As that I am not an agent, publisher, or marketing guru I appreciate any and all help in spreading the word about the book.  And, I could certainly use another positive review or two in order to convince skeptical readers (such as myself).

With your help, I couleu make it into the top ten of Amazon’s best sellers in the cylcing category (I am 58th as I write this).

For those of you who do not have a Kindle, don’t despair — can read the book on your smartphone (iPhone, Adroid, etc) or your computer or iPad or Ipod Touch or probably even your toilet seat.

Enjoy! And thanks!

© 2011 Damon Timm.

Music | In Search of #6 | Blog

British toilets, at least the consistent majority of those visited by me in the six or seven months of my residence there, are very peculiar. I would not suggest that American toilets are necessarily superior but I am puzzled as to how it is that such a small change in construction lends itself to a completely different toileting experience. A far less pleasant toileting experience, I may suggest, for those who prefer a dry bum at the end of a trip to the john.

In terms of engineering: the British toilet possess two distinct difference from its American counterpart: [1] a greater distance between the water and toilet seat; [2] significantly less water surface area. You can see this illustrated in a clever drawing below:

On a positive note, it would appear that a British toilet uses less water per flush; however, one’s feces reaches terminal velocity on the trip downward and, upon arriving at the small drinking-glass-size reservoir at the bottom, sends the majority of the toilet’s liquid content skyward, which quickly retraces the distance most recently traveled and arrives promptly at one’s bum with scattering force.

When I was a resident alien, in lieu of establishing a routine that permitted me to shower after each bowel movement, I asked how it was one avoided this exciting rush. The answer, given by many: lay toilet paper across surface of the water, thereby breaking the turd’s fall and reducing the splash effect.

And I did. And I didn’t question it.  And all was good, if not peculiar, until I returned stateside and forgot all about it.

My most recent trip across the pond reminded me that while we may speak the same language, our toilets do not. Of course: I am not the only individual who has experienced this “ass splash” — aside from the tens of millions of Brits who bear this cultural burden every day, a quick perusal of the internet unturns others with a similarly displeasing experience. From a more generic pondering to a comparison between british and german vessels, many greater men and women have attempted to tackle the beast that is the british bathroom.

All in all I have learned some important lessons, which form a syllogism (of sorts): [1] I don’t like water, urine, and feces splashed all over my bare ass; [2] British toilets are stupid; [3] but not as stupid as german toilets.

© 2008 Damon Timm.

Music | In Search of #6 | Blog

I’m reading this article in the New Yorker and it mentions this cellular phone that one can buy, unlocked (i.e., no twenty-three year contract), for $50. The author, Patricia Marx, describes this Motorola Motofone F3 as an antithesis to the iPhone — it doesn’t even have a color screen — and this intrigues me.

Suddenly I want one.

You see: my current cell phone is a hand-me-down (from my father) and functions as a replacement for my previous hand-me-down (from my co-worker) which, itself, was a replacement for my Palm Treo 700p which I sold on eBay. The original hand-me-down stopped charging and the one from my dear old dad has a tendency to shut itself off when it gets the slightest bit weary. I need a new phone but not a new contract.

I want the Motorola Motofone F3.

I want the phone with the white on black text sporting the sexy giant alarm-clock sized numerals that was designed for second and third world countries to be sold cheaply for the masses and includes voice prompts in different local language of the world.

Now it should be easy: the F3 is on sale at Amazon.com for $34.99 and I should buy the phone and be forever happy — but wait: I learn that the F3 is utilizing a GSM mobile phone network (as does, apparently, 82% of the phones in the world) but I have a contract with Verizon Wireless which, sadly, is one of the eight carriers in the United States that does not. They use CDMA. So the F3 won’t work on my contracted plan and I am reminded that I am not in the United Kingdom where people can switch phones as easily as they can unplug their SIM cards. Instead I’m in the United States, where I have to pay for text messages that I did not ask to receive and have no option to refuse.

But I am not dismayed yet. A CDMA version of the F3 appears to exist: the Motorolo Motofone F3c! Now this is the phone for me! That little added “c” makes all the difference to me! Quickly reviewing the specifics on Motorolo’s website I note:

The MOTOFONE F3c is expected to be available in Q4 of 2006. For more information regarding pricing and product availability in your region, please contact your local Motorola representative.

