108 to #158?
That’s fifty issues I’ve created. Personally. Issue #159 is in dispute, of course, because it hasn’t yet been printed out. The owner of the trademark is staking his claim on this fact. He’s either going to sell it or close it down or who knows what? He can trade it for a pineapple if he wants.
I shouldn’t care, but I do. I take pride in what I’ve accomplished, and I am sad that I’ve once again been fired. For a person who graduated summa cum laude, I kid you not, from Princeton in 1979, I do get fired a lot. A lot.
I begged the guy who fired me for a chance to work on the magazine. I would have done it for free. When Bill came back from his first-ever meeting in 1997 and told me they were selling the magazine, I jumped up and down and yes, I begged.
Bill, for some reason, ignored me. He can do that most charmingly. And I’ve come to realize, as I try to get my feelings into labeled lists here, that I can now write anything I want because I don’t work for UFO, Inc. anymore. I do not. If somehow I get un-fired, I will pay it no mind because here and now and officially, I quit.
From now on, I only work for me. I’m out in MY happy place, my happy hippy hut, doing what I want to do. If I want to rearrange the place, I will. If I want to turn on both heaters at once and blow a fuse, I will.
And I did. And it did.
Twinkly lights are off and the raw edge of the rainy day is slicing under the glass door frames. It’s going to start getting cold out here real soon, so I’d better pack up. As always, I’ll answer any questions in the Disqus form, below. I might ask a few of my own.
I will be glad to be rid of UFO, I think. Not the topic, oh no. Not that at all. Who could ever be rid of UFOs? They are all around us. So many things are still unidentified.
After you are gone, gone away from your chair and your slippers and your cup ‘o stuff, everything you knew will be gone, too. Thus, everything returns to the unidentified.
More to come. Watch this space. 🐔