Chapter 31 - The Greater Public Good

The trashcan in the alley was not simple trashcan tipping over of its own volition.  Nor a member of the gang that was targeted for the raid.  Nor one of the city's oversized raccoons looking to further fatten that night's haul of chicken bones and stale bread.

The trashcan was, in fact, a curious 8-year-old boy enamored by the brutal energy of the city.  Old enough to understand the dichotomy of good and evil, cops vs. robbers, but too young to understand the real costs of the morality play, he hounded his parents night after night to venture outside in search of cops on their heroic crusades.  Night after night, his parents refused, aware of the very real danger associated with his request.  Eventually, after sufficient pestering under the reasonable belief that, statistically, he'd be fine,  his parents had allowed him outside after hours, acquiescing to his desires to find some action via a major bust, a raid, or simply an arrest.  His desires did not disappoint.

After Tannehill fired into the alley, a couple of patrolmen lazily followed to inspect the events.  They found the boy, unmoving, covered under the refuse of the garbage can.  The common violence of so many previous raids come and gone caused them to simply shrug at the tragic scene that lay before them.  They nonchalantly mumbled something about the senseless tragedy of it all before informing Tannehill that he had gunned down a child.

Stunned and shaking, still more from the response to the loud noise that preceded the incident than from the realization yet of what occurred, he could only ask, "Is he dead?"

"Yup," one of the patrolmen answered laconically.  Everyone in the vicinity expected the typical platitudes before moving on with the night's work.  Someone else would be responsible for informing the child's parents and his name would fade into the annals of history.

"Good," was all Tannehill could blurt out.  His emotional response had outstripped his verbal acuity and his intent was to signal that at least the boy hadn't suffered or, worse, faced the prospect of suffering for the next several decades if he were unlucky enough to have been hit in spine or head and still survive.

However, the faces of all the men turned toward him indicated that they didn't pick up on his intent, only on his literal exclamation.

Some looked on in horror.  Others in self-satisfied disgust.  Here was one of the department's golden boys, Johnny College, the cop too good to accept a little fiduciary thank you on a public servant's salary, gloating over the death of a child.  None of them bothered to look at their own cavalier attitude toward the accident, only at their superior standing toward Tannehill's seemingly depraved response.

It was this combination of jealousy and repugnance that led to the events that followed.  The bootleggers, already nervous about their small-time role as the fall guys on the big-time stage, had begun packing up the critical infrastructure and cash when they heard the trashcan crash to the ground and only hastened their effort after the gunshot, assuming they would likely be on the receiving end of the next round.  By the time the raiding party had regrouped, the bootleggers had put two full city blocks between themselves and their former establishment. 

On first briefings, the politicians and department heads thought nothing more of the night's events.  This wasn't the first child who'd been caught in the crossfire in the pursuit of law and order, and this certainly wasn't the first busted raid that netted no positive propaganda for the city.  

However, some of the patrolmen on the raid had correctly surmised the city's diminishing tolerance of violence in the name of a movement they couldn't increasingly understand nor support.  Those same patrolmen used the opportunity to drag the department's standard-bearer through the mud and found a willing confederate in Phil Spinoza.

Spinoza saw his opportunity to effect change in the city's standard operating procedure, and, if he had to sacrifice a former friend on what was likely hearsay and, even, outright mendacity from his sources, then it was worth it for the greater public good.

It wasn't as if the department and the city weren't rotten to the core and that the lies for one particular incident weren't stand-ins for the likely horrors and mistruths they covered up on every other raid.  It wasn't as if Tannehill, his former friend, even if not an active participant in the corruption, wasn't a willing accomplice in their cover-ups.  He, their Golden Boy, stood in front of a podium day in and day out championing their methods while knowing full-well the bloodstains on their collective hands.  He, their Golden Boy, who had been shipped off as part of the infantry but somehow, miraculously, saw no action.  Wasn't he supposed to be the most likely to die in the trenches?  Instead, Spinoza had to see the horrors of war day in and day out while Tannehill remained safe.  He, their Golden Boy, who had to face one event - albeit horrific - of an ill-placed mortar, while Spinoza viewed the results of several ill-placed mortars and had to comfort the maimed and dying in languages he couldn't completely understand.  He, their Golden Boy, who was spared the ravages of the Spanish Influenza, while Spinoza's entire family was gutted.  He, their Golden Boy, who could cower behind a desk, ducking at every sharp noise and still receive a hero's welcome, while Spinoza covered every grizzly maneuver in the city night after night.

Putting his biases aside, Spinoza decided that whatever his feelings for Tannehill, positive or negative, and whatever dubious sources abound around this particular incident and its happenings, this was the story that could finally shine a light on a corrupt department led by the guidance of a corrupt polity.  This was the way forward for change.  The means may not be the straightest method of accounting for the night's events, but they would ultimately be justified by the greater civic ends.  