Now we are well into Q1 of 2008 so I search, and search, and search — employing all of my nefarious web grazing tactics — and find nothing.

Of course Verizon doesn’t offer it, but I don’t expect them to offer an affordable phone with no contract: that’s entirely out of character. The odd thing is that it’s not even available on eBay (where, the last time I checked, both my co-worker and my dad were for sale). The only references to the phone I can find are from sales reps in India and a Want It Now listing on eBay and, finally, a small note in the wikipedia entry for the device which states:

Although the F3c (CDMA) works on networks in the United States and Canada, Motorola specifically does not offer the phone in those two countries — it must be imported.

So thanks Motorola for making a neat phone and then not selling it to me; and thanks Verizon for choosing to back the CDMA network which gets poorer battery life and is incompatible with the rest of the world’s technology; and thanks to my family for being a part of the IN-Network in the first place; and thanks to my dad and co-worker for giving me their phones for free and then not backing them with any kind of warranty; and thanks to India for being so far away and writing in a funny language that I can’t understand; and thanks to whoever is in Aventura, FL that wants the same phone I do and thought to ask for it before I did; and thanks to my girlfriend who didn’t put a fresh container of rice milk in the fridge forcing me to have warm milk on my organic poser cheerios; and thanks to the internet for bringing me all this information that, in the end, brings me absolutely nothing at all.

© 2008 Damon Timm.

Music | In Search of #6 | Blog

I had attempted to make a few posts throughout the year: I began them earnestly and with much malice only to edit and revise what little I had written to the point of questioning the purpose of writing them at all. They didn’t come together in a the short essay-like fashion I prefer to present and I found myself questioning their greater purpose and effect only to finally slash them with my own red pen.

I had one post about an experience with my cable company that left me breathless and flat with exasperation. But as I outlined the five different phone calls and the nuances of each utterly incapable and entirely difficult customer support agent and the penultimate event during which my cable was cutoff — I lost interest. At the sixth page of dialogue reiterating the cyclical conversations exponentially escalating to my emotional breakdown and attempts at my own life — I stopped typing. I realized: everyone has nonsensical conversations with the cable company and the result is usually the same: we pay a lot of money for cable television and we watch it and sometimes it is shut off and that’s when we call them and they turn it on and we pay them more money. And that just isn’t funny and it also isn’t particularly mean-spirited — alas: boring.

Now this isn’t to say I haven’t been miserable at times. Far from it! In fact, I’ve even learned that my misery is entirely self-created. A podcast from National Public Radio about the difference between two types of people (“saticficers” and “optimizers”) explains it all in sordid detail (based on this study (PDF)). See: an “optimizer” is a person who searches out an array of options when approaching any task, while a “saticficer” is one who just sort of says: “oh look at this here — I’ll go with that, thank you.” I am an optimizer, obviously. The point of the report is that optimizers get cool stuff but are, in the end, miserable with it because they know that there is all this other stuff out there (having reviewed the options) and are afraid they may have missed something. Satisficers don’t know what they’re missing and are thus blissfully content in their ignorance. I was going to write about how this podcast had opened my eyes to my own condition and that I now determined the fate of my own happiness when I suddenly understood that being able to choose between misery and joy was, in fact, just another option I was presenting myself. And that I chose misery. Every time.

I have been taking out my frustrations at not having anything to complain about on the most unsuspecting and innocent of targets. Instead of writing my own ideas I have been trolling webpages a looking for excuses to start a war of words — tiny verbal battles with unsuspecting forum frequenters. I attack with the a cackling laugh from behind my little screen thinking how clever and witty and smart I am and how surely someone will find my post likewise genius and laugh and cackle along with me. But no one does. And even I don’t find them funny any more.

But now it’s the new year! Times are a changing! I’m posting a blog-item again and I’ve posted another song as well. I’ve dug deep into my happy life to find something to complain about and, with any luck, the well will not run dry any time soon. Perhaps I’ll even edit less and write more and, with any luck, churn out a whopping two or more posts for 2008.

© 2008 Damon Timm.

Music | In Search of #6 | Blog

“Could I please have: pancakes, a large order of hash browns, and a croissant with egg-product on it? And just egg-product: no cheese-product or meat-product. Thank you.”

