Let Them Eat Cake

I vaguely remember that while I was an intern at a newspaper in Northern California, as part of my duties I wrote a brief item, maybe three or four paragraphs, about a civic event involving some type of anniversary. One alluring feature of the event was to be some kind of gigantic birthday cake topped with the appropriate number of candles corresponding to the number of anniversary years. I wrote an appropriate item but my editor did not like my lead paragraph and punched it up by rewriting it in a completely different way than what I originally had written. She wrote something like: "What's a birthday without a cake?" I can't really say that her rewrite was not an improvement over the original and, anyway, interns are there to learn the ropes from the editor, not the other way around, so fine, the clipping is there in a box somewhere and I could probably find it if it were that important to recall to mind but it really is not that important now. At the time of my internship I only had maybe those ten or so clippings to show for job hunting and it would be sort of hard for me to argue that I actually wrote most of those articles if I were to be scrupulously conscientious on this point. But now, many years later, I have plenty of clippings to show that I actually can write, sort of, even if the newsprint is not glossy enough to impress some people who don't appreciate me and my unique characteristic style, whatever that means. Anyway, most of the time in newspaper writing all you do is just regurgitate whatever they say and tack on the appropriate attribution in almost every paragraph. No literary flourishes are necessary, not in these modern times. It might have taken me a few months to really get the hang of it, but now I am not half bad even if it is only me that says so myself. Often I see mistakes in other people's writings so this proves that I am comparable in quality even if the BLOCK is against me. If it were not for the BLOCK, I would be able to have a happy and productive life but unfortunately the BLOCK will never give me a break. They think they are building a temple but actually they forget that I myself am a temple. My body is the temple of the Holy Spirit as the Bible says. I am not just some dog that was wandering along the streets. I am a human being and thus I must insist that it is imperative to drive out all these male chauvinist pigs who are attempting to besmirch the sanctity of my pristinely briliant mind. The more you obsessively grind on and on, the less I care about your sick and twisted mind. Sorry but your Wizard of Oz act has got to STOP immediately!