The poster that started all this nonsense.

As part of this little improvement odyssey,  I’ve taken to reading biographies of all the great men…Alexander the Great,  Hannibal, Larry Flynt, etc.   My hope was that by metaphyscially rifling through their pockets like a thief on a corpse I’d find  patterns, habits, philosophies…anything I might blatantly steal from their rich, fulfilling lives and apply to my miserable own.  For my sins, it’s been a torturous experience, but not because these men aren’t fascinating.  Mostly, I’m vexed by the dubious talents of the authors writing about them -  just because you have a keen interest in one man doesn’t mean you possess either the writing or analytical skills to reveal their lives.

I’d grow impatient as the author piled on the minutiae – their sister died in a horrible laundry accident, they had a sled named Rosebud, blah, blah, blah.  I’d drop one biography and pick up another, only to find the same thing – they grew up down the block from the guy who invented gunpowder, or Post-it notes.   I wasn’t getting to any of the good stuff, but I didn’t want to skip ahead for fear I’d miss something.  In this way, I’ve been dancing between as many as 20 biographies, all of them frustrating me equally.

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