Professor Radington

This is one of my favorite columns that I wrote for the Advance-Titan, the college newspaper at UW-Oshkosh. It was originally published in September of 2006.

Reader, do you know what I really look forward to in life? It’s not the fickle stuff like the free weekends of Cinemax or the popular return of the mustache (Bold prediction: the ‘stache makes a comeback in 2011, along with Zubaz pants.). I’m really looking forward to that moment when I cradle my first infant child and she wraps her TINY hand around my finger and squeezes with the rare strength of an unblemished heart. Do you need to hug the person next to you after reading that? Yeah, I’d like to do the same, but I’m currently seated beside an editor that smells like microwaved Preparation-H.

Kids grow up, of course, and someday they might be squeezing your throat instead of your finger. Once kids start tossing firecrackers at the elderly and blowing all their allowance money on Vaseline, I have no clue how to deal with them. But the squeezing-finger thing seems pretty appealing, so with absolutely no further thought on the matter, I want to be a daddy.

Before I father an actual human baby, I’d like to prove my care-taking skills on a more manageable level. When you play a video game with a difficulty setting, you don’t start out at the “expert level,” do you? Hell no. So prior to fathering a baby, I figured I’d take care of a dog. BIG MISTAKE. Unlike babies, I’ve never seen a dog wearing a diaper, and so I logically assumed they are born with an innate sense of knowing where to go number 2. Not wearing diapers is an act of deceit on the part of the dog population. After gorging the platter of Thai food I generously provided, my adopted dog Maddux couldn’t wait a measly SIXTEEN HOURS to do his business outdoors. When I returned home from my road trip to an abandoned Fanny-Pack factory in northeast Iowa, the mess I discovered prompted me to return Maddux to the Humane Society.

He didn’t even use the chopsticks, the slob.

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This is but a snippet of "Professor Radington." You can read the rest by ordering a copy of my book, titled "There Will be Blog."

www.xlibris.com/NickOlig.html

The Boner Way Out

“It's the terror of knowing what this world is about/ Watching some good friend scream, 'Let me out!'”

--Queen & David Bowie, “Under Pressure”

It's no wonder I'm depressed. Writing is my favorite activity, and when I think about the reasons why I do it, what I find is not so encouraging.

For me, writing is a lot like passing a series of kidney stones. This column deals in part with ailments, you should be warned, and kidney stones are an ailment I've so far been able to dodge. I don't think too much hyperbole is required to contend that aspiring to write professionally is about as hurtful as passing kidney stones habitually, and even though I suspect I'm being melodramatic on the matter, the metaphor still applies. Kidney stones are shards of crystallized minerals that cause considerable pain and discomfort as they tear through your urinary tract. The torment they reap is alleviated after the stone shreds through your urethra and the tip of your penis in a torrent of liquid relief. Similarly, ideas of mine materialize for mysterious reasons and provoke a sort of pain that isn't reduced until the thing is transferred from inside of me to the outside world. From this admission you can gather that, for me, the most gratifying part of writing is when I finally complete the piece I've been working on, and also that all preceding parts of the process are, at best, arduous.

Put another way, writing is the manifestation of obsessive-compulsive disorder in a very basic form. For mysterious reasons, I become transfixed with an idea—such as relating sadomasochism to playing the video game “Mariokart: 64,” or finding correlations between listening to an oldies radio station and living with my parents at age 27—and I feel strongly compelled to see the idea actualized, made into something tangible and complete, for the benefit of fewer people than I care to admit.

When I write, I'm mostly trying to rid my system of nuisances.

And so it seems the paramount reasons I choose to write are pain and neurosis. Third on the list of writing motives is vanity. Speaking as someone who is largely unblessed by aptitudes and talents, it is immensely satisfying to feel secure in the knowledge that few people can match or exceed my ability in one specific area...and I mention that for what it's worth (not a whole lot of money or women hitherto)...but more importantly, I mention that for what it's worth TO ME (a damn good reason to live).

The synthesis of pain and neurosis is depression. Josh Andrew Koenig, who played the part of the dimwitted yet affable neighbor Richard “Boner” Stabone on the 80s sitcom “Growing Pains,” suffered from depression. I use that verb, SUFFER, in the past tense because Boner died by his own hand in February of 2010. It would be pleasant to use SUFFER in the past tense because Boner lived to conquer his battle with depression and is now leading an inspired and courageous life.

No such luck!

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To find out exactly where all this is headed for, order a copy of "There Will be Blog."
www.xlibris.com/NickOlig.html