Too Many Cooks

I don't understand how something
that's been done literally
for a thousand years
functions far worse
than moviemaking or any number
of sports.

I'm talking about the writing
profession.

Now, I would assume if
people were at all interested
in discovering new
and unexpected talent,
there would be the equivalent
of the team scout,
maybe exploring high schools,
colleges,
or god forbid some kind
of official writing guild,
where new writers, honest
writers, the ones who have
talent and are not just
enamored of something
they can't actually do
might be noticed.

But instead, it seems
as if everyone
wants to fall back
on the excuse
that publishing just
ain't as popular
as it used to be,

Bullcocks.

There are hundreds of thousands
of books published every year,
and I'm including poetry
in this, but somehow,
not even a comprehensive,
definitive, popular
public publication can
track all of it.

Word of mouth
is kind of beside
the point in this
kind of circumstance.

This is why most people
gravitate to popular fiction,
because it's the only thing
guaranteed to sell,
to look familiar
and not threatening,
because for most people,
it's just too hard to
find interesting things.

Why the hell
do we make it
so hard?

Books are old,
really, really old,
and we really
have to still
keep approaching them
this way?

That's kind of what's wrong
with our current culture
as a whole.

We literally don't understand
what we've got,
and yet the things
we complain about
are all ridiculously
more ephemeral,
mere phantoms
and bogeymen.

Dudes, we could
make things a lot easier,
and put more solid footing
beneath us
if we'd simply stop thinking
of everything as just
a way to make some profit,
and instead think of how,
and not as some charitable
notion, it affects
the greater good.

It's time to think
of community first,
the common good,
common sense.

Stop being so stupid!!!