Spinoza worked feverishly to compile the facts over the days following the raid and ensured that he was able to publish his story before a cynical public began to assume that another child lost to the war on crime was just the price to pay to live in a large American city.

[Author's Note: Today's edition weighs in at 1059 words and contributes to a grand total of 33895 for the (now, actually) novel (or at least novella).  This also marks the first time since January that I've published multiple chapters in a month.  Given my renewed energy and a solid week left in mid-summer, there's even an opportunity I may be able to get another chapter finished before August.]

Well, What Do I Do Now?

The invariable question came up from one of my friends the other day that, if my ability to support myself via blogging (or some other independent means) becomes a reality, what would I do all day?  It struck me as a bit of an odd question, since the underlying assumption that writing a blog is passive income requiring little effort.  The reality, as espoused on many of the reality-check sites about Making $8 Gazillion a Year through a Blog is that blogging isn't as easy as it first appears.  

First, you need to generate a lot of content.  If the research highlighted in my previous posts is to be believed, it's approximately 1400 words per day.  I'll assume that's per workday, so that winds up being 100,000 words every 70 or so days. How daunting is this number?  That's approximately a 400-page novel every three months (accounting for the ~20 days of weekends over 3 months).

Then, once you have content, you have to make sure that it's something that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) algorithms (Google and the like - well mostly just Google) can find.  Before doing further research, it's my understanding that by producing enough rich (whatever that means) content, your blog posts don't require SEO tweaking.  SEO tweaking is its own beast that essentially means you have to structure your writing with enough (TikTok) popular (GenZ) words (social distancing) that search engines will pick up on hot topics and move them to the top of search results.  Search engines are also smart enough to realize when you're attempting to game the system.  So, no matter how many times I repeat TikTok here, I'm not getting to the top of the search results page.  And therein lies the definition of rich content (sort of) - what would you rather read?  A page that just simply lists the words TikTok 1000 times or this page (don't answer that).

Then, once you've got SEO-friendly content, you need to continue to cultivate a user base that actually finds your posts at least somewhat captivating.  Otherwise, advertisers aren't likely to care much about paying you for eyeballs if those eyeballs are disinterested or looking elsewhere.

Then, you have to hope that some other medium - like TikTok - doesn't completely erase your business plan based on blogging.  This one is a bit of fear-mongering on my part, since, despite all calls that so-called newer generations have shorter attention spans, humans will be humans for several thousand years to come and will also likely continue to read.

So, blogging isn't necessarily easy, unless you simply want to write useless tripe that gets written out regardless of whether or not anyone's reading it (ahem!).  But let's set those assumptions aside, and pretend for a moment that the blogging business is easy.  

As of this moment, would I have enough to do to keep myself from succumbing to boredom?  Let's make a list.  I'm going to assume that I'm replacing an 8 hour day and, that the things I already do outside of that 8 hours now are either expanded (playing guitar) or not considered (I'm lucky enough to make sufficient time for exercise now, so that's not something I'd do with extra time).

• Blog writing and editing.  As I mentioned in previous posts, at 1400 words with no research needed, this will still require about 2 hours of my day.
• The business of blogging.  I'm not entirely certain what this entails, but I'm sure it will require some comment moderation, probably checking in ads and affiliate links, working to tweak some SEO, etc.  For now, let's assume its 1 hour.
• Research.  This could take up an additional 2 hours per day, easily.
• Guitar.  Typically, I try to devote 15 minutes of my day to practice.  An additional 1 hour would certainly be nice.
• Cooking.  I do devote time to this already, but certainly having an extra hour in the kitchen would open up possibilities.

We're already at 7 hours.  If you're in a knowledge worker type field - like I am - then you've pretty much already reached your daily limit (unless you're seriously self-deluded and think you work without respite for 10 hours a day. And, no, meetings don't count).  I'm sticking to knowledge worker as my paradigm, because there's usually a lot of downtime at a typical office job that doesn't apply to other positions.

And that's just the opening salvo.  I can always add more reading, more exercise, mild software consulting, more foreign language learning and a lot of other things into the mix.  These are all things I've been doing for years and things I'm not likely to burn out on.  And many of these things can be income generating (making music, language tutoring, and consulting) even if it's only $50 or $100 a month.

Now, you may look at all of this and scoff.  "Those aren't really things you can rely on to keep yourself busy," or "that isn't real work."  Maybe.  But certainly between writing full-time and attempting to indulge myself in something creative and, potentially, helping out with programming projects sure seems like a productive use of time to me.

If you're the type that swings a hammer or is on your feet all day, and you're one of the scoffers, I get it.  In one form or another, I've had to do those jobs for limited amounts of time.  If you want to talk about work with a capital 'W', those are the types of jobs that definitely qualify.  If you're someone who's a software engineer, or office manager, or derivatives trader and tell me I'm either being lazy or pissing my life away, we'll you're wrong, since it's very hard to define what peak productivity is for those positions.