The woman behind the counter pushed the corresponding buttons on the register and, dutifully, spoke my order aloud: “Pancakes, egg-on-croissant, large hash brown. $6.24 please.”

From my wallet, I removed and then handed to her: one fifty dollar bill and one quarter totaling $50.25 in American currency.

She handed me, in return, $4.01.

I considered her offering, for a moment, and then decided that $4.01 would buy me less pre-packaged airport-vegan fare (were I to discover any on my journey) than $44.01 would and, because of this, I reminded the kind woman, dutifully, that I had handed her a fifty dollar bill. Not a ten, despite their similarities.

She nodded, slightly embarrassed, removed the fifty dollar bill from the inner recesses of her bra and returned it to the register, which she promptly closed, locked, and then glared at suspiciously. The register said nothing in response though I imagine its retort would have been shocking.

One minute passed.

“Give me back the $4.01,” she said, “I have to do it all over again.”

I placed the $4.01 on the table while she swiped her ID card, rung up the pancakes, croissant, and large hash brown a second time and then tendered $50.00 received. The register displayed change owed to me as $43.76.

“Give me back a dollar,” she pointed to the $4.01 I had placed on the counter, “I’ll give you $0.76.”

I covered the money with my hand and leaned in close, lest my hubris were to embarrass her in front of the multitudes behind me:

“I gave you $50.25 — you owe me $44.01. We have $4.01 here, another $40.00 and we’ll be fine.”

“Oh,” she said. She stared at the two twenty dollar bills in her hand, then at the register display, then back at the two twenties, and then finally removed the quarter from the inner recesses of her bra and placed it in the register. I took the $4.01 off the counter and she handed me the remaining balance of our transaction.

“Thanks.”

Not three steps further and I was presented with a little man who took my receipt and read my order aloud:

“Egg-on-croissant, pancakes, and a medium hash brown — pancakes will be just a minute.”

He grabbed a medium hash brown container and began to fill it with deep-fried potato-product. I put my elbows on the counter, assumed a relaxed-but-in-control position, and said: “Sir, I ordered a large hash brown — not a medium.” I showed him my receipt, which said:

1 – LGE HASH BROWN, $1.49

He paused a moment to look at the receipt a second time, then returned to stuffing the container with greasy Idaho-loveliness, and said, over his shoulder: “It’s a medium. You paid for a medium. Large is actually King-Sized.”

I pointed to the breakfast menu above his head: “But it says large on the menu. There is no King-Sized. How could I have asked for a King Sized? I asked for a large, my receipt says large, the sign says large. How does medium play into any of this?”

He handed me a medium hash brown.

“You paid for medium. The cashier is new; when you said large, she should have known to select King-Size.”

“So,” I continued, undeterred, hash browns in hand, “the sign says: large; I ask for a: large; the cashier selects the button that says: large; the receipt prints: large; and you are telling me that this series of events results in me receiving a medium?”

“Here are your pancakes.”

As I sat down with my medium hash brown, egg-product on croissant, and silver dollar pancakes (which were as easy to cut as actual silver dollars), I read the following on the back of my Burger King bag:

SMELLS LIKE A WINNER: You always hear sports announcers talking about the “sweet smell of success.” But none of them ever really explains what that smells like. We’d like to propose it’s the scent wafting from this very bag. Of course, we could be wrong. But we don’t think so.

What I would like to propose is that maybe it’s the smell of absurdity. Maybe it’s the smell of abject uselessness and utter incompetence. Maybe it’s the smell of too much money being spent on clever advertising and not enough being spent on employees being trained in basic arithmetic and the creation of signage and policy that results in customers being served not only what they asked for, but also what is advertised in the menu, input by the cashier, and printed on the receipt. Maybe it’s the smell of foolishness.

Of course, I could be wrong. But I don’t think so.

Anyhow: the point is: a medium hash brown is more than enough. I didn’t finish it all anyway.

© 2006 Damon Timm.

Music | In Search of #6 | Blog

Or: so you thought.

I have recently discovered a new pastime even more fascinating than locating what I am looking for on the internet: finding what others are looking for. Now there has been some recent legal hubbub about search engines revealing user’s search results to the government or the highest bidder but this does not concern me in the least because I am not the government and I don’t have enough money to bid on these glorious findings. What I do have, however, is my own website and with this acquisition I found I am privy to a fascinating collection of data pertaining to the people who have arrived at my portal.

