This column has no point

We are starving here in Paris, my friend and I. We have not left our flat all day, in catastrophic fear that, if we do, we will embark on a disastrous spree of spending money we don't have. What we do have is this: a carton of Lucky Strikes, a jar of instant coffee, and a galaxy of Karma to burn. He is stone broke and I am skidding turbulently in that same direction. It is only a matter of time before I too am side-swiped with poverty. Cover your eyes children, the collision is bound to make priests wince with contempt and spur parents into rowdy protest as they pound on the doors of decency.\nBut tonight, oh Bloomington, my thoughts drift upon you. Are you spending your days gloriously? Are you savoring your 85 degrees and partly sunny? Have you peeled back the top on those country miles? Is the volume knob on full tilt? Have you found your lovers yet? Are you screaming "Geronimo" as you leap nude from quarry walls? I sure hope so! Or are you so bored with yourselves that even fireworks don't excite you? Have you regressed to lip-syncing dirges and pointing fingers as you scramble for the point? Are you demanding that there be some clearly specified theme? -- some well marked gist to vindicate your intellectual effort; a honey coated pacifier to shove between your quivering lips to keep you cooing like a dove, in a state of perpetual coddle? How tragic if so.\nQuite unbeknownst to myself, apparently, the moment I stepped into the ring of journalistic writing, I took some blind oath to, above all, give my explicit opinion on the affairs of this planet. And if I didn't comply, then I could expect to be pummeled by the critics as they pelt me with sloppy tomatoes and brown wrinkled apples. Or maybe sling shots of moldy cottage cheese.\nSo, in essence, I am expected to take stand on the soap-box -- to clamber atop the Ivory Tower with my megaphone and trumpets and make some witty, but for God's sake intelligible, commentary on the most pressing matters of our time? At least make myself sound like I sat in college lecture halls nodding with passionate agreement as my pen smoked to capture the professor's words. Pick one side of the road or the other, and stop snooping through the opponent's trash as I ramble from one moment to the next.\nLet me get this straight -- It's critical that I engage myself; that I apply myself and cradle thought as if it were a brittle leaf of gold or your dead grandmother's ming vase. And only then will I be qualified to spit out some self-righteous sludge to satisfy my audience's ego? That's great, but I am concerned. I am prone to vagrancy and my hands are constantly shaking, especially when I haven't eaten, so I don't think it would be a good idea for me to go handling any vases.\nTo be quite honest, I am terrified of heights. So the peak of the soap-box is a nauseating idea that I want no part of. The soap-box is appropriate only for those who have the answer -- the solution. And I am sorry to report, I don't have it! But the university is choked with enough arm-chair theologians who think they do. I know, I've held my nose and plugged my ears too many times because of these schleps. So I'll leave the soap-box vacant for them to use. I don't own that kind of vanity. Some may, but I don't. If you're really that curious, my "world-view" is a hell-cat typhoon of raucous contradictions that will only yield more tomatoes. So excuse me, lads, if I refrain from serving up my world-view on a silver platter for your pretentious digestion. Understand that it is not because I don't have one, its because I fear your arm will quickly cramp from hurling all those rotten tomatoes.\nBut we are still hungry here in Paris. All this talk of decayed vegetables and dead grandmothers is POINTLESS. I can hear my friend's stomach growling from across the room while he's writing his novel. So if you're willing to employ me, I swear that I work like an ox. I have the wax and rag, and will be glad to polish the soap-box for you any day of the week.