We've generally been conditioned as a society to tie our self-worth to our jobs, our income, and, worst of all, the hours we work.  We never actually stop to think about what we're doing and why we're doing it other than to say something distractedly about "wanting the entire experience" or "living our best life" or "gotta power through."  People who don't live up to our ideals of work, we label as lazy or inconsequential.  This is somewhat ironic, given the workers' movements to reduce work hours to something reasonable and John Maynard Keynes's concern about what we'd be bored silly when we eventually succumbed to the 15-hour workweek (which is nowhere in sight for most of the population).

So, if I do, by some fashion - most likely through a fair amount of hard work - have the ability to begin to earn income via my blogging activities, and you're someone who finds that trite, then take heart.  I've got the self-direction and career arc I've been craving for a while, and you can wallow in the glory of knowing I'm lucky, listless, fool.  If I fail in my travails, you can wallow in the glory of knowing I'm simply a fool, and I can be proud that I made an effort at a task I genuinely enjoy, was able to improve my craft, and likely add new perspectives to future situations simply by jotting my thoughts down.  Either way, we both win!

Chapter 30 - Is Myrna Loy With You?

"Are you William Powell?" Vera stood over Spinoza, pencil tucked firmly behind her ear and a nearly illegible note in hand. Spinoza occupied the same booth Tannehill always sat in.  What is it with these middle-aged men and their penchants for booths near the door?  Did age so ravage them that walking a few steps further down the counter would leave them breathless?  He was sopping up the final drippings of a late lunch by stabbing pointedly at the last potato on his plate.

"No," Spinoza drawled.

"Have you ever been mistaken for William Powell?"

"Possibly from a distance and by someone with poor eyesight.  Never for acting ability."

Vera squinted. "You're relatively tall, thin, and kind of cute in a Powell-esque way."

Spinoza blushed.  "You know The Thin Man wasn't named after the detect..."

"Detective.  Yes, I know.  It's named after the victim.  I've seen the film," she shifted the weight of her feet with a change in topic, "are you here to buy me a pastry?"

"I'm sorry?" Spinoza's eyes widened.  

"No?"

"No, I'm sorry...no."

"Perplexed by this whole exchange?"

"I'd be lying if I admitted otherwise," Spinoza stuttered but began to relax now that he realized he wasn't dealing with a lunatic.

"You're not the only one, buddy" Vera continued, beaming.

Confusion continued to reign in Spinoza's eyes.  Vera thrust the note on the table.  Misplaced drippings from his afternoon offering began to soak into the paper.  However, Spinoza could clearly make out that Can't come! William Powell - bye you a cake at bakery was clearly inscribed on the dry portion of the note. He looked up from the note, no further elucidated with the recent exchange than when she first skipped over to his table.

"It's a note from our other waitress, Flo.  She's not the most, um, literary type.  So, Mr. Powell, would you care to inform me why you plan on giving me a farewell pastry?"

"I don't think I'm the William Powell you're looking for."

"I don't think the real William Powell is likely to venture this far north and hang out near the docks."

"As flattered as I am to think that I should be waiting for someone as lovely as you, I'm waiting for a friend who's late."

Vera ignored the compliment.  "Who?"

"A private investigator."  Spinoza braced for a flurry of intrusive and prosaic questions about the nature of mysteries and the hard-boiled life.

"Tannehill?" was the only one he received.

Spinoza's response changed from confusion to shock.  His body sunk further into the leather upholstery of the booth in sympathy.

"And you're headed off to Loving's Bakery?"

Spinoza nodded, still stunned.  "How did you know?"

"My psychic powers amaze and impress."  

Spinoza harumphed at this response.  

"No?  Well, how about this Watson?  You've been tapping your fork impatiently for the last 15 minutes I've been here.  I made an educated guess that you were expecting Tannehill, because he's the nearest PI to this wonderful culinary establishment.  When Tannehill was in here last, he had a dusting a confectioner's sugar on his shirt cuff.  It's obvious from his attire and demeanor that he doesn't bake on the side, as his suit is rumpled and indicative of a cramped apartment.  And, when he was last here, he seemed distracted, so his excursion to Loving's wasn't likely successful, so it's elementary that he'd attempt another journey."

Spinoza's mouth dropped open.  "You were able to deduce all of that?"

"No, of course not."  Spinoza once again exchanged surprise for perplexity.

Vera sighed.  "What is obvious is that he didn't tell you he brought along a charming, debonaire waitress from The Happy Hour Diner to accompany him on his adventure to Loving's.  So," she drew out her exhale, "when I see someone I'm supposed to meet who's supposed to look like William Powell, who, in fact, does look like William Powell, it's not hard to begin putting some of the pieces together with the occasional direct question."