Specifically: what search string a particular user had entered in his search engine that brought him to this website.

Of course, the usual suspects abound: people searching for “Damon Timm” and “audiobook memoir podcast” find there way here (thankfully); but other, more unusual, searches seem to trigger a hit on this website — some of which are quite amusing. For example, every month a handful of people visit damonjustisntfunny.com in search of either “poontang” or “coitus” (arriving fairly disappointed, I would assume). There also seems to be an overwhelming desire to hear some kind of Christmas Waltz regardless of the time of year.

Below is a small collection of the particularly amusing search strings I have found over the past year that have made me laugh, cry, and sometimes scratch my left calf. If you happened upon this website through the use of one of these search phrases don’t be afraid or ashamed: I won’t tell anyone (unless they offer me a lot of money or claim to be a member of some government or another).

king damon · sissy sodomised · Blog about being funny on the radio · Website address misunderstood amusing · clown bad scary · omnificent · opus Issaquah · eustachian tube blower · -she -her he performed oral sex in my sleeping bag · profile of mildly dyslexic adult · your blogs are funny · asshole father · tarp tent fold · funny tea experiences · meaning of prostitis · definition post prandial · does johnny damon have a myspace · homemade euphoria

If anyone has any idea how a search for “eustachian tube blower” returns this website I would love to hear it — I have no recollection of mentioning a eustachian anything ever under any circumstance for any reason ever.

But of course: arriving here after a search for monificent is terrifyingly self-evident.

© 2006 Damon Timm.

Music | In Search of #6 | Blog

In the first grade one of my best schoolboy friends was a Damon. I was not, however, threatened by his imposition on my namesake for he was skinny, and small, and had blonde hair, and always wore a St. Louis Cardinals hat (even when he was sleeping). And although he was the only one in class with the complete and working set of Thundercats action figures, everyone called him Damon J.

I was just Damon.

And at home I was King Damon. And I as grew older, and became more interested in exploiting those smaller than me, I began collecting money for the Damon Fund. Despite my penchant for the grandiose, I have begun to accept being called David or Damien mistakenly (or intentionally) and rarely correct people when my name is misunderstood for, really, I would just rather they not know who I was.

I am Damon.

While Damon Wayans has attempted to bring “Damon” back to the forefront of first names (a tradition that began in the 4th Century BC, with Damon and Pythias), the likes of Matt Damon and Johnny Damon have set all of us back into the Dark Ages of Damon. It is worse still, of course, to posses a last name for a first name and a first for a last — a fate I do not shy from — but that is hardly Damon’s fault. Damon Timm, I thought, was fairly unique.

Of course, it is natural to be interested in those people that share your name; more curious still are those of us not named John or Matt — those of us who only run into our name-twins only on rare occasions. Having recently been noticed on this website by Damon (who claims to be funny and does not appreciate my assertation that Damon, universally, is not) and then, not ten days later, by Damon Timm, I was prompted to ponder the persistent questions of what it means to be Damon and, even more specifically, Damon Timm.

A Google Search for “Damon Timm”, unfortunately, reveals mostly results pertaining to myself (tedious), a Damon Timm who won the 2005 Rodel Teacher Award, and a link to a myspace profile that anonymously refers to a Damon Timm as a favorite musicians (I am quite certain this does not refer to me). Searching Google for “Damon”, of course, returns more results than I wish to aggregate at this juncture in my life.

Turning to the world of blogs, a quick search on Technorati again reveals very little of interest above and beyond what Google was able to provide. There are a few posts referring to my search for kisses and the Rodel Winner; when I looked for blog authors purporting to host the moniker Damon, I wasn’t able to find much of interest either except: a Damon who lives in Alaska (which is Damon-worthy) and a Damon who went on a roadtrip.

The two Technorati bloggers and the Teacher of the Year, coupled with the talented musician currently residing in Mexico and my not-so-funny blogging quasi-doppelganger, combine to produce an overwhelming whiff of stale air on the internet regarding my namesake. More needs to be done.

Perhaps if I were to look harder or hire a private investigator I could discover more leads but I have enjoyed, these past few weeks, having us Damons and Damon Timms come together organically on this website (where I don’t have to do anything except check my email) and would like to encourage more of this sort of communique.

