Who among you would purchase a compilation book of the posts from a favorite blog?

I’m one of many who thinks LawDog should put all his stuff in a book. I for one would buy it, even though I’ve read it all before. The same goes for Crystal. Rocky Mountain Medic has some good stories. All of them have plenty of material that would translate well in book form.

I came to this blogging thing from the opposite direction, I suppose. My book came first, and the blog afterwards. I’ve repeated a few stories from The Book here and there, interspersed with my random musings and new stories. I try to avoid doing it too much, partly because it feels somewhat redundant to me, and partly because of the biggest reservation of my publisher and friends who have read the book, specifically:

“Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”

I write my blog as a source of inspiration and as a stress outlet. Some of the stories here have already appeared in one book, others are trial runs that will appear in a future book (albeit longer and more fleshed out), and still others will not make the cut at all.

I’d like to know what you guys think. I’m closing in on 20k hits in the short life of this blog, and should hit it within the week. That just astounds me, and quite frankly, humbles me. Roughly 350 of you visit daily, and my question to you is this:

Would you buy a book comprised of stories you’ve already read in the blog? Would you read the blog if you already had the book?

So please, give me your thoughts. My publisher has reservations about my blog here, but my sense of it is that he understands the denizens of the blogosphere even less than I do. I’d like to show him 500 comments consisting of “Hey, I can’t get enough of AD on-line, in print or in person. Keep it coming and we’ll buy it!”…

…but I know that isn’t realistic. But I would dearly like to know what YOU think. You’re my readers. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be writing.

So please leave a comment. Gimme some feedback. As an additional carrot, I promise to post The Retaliation in the next couple of days…

“He’s such a narcissist that he wears ribbed condoms…inside out.”

Chuckle…

I’m a little afraid to answer. So I just fix my Patently Insincere Smile on my face and say something noncommittal.

“Why don’t you tell me what you think it is.”

He’s thin and dirty, with that peculiar musty yet acrid odor of a crack user. He has burn marks on his fingers and the web of his thumb. A Caterpillar ball cap is perched on top of a ridiculously large Afro. He’s holding up a flannel shirt, showing me what appears to be an old puncture wound on his left side. One of many such scars.

His pupils are dilated, almost looking like black holes in his muddy brown schlera. He leans in and leers at me and winks.

“Guess.”

Okay. Your dad picked up that scar in Nam, and you inherited it from him.

No, wait. Scratch that. You had your breast implants removed.

Actually, looks like you had a chest tube at one time, probably to go with that bullet scar you have in the front of your chest.

Naaaahhh, that’s too easy.

Wait, I’ve got it! Mary Ellen Moffitt. She broke your heart.

Eventually I just give up and throw out an obvious one. “Uh, a knife wound?”

He shakes his head and gives me a bleary, drug-fogged grin. Beckons me closer. Leans over and whispers in my ear…

“Stigmata.”

I look at him appraisingly and he nods seriously in confirmation.

“Yep, stigmata.” He whispers the word almost reverently, and then asks significantly, “You know what that means, don’t you?

“Yes sir,” I sigh in resignation. “Haldol and lots of paperwork.”

God I love this job…

Surfing a few blogs today, and I found this one. She’s acerbic, a little profane and funnier than a bottle of nitrous oxide.

Not that she needs the link, but I’m adding Boobs, Injuries and Dr. Pepper to the blogroll. Maybe if I throw in enough shameless flattery, she’ll make it reciprocal.

Go by and give her a read, and tell her I sent ya. You’ll be glad you did.

I’ve been thinking about going down and having my colon cleansed thoroughly.

Lest you guys think I only dish it out when it comes to horseplay, I’ll tell you of the time I unwillingly had my colon cleansed…thoroughly.

When I was growing up in north Louisiana, I had a good friend named Paul. Every day after school, we’d fill our pockets with ammo, grab our shotguns or .22′s and set out walking. We hunted together, terrorized our teachers, and chased girls. We did amateur gunsmithing for our football coaches and phys ed teachers, and we took first place at the regional social studies fair for our project comparing the effects of the handgun laws of Morton Grove, IL and Kennesaw, GA. We were the Official Gun Nut Twins of Podunk Parish High School.

We were tight.

In our teen years, Paul and I fell under the evil influence of a master gunsmith in our hometown. He was an irascible, foul-mouthed, opinionated old coot who could out-shoot all comers…with one arm tied behind his back.

