The Final Countdown

Some jokes stick with you for a lifetime. Maybe they shouldn't, but they do.

This is especially true for one's first meta-joke or anti-joke. (I'll leave the classification to experts.)

For me, long before "How many surrealists does it take to change a lightulb?--let alone Interrupting Cow--there came a simple exchange I've never forgotten.

Guy One: How do you keep an [individual] in suspense?
Guy Two: I don't know. How?
Guy One: I'll tell you later.

Today I am Guy Two, the joke at least temporarily being on me. This writer in general and entry-level humorist in particular is kept in suspense until March 1, when my collection Notes of a Tourist on Planet Earth is released. There will be more waiting for reviews and sales figures, but all of that flows from publication.

And now I am down to "The Final Countdown." Yes, I went there, referencing the cheesetastic single by Swedish band Europe.

And what does an [individual] in suspense do?  Recent experience suggests the following:

1. Concentrate poorly.
2. Sleep poorly and/or with stress dreams.
3. Turn every conversation with others, or train of thought while alone, to the book.
4. Check social media obsessively to see if anyone has read, liked, or passed along a book-related update.
5. Search the Internet at least as obsessively for references to the book.
6. Repeat steps 1-5.

My dog is strangely unaffected by all of this.

I don't what's coming next, but I suspect the waiting is the hardest part. Tom Petty had this figured out a long time ago.

Three days until the publication of Notes of a Tourist on Planet Earth.