So: let us begin the Congress of Damon. To all you other Damons and Damon Timms out there, please make yourself known but, of course:please remember:

I am still King Damon.

© 2006 Damon Timm.

Music | In Search of #6 | Blog

Listen to MP3/iTunes Stream | Listen with Windows Media Player

You can also read the show notes from NHPR.org.

One amusing anecdote regarding my interview on NHPR: a friend of mine from college (fellow New Hampshire-ite and bike tourer) was in a bar in Berlin (NH) and during the course of a conversation with a stranger came to discussing his bicycle trip across the country. The man said, “Did you hear that crazy guy on the radio who had only kissed like five girls and went on a bike trip out west?” My friend said: “Why yes, I have, he is a friend of mine.” And, of course, the man’s inner prejudice was reinforced, specifically: that all bike riders are whackos and that we all know each other.

Which is only partly true.

original post: june 14th

Exciting news!

On Wednesday, June 14th, at 6:30pm EST, I, Damon Timm, will be on New Hampshire Public Radio’s The Front Porch, shamelessly promoting the audiobook In Search of #6 and re-visiting all the sordid history behind, below, and above the making of this travelogue and memoir.

If you want to be the very first to hear it, you can tune in at 6:30p EST on Wednesday. You can listen on the radio if you live in New Hampshire (nhpr.org has station listings) or via a live audio stream from you computer anywhere in the world.

Listen to MP3/iTunes Stream | Listen to Windows Media Player Stream.

If you are not available at that day and time fret not! I will be sure to post the link to the audio from NHPR as soon as it is made available. I will also try and get an audio transcript from the show (it will be a thirty minute interview and I cannot type it out myself).

Of course I will be foolishly nervous on air and bound to say ridiculous things about myself, Ben, the trip, my life, #6, eggs, and post-prandial naps — needless to say: it will be worth listening to and I look forward to hearing your commentary on my interview performance. You can post said comments below.

Enjoy.

© 2006 Damon Timm.

Music | In Search of #6 | Blog

One begins thinking about what one could say that might be funny, and how one could phrase certain delicate matters and, after the taping has occurred, one further thinks about what one could have said better and how one had let down everyone who was rooting for one’s cause. Furthermore, the pre-recorded nature of a taped show allows for the show’s producers, in their wisdom, to move the show from day to day and one may seem to not possess the slightest clue as to the actual date and time the show will be aired (which is, in fact, the truth).

Inside the NHPR building, however, I found that my nervousness melted away and I became overly-relaxed. I think it came from watching the woman who was doing the intros and outros and station notification for New Hampshire Public Radio in her little glass box. I could not hear her, from the studio I was in, but I tried to read her lips through an enormous window. She sat, back straight, eyes focused, with hands that flittered and flipped across papers and levers and buttons, and that wrung themselves silly whenever her lips began moving. She looked at me, once, and I winked at her and then she started to smile and laugh and then, I think, she forgot that there were some other buttons she had meant to push and a horrified look shot over her face and she began striking at the flashing lights and cursing me under her breath.

After meeting Shay Zellar (the radio star) and Andrew (the producer) we futzed around a bit finding appropriately humiliating audio clips to use during the interview. Specifically, those that described Ben and my Heterosexual Life Partnership, my pathetic moaning over climbing long hills, and my lamentation over trying to find a kiss on a bike trip.

And then: the interview began so very quickly I had hardly a moment to think about it before I was being welcomed to The Front Porch and replying, foolishly: “It’s a pleasure to be here; thank you for having me.”

What I had meant to say, of course, was: “Well it is about time someone recognized the genius of my work — you are only the best of the worst, I must say, for having taken this long. You ought to be ashamed!”

Then there were a number of questions about how the idea for the story came about, what exactly happened on the trip, how #6 and Ben felt about being verbally trampled upon and thrown into the cult-limelight of podcasting, and whether or not they would ever speak to me again after the interview. I stuttered, through most of it, failing to string together any meaningful or amusing thoughts and, instead, made inappropriate commentary about how I really wished I had found #6 in San Francisco (to make the story arc flow better), how Ben refuses to listen to the audiobook for fear of what I might say (rightly so), and how fortunate many of my friends are to not be able to hear my interview. I later regretted saying many of these things and would like to apologize in advance for your disapproval: it was the nerves.

