What It's All About

Continuing my long series of stories and essays that were formerly part of other works of mine that were unfinished, here is what used to be the first chapter of a book I was working on called "What It's All About". Hopefully you can see how this could easily be the intro to my new book.

What It's All About

This book is about words. Lots of them. There's no getting around it. There are quite simply a lot of words in a book. That is what separates a book from a pamphlet. Okay, a pamphlet usually has a coupon on the back to tell you how to join a fantastic mailing list for only five dollars a month, but you get the idea. Why did I write this book you ask? Well, if you looked closely at the title then you may have gathered that I am about to tell you what it's all about. Many people have made clever attempts at this over the years by telling you what they think it's all about or what it is or how to get there. But this book simply cuts to the chase by giving you the inside information that I have compiled over the years by simply observing people, writing what I see down, then losing the paper I wrote those things on, and hazily trying to remember them. By utilizing these techniques, you too can figure out what it's all about, but since you have already started to read this book, maybe you should just go ahead and finish it instead of trying to figure it all out for yourself. At least that's what I'd recommend.

In actual fact there really is no one unifying "it" that it's all about. For different people, and different animals it is about many different things. The popular theory is that it's all about happiness. This of course is a very vague theory and doesn't really mean much except to lump people into the same category as animals. Of course everyone wants to be happy but that's not what it's about. Here are a few examples to show you what I mean.

For a murderer to be happy he has to kill people. This makes him happy, well at least for a while until the whole "killing and wearing he skin of his victims as a mask" high has worn off. For an accountant to be happy, he simply has to finish out his horrible drudge of a day, type up a few more numbers and go home. Blockbuster Video advertises that if they have the movie that you want to rent on their shelves that you'll "go home happy". For a raccoon to be happy he's got to knock over your garbage can and start munching on a week old banana peel. You see how these things can't all work together at once? If the murderer kills the prospective video renter, then there would only be one person happy out of the two. If the accountant goes home from crunching numbers and finds his garbage can knocked over again that just might ruin the short amount of happiness he found in his five-minute drive home while blasting Kool and the Gang. Even people who revel in not being happy are, perversely enough, happy in not being happy. That's a pretty scary thought isn't it? It's almost as scary as the thought that Titanic 3 might be all checked out at Blockbuster Video.

- Author's note - The author has accounted for sequels and future humor long after the initial publication date with that last joke. hint - it was the one about Titanic.

If you haven't figured out exactly what it's all about yet, then keep reading, as the odds of more typed up words appearing on the lines after this one are incredibly good. But here it is, the defining statement of the opening monologue that you have no doubt been breathlessly waiting to read - what it's all about means many different things for many different people, so this book won't attempt to define one specific thing. Instead, the book will most likely be composed of many random thoughts and ideas, which in some bizarre fashion may account for what's all about at any given time. Did that make sense to you? It may not have. But, later you may find that it may in fact just be what it's all about.