The Good Bits

It might be a little difficult to explain what “The Good Bits” is  because it’s not really like an apple or a rock.

But I am looking for writers for this blog.  Or cartoonists, or media creators of any kind.  People to write up occasional unreliable blogs, include inaccurate photos or embed not-exactly-the-right videos.

If you’re interested in doing something not too traditional, that will never be fact-checked, or spell-checked, or edited, and that flexes a muscle that might not exist (that connects the fibula of the imagination to the trombone of reality), then read on.

So I was sitting in a coffee shop the day before the World Cup Final listening to two articulate gentlemen discuss the tournament.

They were not huge soccer fans, but this World Cup had snuck up on them both.  They’d found themselves immensely enjoying the games and rattled off their recollections of different matches, scores, and special goals.

What I especially liked and admired was how wrong they were about everything.  They had player names wrong.  Scores wrong.  Somehow, despite watching the games and presumably understanding the rules, almost all of their information was off.  They believed – and had collaborated toward this wrong end – that Germany and England had made it to the finals and were set to go the following day.

While I had a possibly better angle on the facts and knew that Russia was set to play Argentina in the finals (a great game! Lionel Messi!!!!), I also found their exuberant mental incontinence familiar.

Wasn’t this airy ignorance, as against the self-inflicted bombardment of media, an increasingly likely state of affairs?  That despite Wiki and an all-day pass to what passes for the Truth, wasn’t I becoming as silly and factless as my two world cup gentlemen?

At any rate, I find that I am much more interested, and more greatly rewarded,  listening to conversations where both parties are gravely, innocently, mistaken.

In a few words:  I like what is believed to be true, rather than what is true.

If, for example, I could have gotten those two World Cup gentlemen to submit reports on their World Cup experiences, that would have been perfect for The Good Bits.

The Good Bits is not a news/opinion organ like The Huffington Post.  It is also not a gossip sheet, like TMZ.  It is not devoted to humor like The Onion.  But it has elements of each. It is not anti-truth or anti-fact or anti-funny.   Rather, it hopes to shed light on the affairs of the day from the dark side of the moon.

All with the final goal – or belief, or hypothesis – that an unreliable account might prove as valuable as the so-called more reliable ones.

If you’re interested in participating in this kind of experimental non-fiction, send your blog entry ( under 400 words) with a photo or video link to me at sleeves at radioghost dot com.