Needless to say: it went very well.

And then it was over and I was whisked out the door shaking hands and patting backs and Donald Hall, that Poet Laureate of ill-repute, was most likely ushered in and they forgot all about me and I was left to go back to my car and to begin reviewing how I could have said everything so much better if I had only had a second chance.

What was very pleasant about this whole experience, however, was the excitement and support everyone has shown over the entire radio interview and the feeling that, even for a moment, I had done something that someone else appreciated and enjoyed. Despite having never heard the interview, and not even being sure when it will be aired, numerous people have placed a sense of great accomplishment on this feat, and it makes me feel very special.

Now before I get teary-eyed, start sending out Hallmark cards, and whip up some blueberry muffins for the girl scout bake sale, I would like to close this gush-fest by relaying one of the nicest comments that came from a person who actually had to listen to the entire podcast: Shay Zellar (the radio star). She told me that she laughed aloud while listening to the memoir and was looking forward to hearing the end. This, of course, came as a surprise to me because, secretly, I believe that In Search of #6 will only appeal to myself and Ben. However, she seemed to like it quite a lot and laughed (in the reserved way that NPR hosts are allowed to laugh) when I spoke of amusing anecdotes or we listened to the audio clips together. And when I was leaving, the last things she said to me, was:

“You write like a less-dysfunctional, or maybe: more-functional, heterosexual David Sedaris.”

Which I believe to be a compliment.

© 2006 Damon Timm.

Music | In Search of #6 | Blog

If I were to create the definitive criteria for judging the cities I have graced, however, neither of these measures would serve to address that which I feel is important. Instead, I would demand that a city be judged not by its inhabits, its poverty rate, its crime, its abject visual horror, or its job availability — a city, as far as my eye can see, should be judged solely on its proximity to snowcapped mountains.

Anchorage, Alaska, makes the list.

Some cities have no mountains, snowcapped or otherwise, and, therefore, should never even submit their names for consideration. New York City, Boston, Washington, DC, Chicago — these are all immediately disqualified and I will never visit them even if they ask me. Las Vegas and Los Angeles deserve a fair mention for having put forth the effort to supply viewable peaks, however, their general lack of snow does little to attract me to even their airports for a flight change. Denver, I have heard, is simply foolish and I am afraid to go there for fear of never returning.

Anchorage, however, will forever welcome me and I will welcome it. But only as a place to arrive and depart from; it is the gateway to Alaska and, desiring to come to Alaska, this is where one must go. If it were not for these mountains, Anchorage would be a terrible and awful place. It is ugly, dirty, depressing, and soul starving.

Alaska offers a decidedly wonderful lack of people, which further stimulates my love gland and pumps up the deflated Anchorage to a more worthy status. Driving between Anchorage and Seward, the radio in the rental car could only find a station once every fifteen minutes; normally, it simply sped through the numbers, cyclically reinforcing the vast emptiness of Alaska. In Talkeetna, when I became lost, I simply stood atop my car and viewed the ends of all four roads that made up the single city block that was their city.

The people of Alaska frighten me and as well they should: they are in Alaska because they cannot survive anywhere else or, because quite plainly, they are not wanted anywhere else. Yet they are a sweet and loving people, and more polite than I have seen in some time, and I found myself drawn to them and their obvious chemical imbalance.

I will return. Alaska’s mountains call to me and Ben and I have already found a highway that must be tamed. It is called the Dalton Highway (or Haul Road) and runs from Fairbanks to the Artic Ocean — over four hundred miles of absolutely no one and nothing, except the oil pipeline, big rig trucks, and bears and moose and yeti.

I would recommend you go as well — the glaciers are soon to melt and the climate is soon to change and, before either of these events occur, Anchorage, and vast parts of Alaska, is soon to disappear in an earthquake or in a vote by the Senate and House. Go to Anchorage, of course, but only stay as long as it takes you to point yourself in the direction of one of the many snowcapped mountains and be on your way.

© 2006 Damon Timm.

