Justice due

OK. This is my second attempt to write my second blog entry. Damn power blinked off before I could save a half-written entry. I don't have it in me to try to recreate it.

I did get into a discussion with one of my best friends about blogs and my publishing of one. He brought up Chris (see previous entry), and I explained post No. 1. This friend, despite being under the influence of alcohol and extreme mental agony from a subject not to be discussed here, really made a point to me that I had been missing.

The topic was why I was doing a blog. I suggested that there was a potential desire to be published as a writer. He pointed out that blogs aren't really 'published' in the original sense of publishing. To be published, he said, someone has to read your work, decide they want to publish it and then go to the expense of publishing it. Blogs are people posting their own writings on the Internet. It's not the same, he said.

And while my inner journalist self could only look down, wondering how I had missed such an obvious perspective. Perhaps that was because of a minor rant I had once made in an essay on the review website Epinions.com. While it's primarily a review site, epinions at one time (I haven't been active in several years) would sometimes pose rhetorical questions for writers to try to answer with their own subject matter knowledge to try to help others sort it out. The topic was 'Would you be willing to pay for an online subscription to newspapers?' My essay went off on a tangent than directly answering the question. But it's a belief I've had for many years. The editorial process is an undervalued process that is increasingly becoming underused. It is directly related to the notion of publishing requiring someone willing to take a chance on an editor's work.


Back to the new subject of today's entry (the first was going to be more exploration of this whole blog experience, how it has worked to now, the process of self-editing, yadda yadda tomato):

Went to lunch with some friends today. They were working. I wasn't. Guess which one of us had a margarita for lunch. On the way back to drop them off, this Dodge 4x4 truck tries to cut us off as we approach a stop light, then swerves back into his lane and runs a red light just as it turns red. Across the intersection, he barely misses a car and swerves around another vehicle and then speeds to get past a semi-truck before two lanes merge. All three of us in the car exlaim out loud how close that guy was to causing an accident. I point out, in the line of traffic perpendicular to us, about 4 cars back is a cop. And there's a cop right there, I point out with my finger, and I bet he didn't see anything. Then, as the cop gets to the intersection, he abruptly turns and goes up the street out of sight with no lights or siren. We proceed on when the light turns green, wondering if he really was pursuing the truck or just trying to get somewhere else.

Just as we were about to give up on the idea, we see him as we crest a hill. The cop pulled over the truck and neither of them look too happy. I slow down and honk my horn three times. We all point at the guy and give the thumbs up. Justice due and justice served.