I’ve been offered the opportunity to be paid to write a weekly column for an online magazine.  This is an offer that I take very gravely, though I haven’t even found out how much I’ll be paid if I cobble together an idea.  It’s an arbitrary number:  the reward is the byline, the principle of being a paid to do something I love that I’ve spent years passionately cultivating.

Within the scope of the magazine, there are a couple of ideas that have been floated for me to consider.  One idea in particular -a “local color” column where I follow interesting people, visit strange locales, and expose facets of our regional culture- seemed like such a fun assignment, and one that I could write to the caliber that I would hold myself, being paid and what-not.  Until I began to calculate the practicals…

My schedule is packed so tight on a daily basis that I barely have time enough to write in earnest as it is.  The only time I have that is near expendable is from work, and unless I was being compensated for that as well as the expenses of traveling, etc., I wouldn’t feel comfortable compromising the quality and frequency that such an idea deserves.  

Southern culture (from the angle from which I would approach it) would be strange, distinctive, and probably quite lurid.  If I had one or two more days a week, I would be able to go balls an’ all at such a project.  

Ideas (within the first day of consideration):  bootleggers, Chip Nelson, Roman Gabriel Todd, the ghetto stripclub, Kasey Koon (who is the drummer for a local band and a Satanist author/publisher), legit white supremacists, megachurch ministers…  All ideas I could murder if I fucking had the time.  

I need to come up with something doable while I’m stuck on Dildo Island (pristine and crude Gulf Shores, AL) and I feel the need to have an idea that sticks as well as that shit by the end of the week, at longest.  

Serious predicament shit.  Now back to boobs and cartoons.