Music | In Search of #6 | Blog

http://www.damonjustisntfunny.com/category/in-search-of-6/

It begins with the Prologue, logically, and will end some twelve chapters later through near-weekly syndication. You can read more about the memoir and the journey here:

http://www.damonjustisntfunny.com/in-search-of-6/about-in-search-of-6/

Most everything you need to know in order to get the audiobook and subscribe to the chapters is available at damonjustisntfunny.com, however, I have included some instructions below and have a very large favor to ask of you.

The favor:

Please, share this with everyone you can.

This is a very big and exciting project for me (nine months thus far and counting), and I would love the chance for as many people to share in it as possible. And that is only possible if it is passed along through every means available to you and yours. So: send an email, forward the link, blog it, link it, tell people, contact major publishing outlets, find me an agent, broadcast it on local radio stations: whatever you can do would mean a tremendous amount to me.

It’s a new approach to publishing; a grassroots effort; I need your help.

Please help me spread the word and make post-prandial napping a national pastime (more so than it already is).

Thanks!

To read In Search of #6:

Reading the chapters is easy: simply peruse damonjustisntfunny. In the spirit of blogging and the information age, however, I would recommend you subscribe to the content via email (very simple) or with your feedreader (not quite so simple). This way, each chapter is delivered the moment I release it and you can feel as if you are on the cutting edge of technology.

Read more about how to do this at: http://www.damonjustisntfunny.com/subscribe/

To hear In Search of #6:

This book was written to be heard and, if you can, I encourage you to listen to it as an audiobook. You will have the pleasure, of course, of listening to me read aloud but, also, you will hear live audio recorded on the journey (which is often funny) and quaint guitar interludes and my attempt at imitating various voices. It is quite a treat.

Again, the easiest way to do this is to subscribe to the podcast with iTunes or another podcatching or feedreading program. To get it in iTunes, just click on the iTunes logo (“Subscribe in iTunes”) on the In Search of #6 page and you will be taken to the Music Store; there you can subscribe and each time a new chapter is released, it will automatically be downloaded to your computer.

More information available at: http://www.damonjustisntfunny.com/subscribe/

If you think subscribing is a hassle (and it only appears to be a hassle on the outset for, after it is setup and you have iTunes installed, it is a breeze) you can simply click on the links to the MP3 audio files at the beginning of each chapter and listen at your computer or right-click and download to your hard drive and do with them as you wish.

If you have trouble with any of this, please just email me and I would be happy to help you through it.

An apology:

Sorry I had to send such a broad all encompassing email and I apologize if you received this from me more than once (I wasn’t sure which email was valid so I used them all).

Thanks so much for your time; I hope you enjoy it; send me an email or, better yet, post a comment on the website if you are so inclined.

Love to hear from you.

Be well.

Damon Timm

Link to this entire email (for forwarding purposes): http://www.damonjustisntfunny.com/blog/to-my-friends/

About the website damonjustisntfunny.com: http://www.damonjustisntfunny.com/about/

© 2006 Damon Timm.

Music | In Search of #6 | Blog

If you believe I will be more motivated to write prose and create more guitar riffs because I can post my work for the demanding eyes of the public, you are misguided.

If you think, however, that all of this is some terrific front and that, in fact, of all the time I spend on this website one percent of it is actually devoted to creative endeavors, you would winning the tea kettle, bronze tongs, and garlic press.

I possess thirty minutes of patience for writing stories and playing music and then I must move on to something more exciting (such as flossing or seeping the floor). What I am finding I do have patience for, however, is coding. Programming. 0s and 1s. Glorious strings of meaningless symbols and numbers.

Shouldn’t I be putting the finishing touches on In Search of #6? Shouldn’t I be adding better background vocals to Rosa’s Song? Of course. But what I am doing, instead, is spending hours upon hours trying to figure out how to take this code:


if ( in_category(1) ) {
include ( TEMPLATEPATH . '/category-1.php');
elseif ( in_category(2) ) {
include ( TEMPLATEPATH . '/category-2.php');
else {
include ( TEMPLATEPATH . '/category-3.php');


And turn it into this:

$cat = get_the_category();
$cat = $cat[0];
include ( TEMPLATEPATH . '/category-' . $cat->cat_ID . '.php');


I don’t know how to even begin to explain why this enthralls me so and, if you cannot appreciate the difference between the two examples, I don’t believe I should try.