Actually, the arm wasn’t tied behind his back. It had been lopped off several inches below the shoulder in a railroad accident that had happened in his twenties. Back then, his contemporaries thought that would end his competitive skeet shooting career, and it did.

For about two years.

Then he proceeded to win another armful of national titles with just one arm. I swear, the man was a wizard with projectile weapons. It didn’t matter what he used – rifle, shotgun, pistol, longbow or pool cue – he was just by-God better than 99.9% of the human population with whatever weapon you cared to choose.

And during our daily worship at his shop, we learned a fair amount of gunsmithing and no small amount of shooting skills that still serve us today – me as a recreational shooter and Paul as a deputy sheriff and sniper for his department’s SWAT team.

Aside from the life skills and marksmanship, Old Coot also taught us the value of a good prank. The man was E-V-I-L. What little I know about dastardly pranks, I learned at the feet of The Master.

Fast forward to March of 1991. We’re all gathered at Paul’s house to watch the Mike Tyson-Razor Ruddick fight on pay-per-view. Old Coot was there expounding on religion, sports, politics and the overall superiority of Remington firearms. The beer was cold, the red beans and rice were spicy, and the conversation was not fit for delicate ears. The testosterone was almost as abundant as the methane.

About halfway through the undercard, I let a gentle one slip out. It was a purely self defense fart, my first of the evening. Nothing special, just a little frog chirp of flatulence easily lost in the thunderclaps of noxious emissions from everyone else in the room. My benign little poot should have been like a whiff of spring rain after finally finding the upwind side of the paper mill. Everyone who knows me will attest that my personal feces are not odorific. My contribution should have been welcomed.

But it wasn’t. Immediately, everyone sobered, focused a little too intently on everything but me, and tried to create a little distance between me and themselves.

*Sigh.* I should have known then that Something Was Up, but I was a little slow catching on. A few minutes later, I let another one that felt a little…moist.

Folks, do have any idea what an entire box of Ex Lax can do to a human body? They say that the human body is 70% water. For me at that time, that equaled about 160 pounds of water weight and I’m here to tell you I flushed about 150 pounds of that into the local sewer system.

The other 10 pounds of fluid probably eventually made it to the water table, having absorbed into the ground wherever it was expelled. For three days I had the nightmare that a loved one would find my dessicated corpse on the toilet, perched above a bowl of perfectly clear water and bean husks.

Every trip to the toilet was an exercise in incredulity. I’d get up from the toilet and look down, fully expecting to see organs floating in there, but…nope. Nothing but clear water and bean husks. After three days of my anus impersonating a pulsating shower head, I also became a very big fan of quilted, aloe-impregnated toilet tissue. Let’s just say comfort was at a premium.

My only consolation from the entire affair was that I managed to keep my innards under control until I got home. Another buddy was not so lucky. Apparently, his metabolism was a bit slower than mine, and the effects of his personal box of Ex Lax did not kick in until he was halfway to a local honky tonk with his date for the evening. There are few things more effective at putting a damper on romance than sluicing your partially digested red beans and rice down the right leg of your Banana Republic shorts…all over the Sweet Young Thang at your side.

Former Buddy still hates Paul, and by extension the entire Podunk Parish Sheriff’s Department, to this day.

I, however, am a more forgiving type, plus I can appreciate a good prank even when I’m the victim.

Especially since forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting. Coming soon, The Retaliation…

I apologize for the weather. But fear not, now that Mother Nature has figured out I’m not coming, she’ll lighten up on you soon. Expect balmy temperatures and blue skies within the week.

I swear, every time I’m scheduled to speak at an EMS conference, bad weather follows me like the plague. Last October, I stayed just ahead of torrential downpours all the way from Houston to northern New Hampshire, even though it took me three missed flights, an alternate airport, a three hour car drive and an oxcart ride to the top of a mountain to make it to my destination.

Before that, it was torrential rains in Atlanta that threatened to keep me from getting to Myrtle Beach.

And before that, it was 103 degree temperatures for 3 days straight in Midlothian, Texas at EMStock. Those folks still haven’t recovered.

But this time takes the cake. Mother Nature shuts down most of the Midwest in a blizzard and forces the nice folks in Sioux City to cancel their EMS conference for the first time in 20+ years, for the very first time they booked me to speak.

A coincidence? I think not. The bitch still hasn’t forgiven me for that Chiffon margarine thing from years ago, and now she’s just being vindictive.

But fear not, folks…next time I’m invited to the Midwest, I’ll try to take the circuitous route and throw her off.