"Go on," Spinoza's gaze finally settled again on impressed.

"Well, it's not hard to tell you're annoyed about something, because you have been tapping your fork impatiently for the last 15 minutes that I've been here.  You should really carry around a novel to keep yourself occupied.  What do you do for a living?"

"Journalist."

"Oh, nevermind then, wordplay wouldn't be up your alley."  Vera continued before Spinoza could retort.  "Then you confirmed you had a late friend who's a PI, so I made an educated guess that it was Tannehill, since this ain't The Thin Man and there isn't a PI on every corner.  Once I pieced that one together, I was able to work through Flo's literary license and figure the rest out.  My guess is the message was intended to read something like 'I can't make it.  Please have Vera accompany a man who looks like William Powell to Loving's for another try at finding something significant.'"

"Then why didn't he say that?"

"He probably did, but you've seen the note and can likely use your own deductive powers to guess the state of the author's mental acuity."  What was left of the note had now consumed all of the gravy left on the table.  The word bye waving goodbye before turning brown.

"Good point, but how did he know that you'd be here if you're not even on shift yet, and it's 1:45?  I was supposed to meet him at 1."

Vera shrugged, "lucky for you, I got out of class early and you're a slow eater. While I greatly like and respect our mutual friend, he occasionally glosses over details.  But hey, he's a PI, they're to details what journalists are to words."

"Give him a break, you don't know his entire backstory.  It's been rough."

"True.  It's not the life of a 1930s woman working as a waitress at Capital City's most epicurean hotspot while attending school part-time." She extended her hand, "I'm Vera."

Spinoza took it, "I'm Phil.  Everyone calls me by my last name though."

"Which is?"

"Spinoza"

"Oh, you're the crime beat reporter.  Maybe next go around you can stick with something more rewarding like philosophy," she pulled him up by his arm and extended the crook of her elbow, "shall we?"

Before he could acquiesce, she shouted to the kitchen in back, "I'm leaving, I'll be back in about an hour."

A harsh, bellowing voice shouted back, "Vera, your shift is about to start.  What if we get a rush?"

She looked around, one customer was asleep in the booth farthest from the door.  Another was sitting at the counter savoring a three-day-old jelly donut.

"Wait, was this the month we were supposed to get a rush?"

A brief pause, "fine, but I'm docking your pay for the hour," the voice shouted back.

"No, you're not."

Another brief pause and then quieter, "no, I'm not."

She dragged Spinoza toward the door.  "Be honest, you were hoping I was just another cute waitress flirting with you."

Spinoza colored again,  "so are you a film buff?"  Spinoza asked, eager to change the subject.

"I know the secrets of the film industry better than I should," she mumbled as they exited the diner and stepped into the sunlit afternoon.

[Author's Note: Today's post is 1212 words and probably the fastest I've cranked out a chapter.  Whenever Vera's involved, I find her eager to chew the scenery, so I just let her go.  The current running total for the book is 32836.  This is beginning to look like it could be something real.]

The Tyranny of Choice

My problem in starting up a blog won't be the lack of topics, it'll be that I'll have too many.  Since pitching the idea of monetizing my blog to my eager investors (myself), I've come up with at least the following ideas (at least meaning I've probably forgotten at least two ideas and probably will forget another couple - or add a couple - before even finishing this section):

• A post on the fundamentals of starting to monetize a blog.
• A primer on distributed systems for non-tech folk and why monetizing a blog at scale shouldn't be prohibitively expensive.
• A discourse on the benefits and ailments of socialism and capitalism (though the two aren't diametrically opposed, but in today's world they sure seem to be).
• How to travel virtually.
• Getting started playing guitar (this is actually something I've been meaning to write for a long time).
• What are the next big things that civilization should tackle and in what order?
• A short story on someone hanging out in the Roman Forum a few years after the collapse of the Roman Empire.
• What steps can we do to simplify our lives?  I have an aching feeling I've written on this before, but it's probably worth a longer refresh with a new perspective.

I haven't yet done much research on the number of topics a blog should cover, but if I were a betting man (and I'm not), I'd bet that the conventional wisdom would likely state that I should focus on one or two topics to ensure a core audience.

The problem with that is that I'm more of a renaissance type of individual.  Or, more aptly, a jack of all trades and master of none.  If writing may be my talent, it's not necessarily delving into a deep topic.

This is not to say that one cannot plumb the depths of a seemingly narrow topic if given the desire and the will.  One of the most powerful quotes (really paraphrases, because I've searched high and low for the source but can't find it, because I can neither remember the exact quote nor can I remember the exact book) that I'll remember for the rest of my lucid life found me while I was considering applying to grad school.