Let it be left at, only, that I have a problem and it isn’t writer’s block or musician’s cramp. It is the fact that I am designing the template for this website and while I know I should be worrying about G-Sharps and how to spell pusillanimous and whether or not In Search of #6 is even funny, what I care most for is CSS, XHMTL, PHP, and valid coding standards.

And if you are still waiting to hear more music or audiobook, you can be sure I am doing nothing to aide your cause and, instead, I am trying to figure out why my div tags won’t float correctly and why when I call the is_single() function it doesn’t seem to work outside of The WordPress Loop.

Don’t try to understand. Just try to have patience.

I am a writer, honest — I just write code, that’s all.

© 2006 Damon Timm.

Music | In Search of #6 | Blog

When the network’s resources are again capable, I expect my deluge to overwhelm me. A typical missive, I imagine, will read as follows:

Dear Damon,

I am so confused! Why is your website address damonjustisntfunny.com when everyone knows you are so very funny all the time and if there was any one who just wasn’t funny, it wouldn’t be you? I suspect that maybe this is one of your ultra-funny jokes that, perhaps, I just can’t wrap my lesser mind around but I am hoping that you — omnificent one — can guide me in this time of darkness.

With all my love and money,
Your reader.

Well, let me take a moment out of my ultra-funny schedule to guide you:

The idea stemmed as I wrote a syndicated email column from Leeds, UK, which commented on my experiences living in England. (By syndicated email column I mean: I sent an email or two to everyone in my address book unsolicited — otherwise known as spamming — and prayed I wouldn’t encounter any complaints.) As I wrote about the absolute absurdity of the English and their general downfall since our liberation, I began to feel bad for the majority of my recipients because they were unable to opt out from their mandatory epistolary communiqué (much as the early settlers were unable to opt out of the tea tax). A few names came to mind immediately: those people who had hung up on me and returned my letters unopened most recently in the past.

During the composition of my second essay, on the futility of love in a post-modern era, I hatched a brilliant plan. I included the following at the bottom of my email:

If you would rather not receive emails like this in the future (which are ultimately just an attempt to illicit some response from my adored friends), please send an email to: damonjustisntfunny@yahoo.com. It is monitored by a third-party, so no feelings will be hurt. Honest.

Sadly, no one emailed me at my regular address or the damonjustisntfunny address, which I did create and monitor carefully, despite my claims of non-partisanship. The only use I got out of the false moniker was as a clever guise to buy illicit software before absconding back to the United States. What surprised me further was that no one phoned to mention that, in a dyslexic and Guinness-induced haze, I spelled “elicit” incorrectly or used “adored” when “adoring” probably would have made more sense.

While it may seem unlikely and a tad outrageous even, I must again blame “the network” — that fowl fiend and fickle foe of mine! — because, obviously, no one I know would have passed up an opportunity to criticize my grammatical and lexical choices.

Anyway: I had other ultra-clever ideas knocking around about what to name the web address for this site (such as: www.damontimm.com or www.postprandialnapper.com) but I went with this one instead.

© 2006 Damon Timm.

Music | In Search of #6 | Blog

I never do. I have only ever finished writing in a journal once, and I believe that to have been an accident. I am not good at keeping journals. I am good at scribbling things down on a piece of paper and then losing it shortly thereafter. That is all.

Since I haven’t figured out a way to skip the first two entries in this blog, I have forced myself to write something against my better judgment; however, I do find some solace in the fact that this entry (even though it is the first and deemed to be most important) will slowly be pushed farther and farther down the page until it is a mere link in an archive. In fact, this very notion encourages me to write another entry immediately after this one and then another and another. Perhaps this is why there is so much nonsense posted on blogs across the internet: everyone is trying to hide the embarrassing prose they have conjured most recently by vomiting new ideas — that are likewise uninteresting — to push down the lesser ones. I am sure to fall into that category soon.

I am calmed by the editing capabilities inherent in electronic modes of communication. In a year, or two, I might quietly slip back here and change everything and no one would be the wiser. Or maybe later tonight. Or in an hour. Or maybe I’m editing it right now; considering hitting refresh: things might be dynamically altering under your mouse.

So, in short: forgive me, but this is my first post.

What else can I say?

© 2005 Damon Timm.

Music | In Search of #6 | Blog