Write a sad story in only three words

The title of this post is a writing prompt I saw on Twitter and I thought it would be fun to adapt the exercise by adding Jack Kerouac to the mix. Thus the prompt becomes:

Pretend you're Jack Kerouac and write a sad story in only three words.

Of course, one could substitute any famous person for Jack Kerouac and have fun with this, but we'll stick with Jack since this is a Kerouac-obsessed blog.

Here is what came to my mind:

Brother gone young. 

Post your 3-word story as a comment.



P.S. This reminds me of the legendary 6-word story: "For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn." This story gets attributed to Ernest Hemingway (Kerouac connection!) but I've seen that claim refuted as urban legend.

One man's journey to Desolation Peak

I thought our readers might find this recent article from The Telegraph of interest: The unspoilt wilderness Jack Kerouac called home.

Remembering Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg died on this date in 1997 at the age of 70. You can read his NY Times obit here for a recap of his larger-than-life accomplishments. Notice that I didn't call it the "Failing NY Times" like our President because, unlike him, I respect freedom of the press and I am confident in the reporting accuracy and integrity of "The Gray Lady." Just because you don't like what a newspaper prints doesn't mean it's fake. Bully-pulpiting about that is dictator-style censorship at best.

Pardon my waxing political. Of course, Mr. Ginsberg would likely appreciate that given his robust political activism.

The Kerouac connection here is, of course, that they were great friends and along with William S. Burroughs comprised what some have called the Beat Generation triumvirate. There were, of course, other, albeit lesser known, Beats such as Diane di Prima and Gregory Corso and Herbert Huncke and Hettie Jones and the list goes on and on and on . . . .

In honor of Ginsberg's death, read some of his poetry today (click here). Aloud if you can.

Spam policy reminder

This is a reminder to readers that on any given day we receive dozens of anonymous spam comments such as the following, which was left yesterday on this post:

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Consequently, if you send us a comment and you want it to be published (we vet each one), you must comply with three rules:

1. You must use a screen name. It doesn't have to be your own, but if the commenter's name shows as "Anonymous" the comment will not get published.

2. Your comment has to have something to do with the post it targets. If a post is not about gynecological locations in Thailand, then a comment about gynecological locations in Thailand will not get published.

3. Your comment must be civil. That is, snarky ad hominem comments and the like will not get published.

FYI, I label all comments that fail to meet the above criteria as "spam" for Google to deal with, so be warned.

We love comments here at The Daily Beat, but we will not suffer bullshit, which is what almost all daily comments consist of for one reason or another. I don't know from where or how or why (for what purpose) these comments hit my blog each day, but if you are responsible: Man, you can go fuck yourself.

On the other hand, if you want to send us a can of Spam (chopped pork and lunch meat in a can), we will gladly fry that up and have it on a sandwich for lunch. And if you've sent in a legit comment and I missed it, my apologies for that -- past, present, and future.

What does any of this have to do with Jack Kerouac? I bet he ate Spam. Other than that, here's a Kerouac quote for you:

I wrote my first novel at age 11, in a 5¢ notebook, about an orphan boy running away, floating down a river in a boat . . .  (Heaven & Other Poems, Grey Fox, 1977, p. 39)

If it's Wednesday this must be Western Haiku Day

April snow
Shovel put away
Thirsty flowers


Nothing to get
No one to get it
Emptiness an illusion


The parrot said
What's on your mind?
I laughed


Sixty-four haikus later
Devastated and spent
No matter the price of ink




Note: To understand what a Western Haiku is, read Jack Kerouac's explanatory note in Scattered Poems (accessible here). By the way, Happy National Poetry Month.

Numerology project complete

31 days ago we undertook what I call a "numerology project" in which we presented a sentence from a book on my Kerouac bookshelf each day that corresponded to the date and the book's placement on my bookshelf. On the 1st of the month we presented the 1st sentence of the 1st book, on the 2nd we presented the 2nd sentence of the 2nd book, and so on (seemingly ad infinitum). The project ended yesterday, April 1, because we started on March 2 and I wanted to capture a full 31-day month's worth of entries.

All that remains is to present the whole set of sentences in one post. That is what follows in block indent. Make of it what you will, I think it reads amazingly well in terms of coherence. For the copyright police, all these passages are cited in their relevant individual entry posted previously and available by clicking the first word of each sentence. It strikes me that this exercise has two Burroughs connections. One is the numerology aspect, with which he was familiar (click here). The other is that this is rather like his "cut-up" method, where new text is created by cutting up existing texts and randomly arranging the passages.

How do you think this came out?

This old Greek reminded me of my Uncle Nick in Brooklyn who'd spent 50 years of his life there after being born in Crete, and wandered down the gray streets of Wolfe Brooklyn, short, gray suit, with a gray hat, gray face, going to his various jobs as elevator operator and apartment janitor summer winter and fall, and was a plain old ordinary man talking about politics but with a Greek accent, and when he died it seemed to me Brooklyn hadn't changed and would never change, there would always be a strange sad Greek going down the gray streets. 

Shortly before my birth my father had begun a small theatrical publication known as the "Spotlight Print," a unique weekly filled with news, comments, anecdotes, editorials, and advertisements dealing with the theatre [sic] and cinema of the time around Lowell and Boston. 

Prior to that I'd always dreamed of going west, seeing the country, always vaguely planning and never specifically taking off and so on. 

1st sentence of the 1st book

The 1st book on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's Good Blonde & Others (Grey Fox, 1993), and the 1st sentence (in honor of today being the 1st day of the month) is:

This old Greek reminded me of my Uncle Nick in Brooklyn who'd spent 50 years of his life there after being born in Crete, and wandered down the gray streets of Wolfe Brooklyn, short, gray suit, with a gray hat, gray face, going to his various jobs as elevator operator and apartment janitor summer winter and fall, and was a plain old ordinary man talking about politics but with a Greek accent, and when he died it seemed to me Brooklyn hadn't changed and would never change, there would always be a strange sad Greek going down the gray streets. (p. 5)

And there you have it -- all 31 days of March (we started on March 2 so today was actually the 31st entry) accounted for in our numerology project to align books, sentences, and days of the month. All that remains is to pull all 31 entries into one post, which should* happen tomorrow. That's going to take some cutting-and-pasting, but it's pretty do-able. Then we can read the whole set of sentences quickly in order and see what it all means (if anything).

Thank God it's almost over . . . .

Oh, and Happy Birthday to my son, who turns 39 today! Wow.



*This word is responsible for more human mental suffering than perhaps any other single word. It is part of the kind of distorted thinking that cognitive behavior therapy addresses. To rephrase, let me say "it would be nice if it happened tomorrow, but unforeseen events may cause a delay."