A friend of mine had a book about getting into grad school and all of the typical pitfalls that occur while applying and attending school.  He was kind enough to let me borrow it, so I thumbed through it to peruse various sections relevant to me.  I'd been thinking for some time about what I'd want to write my thesis on if I made it into grad school.  One of the supposedly daunting issues of writing a thesis is that the work you do needs to be original research - as in, no one else in the field has ever developed a solution for the problem you're addressing.  For the longest time, I always assumed this meant I had to come up with something on par with Newton's discovery of gravitational principles, Einstein's theories of relativity, or Shakespeare's masterful use of iambic pentameter.  The book addressed the topic of thesis selection in some depth before ultimately stating something along the following lines:

Don't worry about picking a topic or about how broad or deep your provisional research topic may be.  Once you find something you're marginally interested in, ask the instructor - assuming you've learned about the topic through the courses you're taking - if you can assist with their current efforts.  Humans are amazingly adept at taking a topic that's seemingly boring or of narrow scope and turning it into a flourishing endeavor.

I followed that advice, and shortly after finishing either my first or second class on state automata in computer science, I bounded up to the professor at the end of the lecture and asked if there's any topic I could be of assistance with as a new grad student.  Turns out there was.  Shortly thereafter I began my journey learning about cellular automata, heading toward the only "A-ha!" moment of my life (when I woke-up from a light afternoon nap on the couch and figured out the principal sticking point to the problem I was tasked with), performing the elusive original research, and getting published as an author in a couple of academic journals.

So, to recap, the problem won't be that I have too few topics to write about, it's that I may try to research the world or astound you with my own navel-gazing abilities.  To that end, I've now written approximately 3 posts in the past four days about thinking about getting serious about my blog.  Those posts are north of 3,000 words already with further depths to plumb on the topic, if I so choose.

Regardless of whether or not I think this particular exercise is useful, I guess it's more important to ask, if I'm even remotely interested in increasing readership - are you entertained?

What's My Motivation Again?

OK, I've now proven to myself that I can write (at least) 500 words about any topic that I haven't sufficiently planned for.  In fact, if I really think hard about it, I can write 32K and counting words on a topic that I haven't sufficiently planned for.  If I squint my eyes and think even harder, most of what I've written over the course of my life has been poorly researched, so I guess an inchoate blog is right up my alley.

Ok, so why do it?  Well, it certainly helps that I like to write.  I'm not certain that too many people are ever going to read this or any of my other posts, but it's not likely to stop me from writing - at least in fits and starts - here.  In fact, there are times where I don't necessarily want people to read what's here.  I want the therapy that comes along with jotting your thoughts down, and I don't necessarily want to do deal with all the scary people lurking on the internet.

But, if I can turn a "hobby" into something that can make me money, I guess it's worth it to go toe-to-toe with the comrade bots from time to time.  I'd also like to see if I can produce content that entertains, informs, or provokes people into thought.  I put "hobby" in quotes as I don't see writing as a fun past time that I may walk away from at some point.  I see it as a necessity.  I also do a fair amount of writing at work, so I'm not worried about the old adage of spoiling a hobby by turning it into a business, because it's already a part of my typical tedium.

Besides, the concept of "writing" (I'm big on quotes today) is such a varied concept that it's hard to say what part of it would be considered a hobby.  It's like saying "you'll hate speaking in English that much more once you have to do it for a living."  If I have to spend 1-2 hours a day writing 1000 - 2000 words and that becomes the principal activity in a new job, I should be able to cope.  If I can't, then I'm going to have a hard time with anything, because most careers require more than a couple hour commitment per day (except for millionaire trust fund baby).

Now, this, again, is assuming I don't have to research any pieces, but even that doesn't bother me.  Again, as an arbitrary guess, if I'm putting in 3 hours of research for every 1 hour of writing, that's still not a shabby proposition.  I don't intend to try my hand at journalism, where the time chasing down leads, double-checking them, and making sure you've satisfied at least one editor can be highly variable (and all while still on deadline - no wonder journalism has a higher level of sociopathy than most professions).  And, at this moment in our Summer of Corona, I'm lucky enough to have the luxury to experiment and see how things work out.

And, experimentation, even in the worst of times, is cheap.  As long as I have the internet and a laptop, content creation is a snap.  Now, I didn't say that good content creation is a snap, but again, we refrain to - I'm probably going to create content for myself whether or not I'm simply throwing it into the electronic void.  

If I'm lucky enough to be able to increase my reading base significantly and host my own site then according to this post (oh look, I did actually do some research - unverified, but research nevertheless.  I'm building some good habits early-on during this pleasant Saturday eve) the magic number is somewhere around 100,000 page views.  Per month.

In the realm of the tech world, that's an easy target to scale up to.  A fairly successful mid-size e-commerce company could see that kind of traffic in under 10 minutes.  In addition, they typically have more dynamic content, whereas my blog posts - if I'm really prolific - will change twice a day.  

