Today is the day to remember to smile, baby!

4

Now George had a lot of unhealthy rage, a broken window, and likely a broken phone, to boot. A psychiatrist would have suggested that he concentrate on why the creativity of those close (or close-ish) to him infuriated him so much, but George would have undoubtedly derided the idea of seeing a psychiatrist, noting that he was most likely more intelligent than any head-shrinker he could afford (which was, of course, the best.)

Besides, it was obvious that he was displacing anger at having writer's block himself. If he couldn't write, then why should some idiotic shlemiels be able to do so?

George sat down to check his email. He publicly decried the Internet and email, saying that it was for the hoi polloi, but he was no idiot. He knew that he couldn't readily communicate with the world without it, and he actually preferred its impersonality versus the telephone or an actual letter.

Usually his inbox was stuffed with pleas from journals for him to submit, flagrant briberies from publishing houses begging him to switch publishing houses, notes of adulation from fans and the like.

This time he got two emails, one from a Marketing Firm telling him that he had been approved for something for which he did not apply, and a short missive from his father, saying that he knew it was no big deal, but he had a letter published in the sports section of his local paper, and that was kind of neat, right?

George logged off and remained calm. He couldn't get angry at his poor, high-school-educated father for being happy for some menial achievement. He couldn't blame the world for his sudden, and so far brief lack of output. He was convinced that it was just a minor hiccup in his creative process. George convinced himself not to worry about it for the rest of the day.

George flopped on his Sharper Image massaging armchair and spent the day flipping through his thousands of channels on his deluxe cable package, snacking on various products including cheez flavor, peanut butter, chocolate, salt, and animal byproducts.

Repeatedly, his eyes wandered over to his bookshelf, where he kept chronologically the pieces that he'd published. There were that year's New Yorker articles, "Mystery of the Bitten Cuticles," "It's Not Me, It's You," and "Morons." There were that year's novels, "Hah!" and "By the Short and Curlies." People had often commented that George's work, brilliant as it was, would be more accessible had he chosen more mainstream titles, but he liked giving his writing names that made people embarrassed to ask for them in bookstores or referencing them.

George, content that everything would be fine, headed to bed early, cozied up in the womb of his goosedown mattress pad, Egyptian cotton sheets and cashmere comforter. He suddenly remembered to take off his shoes (he had been drinking as well as eating.)

Instead of having inspiring dreams, though, George only had what could be called insipid dreams. He dreamt that he really wanted a chocolate chip cookie, but he couldn't find any at the grocery store. He dreamt about babysitting his sister Meredith's awful children. He dreamt about Fidel Castro.

When George woke up, he stared at the ceiling, and then he knew that a day's laziness was not going to knock the problem out of him. His phone rang, and without answering it, he knew that it was a family member or colleague telling him that he had experienced some sort of writing success, while George had none.

George Foreman, with great reluctance, realized that he needed to do something. For perhaps the first time in his life, he would have to exert some effort, and it terrified him so much that at the moment, he tried not to think about it. Just the same way the author of this tale is trying hard not to think about what could possibly come next.