Why is this important?  Well, it's not to you, but it is to me, because it means, should I become wildly successful, I won't have to spend an arm and a leg on infrastructure.  Hosting static content (that of the 2 updates at most per day variety) is pretty straightforward.

So, to round out this Medium-averse length blog post, here's why blogging makes sense, even if I'm never going to see my dream of owning a gold plated house come to fruition as a result of my authoring capabilities:

• I like to write.
• Writing for me is cathartic.
• Because writing is ingrained in what I do now, it's not likely to burn me out if this becomes a part-time business or a full-time business.
• Blogging is a low barrier to entry business.  Usually, this is bad, but because writers are uniquely stylized in their offerings, I'm not "competing" on price or feature set, I'm "competing" on content (again with the quotes).  I say "competing" because, while you only have a limited amount of time in your life (as do I).  However, if you read another blog (or novel or billboard ad), it doesn't mean that you, therefore can't read my blog.  The number of competitors I'm facing is highly fluid and extremely heterogenous, so blogging - as it stands today until TikTok and Insta kill the written word - isn't a zero-sum game.
• Even if I'm wildly successful, the cost to maintain a blogging business is extremely low (as opposed to maintaining an airplane manufacturer).

So, I don't really have much to lose by attempting to monetize my blog and pretty much everything to gain, even if it's not monetary gain.

Chapter 29 - Watch That First Step

Tannehill's response was flat. "I'm sorry, he did what?"

"Strangled himself."

"Where? How?"

Murphy flashed annoyance. "Like I said. In his cell."

Tannehill put his hands up pleadingly, "I know there's not a lot of real estate in a jail cell, but that's my point, there's not a lot of real estate. It's not easy to hang yourself. Did you think he was a suicide risk?"

Murphy's lips were pencil-thin. His stare fixed. "No."

Tannehill's conciliatory tone continued, "Look, I assume you didn't bring me down here just to respond with terse answers. You could've given me this information over the phone."

Murphy's stare remained in place. The fern straightened up slightly in response.

"Can you at least let me see the holding cell where it happened?"

Murphy sighed and the fern drooped, "you know what the holding area looks like CH."

"So, indulge me, Murph. This man killed my partner for God's sake, " he suppressed the urge to say "may have killed" in an effort not to press his luck too far, "And now he's dead? I'm a PI. This isn't going to sit well with me unless I get some sort of answer.  Let me just look at the area so I can set my own uneasy mind at rest."

Murphy sighed again and slowly pulled himself from the chair to his full height. The fern straightened a bit in imitation. "Let's go." The words were drawn out interminably into a mournful bellow.

They walked from the office further back into the bowels of the precinct. This being Capital City, everything was built on a hill, and the station was no exception. Even though the entrance was at street level and the stairs descended 15 feet to the holding cells, the labyrinthian architecture of the building allowed the prisoners the luxury of a small glimmer of sunlight puncturing an aperture in the brick wall.

Despite the sunlight on the split levels, the 15 feet of decline between them was nothing but precarious darkness. The pitch of each step was variable and the pine that composed the steps hadn't been replaced since the gold rush.

A single, unsecured incandescent bulb winked in its knowledge of the dangerous grounds it illuminated and many a prisoner unjudiciously ignored its omens while falling down the stairs to his peril - either of his own accord or pushed by a phantom hand in blue.

They appeared from the black maw of the stairwell back into the light. A short row of cells stood in front of them.

"Which one?" Tannehill asked.

Murphy gestured nonchalantly to the first cell on the left. Tannehill squared to face it.

He peered into the cell, light yellow paint flaking from the bars to expose their iron heart. The top bunk in the cell was perfectly made. The bottom, a disheveled pile of unmade sheets.

"Where? How?" Tannehill repeated the same questions he had upon learning of Beederman's demise.

"We found him with his back against the bars, legs splayed out in front of him."

"What did he hang himself with?"

"Bedsheet. He attached it above the crossbar here," Murphy gestured at the bar three feet above the floor bisecting the front of the cell.

"Can I see the body?"

"CH, you know I can't do that. It's against procedure. Even with your background and the special circumstances of the case, that'd be a stretch."

"You done here with the crime scene?"

"Yup. It was pretty open and shut."

Tannehill glanced back toward the dark stairwell and the open and shut cases it concealed of broken suspects' bones and bloodied faces over the years. "Mind if I take a look?" 

Murphy sighed, went over to the jailer at the far end of the corridor, asked for the keys, walked back, and extended an interminably long arm toward Tannehill with keys in hand. "As a favor to you," he pulled the keys back slightly, "this one time." 

Tannehill unlocked the cell, leaving the keys dangling from the door, and walked in. He became aware of the smell of bleach in the far corner by the bed - a smell that hadn't been so pungent when he stood outside the door. 

He moved to the bed and inspected the sheets.  Among the tangles, he spotted a couple of tightly wound peaks beginning to soften.  Reddish-brown spots dotted the bedscape in clusters.  

On his way out of the cell, he squatted at the crossbar.  The bar height matched the brim of his fedora.  He stood up, exited the cell, locked the door, and handed the keys back to the jailer, who'd walked down the corridor to observe the investigation.

"Satisfied?" Murphy cocked an eye.

"If you can call it that."  Tannehill chewed on his lower lip.  "Did you see the body?"

"Yup.  Like I said, he was jammed up against the bars, facing the back wall."

"Did you see the body?"  Tannehill squared himself to face the jailer.

"Wasn't my shift."  The jailer responded with such a lack of enthusiasm that Tannehill wondered how regular a suspect's suicide was within the dungeons of the precinct.

"Settles that, I suppose," Tannehill acknowledged begrudgingly.

"Yup," Murphy responded lackadaisically, eager to rejoin his fern in the office.

---

Tannehill stepped outside the station and cocked his fedora back on his head so his face could absorb the surprisingly bright early afternoon sun.

The botched coverup of Beederman-Bellucci's death didn't surprise him. The untimely demise of suspects and the half-hearted efforts to explain them away to a credulous public were standard operating procedures for the Capital City Police Department.

However, in this case, Tannehill couldn't discern a motive. Though the reasons may be scant - whether it was a black man looking at a white woman with the wrong level of interest in his eyes, a suspect who talked back to an arresting officer or a drunk who simply needed some minor assistance to show him the errors of his ways, there was always some reason, however tenuous, that led to motive. 

This one didn't make sense. Beederman-Bellucci surrendered quietly and had already willingly played the patsy for someone else's misdeed. It was possible that he was murdered to stay silent, but to what end? He'd already willingly confessed.

And the police wouldn't off him in revenge for Snell - Snell himself was grudgingly tolerated in the precinct, predominantly because he was lazy and incompetent and posed no threat to department's activities.  Tannehill's ex-communication from the department ensured no one would seek extra-judicial retribution on his behalf.

That left only one motive for Beederman-Bellucci's killing - greed. Given that this was Capital City, it left no shortage of suspects. 

[Author's Note: It's not Medium worthy at only 1108 words, but it's still not too shabby.  The story length is now clocking in at 31624 words.] 

Forced Musings

For reasons that I'll elaborate on in a future blog post, I'm interested to see how much I can write on a given topic with little notice and whether or not the post is more than an incoherent mess.  For this exercise, I'd like to see how easy it is to hammer out 500 words on the topic of, well, blog post length.

My reasons are likely transparent already - I'm interested in generating more content for my blog and, if the gods of capitalism and ad revenue shine on me, possibly even making money from the content.

Let's start with the things I have going for me that could make this venture successful:

1. I write consistently.  My formal academic training is in mechanical engineering and computer science, and I've spent the better part of my career as a software engineer or manager of software engineers.  One would think that people in these fields aren't prone to writing, and one would be right.  If brevity is the soul of wit (huh, this is the second straight blog post I've quoted Polonius from Hamlet), then terseness is the corporate motto.  People don't like reading "long" emails (typically defined as 1000 words or more by the number of groans emitted in proximity when said email reaches co-workers' inboxes), much less writing them.  If people can't be bothered to take 4 minutes to digest something, they sure aren't going to spend 30 minutes - 1 hour to compose their thoughts.  Why write when everything can be solved by a meeting?

I'll leave my rant against meetings and their general uselessness for another day, but, needless to say, I think writing has its place in the breakneck bureaucracy of the modern workplace.  By spending time to compose your thoughts, you're forced to analyze what your exact point is.  Even a furious response to a perceived email slight will make you pause and check a few points of grammar or points of emphasis before shipment - "Should I simply respond with fuck you to indicate I don't care that much?  Should I be more formal and capitalize it (Fuck you) to demonstrate I'm serious about my intent?  Should I use all caps to show my passion?"  In cases where you may simply blurt out something that may or may not be an untruth - I won't call it a lie, as it may be something you mostly think is true but are either too lazy or intimidated to follow up on at the given moment, a common method for kickstarting projects in a corporate environment - you're more likely to fact check yourself (or at least spend the time to find sources that reinforce your bias) when you're writing.

As a reader, I'm much happier with written communication in almost all cases than I am with a meeting.  I can spend more time digesting the writer's intent, I can do it on my own terms at my own speed, and I can do some follow up research independently for points I'm unfamiliar with.  If someone barks at me "What's the ETA on the EKS upgrade and what version are we moving to and why?" I only have scant precious moments to come up with a solid answer or, more likely, lightly prevaricate to fill in the gaps.  This response makes neither party happy.

(By the way the above section - at least in first draft form - is 532 words after about 25 minutes of writing).

2. I've been trained to write.  Despite my STEM education, which is great for a lot of opportunities, but not so much for writing, I also had a strong liberal arts education in high school by being fortunate to participate in the International Baccalaureate program. As an example - I recall being assigned a 500-word assignment in our world history class our senior year every week.  This was something I'd crank out every Sunday afternoon as the clock crept towards 4 PM, and wasn't something I sweated.  In fact, it probably took me about the same amount of time to complete the paper as it did to crank out the first 500 words of this blog post.  At a high school friend's wedding last year I heard a fellow graduate of high professional standing (she's an MD in a research field who has to crank out grants) extoll the virtues of our shared educational background.  She exclaimed that it was relatively easy for those of us who went through the IB program to write, because we had to write with frequency for just about every class.  Until she'd mentioned that, I'd never thought about why writing came so easily to me.  I'd assumed that most people of a certain educational level (certainly research-oriented MDs) could write fluidly.  This is apparently not always the case.  So, cheers to my word-heavy high school education.

3. I like to write.  I mean, hell, I've been writing this blog (among sundry various other works) for a while now.  When I put the right phrase together, it's like solving a puzzle.  When I can reach someone through my (usually) thoughtful communication and have them understand my point of view or get them to think, I get the same fuzzy feeling as a warm fire in a deep-woods setting on a snowy January night.  And yes, that last statement was nothing more than word porn.  But, hey, it's my blog, so I can word porn away.

Why I'd fail at this venture:

1. I have a full-time job and a list of hobbies that keep me from writing consistently.  If you're paying attention to the posts of this blog, you'll notice that I'm 2/3 of a way through a (hopefully) 50,000-word novel.  That novel should be wrapping up right about...oh....now.  That novel will likely wrap up sometime around...oh...now...plus another year.  Still, the fact that I've been able to get this far is something I should give myself credit for.  But I still need to finish.

2. I have a current readership of 1.  You know who you are.  And I hate marketing my skills.  I guess what I'm doing with this post could be considered marketing, but to me it falls more into the camp of self-affirmation, because I don't have any readers.  But, give me a straw boater and tell me I need to sing my own praises at the carnival, and I'd as soon jump in the nearest lake.  If I can't figure out how to comfortably reach a broad audience, I can't really do this as something other than a mildly voyeuristic diary.

3. You hate my writing.  Or are indifferent to it.  Writing - as we know it - isn't usually a career that many people consider stable. Good writers are almost literally a dime a dozen.  And I mean literally in the old-fashioned sense, not in the new, anything-goes literally sense.  And, that's assuming I'm a good writer. 

Even if I'm a good writer, I still need to be a popular enough writer.  I'm not a fan of some of the greatest writers in the last several hundred years (James Joyce, I'm looking at you).  And, I'm a little too old to buy into the starving artist myth, so I need to convince enough of you current non-readers that I'm worth reading.

(Another 25ish minutes, another 599 words - Dr. Downey really did train me well)

So, what's the conclusion? It's readily apparent that I can crank out 500 words on a topic that I wasn't certain I could crank out 500 words on. 

According to this blog post (and similar ones echoing the same finding), Medium has suggested that a blog post of about 1600 words hits the SEO sweet spot, which is likely to maximize revenue.  People tend to prefer shorter posts (sometimes around 300 words) but are more likely to post an interesting entry on the Twitter or the Zuckerberg Diaries if the piece is longer.  That's a bit of contradiction, but I guess it means there's room for both long-form and short-form posts.

OK, so as I wrap this up, it's taken me about one hour to write this post over two sittings in one day.  I haven't yet edited it, but that's usually another 15-30 minutes (finishing one pass of editing here - the most I'll do for this post - it did indeed take me about 20 minutes).  So, if the less sensationalistic articles are to be believed, then a consistently cultivated blog can make (let's be conservative but in a still outrageous way) $6000/month.  That's $6000/month while putting in 8 hours of work a week (1 1/2 hours x 5 days - this is writing class, not math class.  Keep up).  That's pretty good.  Even taking researched topics into account and assuming I need to spend 2 1/2 hours researching for every 1 1/2 hours writing (this is an arbitrary statement, but, meh) the workweek expands to 20 hours/per week.  Still not bad.  

Now, I don't know what the administrative side of a blogging business requires (maybe it's an additional 30 hours, at which this whole thing falls apart), but the opening proposition is at least intriguing and not nearly as daunting (nor as fantastically easy) as I'd first assumed.  

Even at a "paltry" $1000/month for about 40 hours per month, the rate is still $25 - not a horrible side gig.  

Maybe it's worth a shot.

(My total here, pre-edit is 532 + 599 + 290 words or 1,421 total.  Not bad for roughly an hour's effort.)

(1,587 words after editing - Medium would be so proud.)