By Silence Doless

One year and eleven issues later, I’m sure you’re all wondering how I write my humor columns. Either that, or you’re wondering why you still read them. However, for the sake of having something to write about this week, let’s assume the former.

Well folks, the process is a complex one. It all starts in the few hours after my deadline. Around that time I get a frantic email from my editors asking where the hell my column is. I’m in the bathroom and don’t receive the message.

Over the next couple of hours I wander around campus and run into people whom I am vaguely acquainted with and think about flowers. Once I finally return to my room, I write an email to my editors assuring them that my column is almost done, and then sit down to write.

By this time the sun has gone down. I brainstorm a topic, thinking about things that happened to me for inspiration. Then, if that doesn’t work, I think about things that didn’t happen to me for inspiration. Eventually I get nervous about not having written anything, so I start typing stream of consciousness. Here’s a typical excerpt:

So there was once a little piggy named Esmeralda, and her brother’s name was Poopstick & Homeslice. That was his full name, Poopstick & Homeslice. He was named after his grandfather Poopslice and his great uncle Homestick by his dyslexic and decision-hating mother.

One day, Esmeralda woke up, brushed her choppers and dove into a vat of bats. The bats had gotten into the vat by any means necessary, as it looked like a cave and dawn had risen on the prairies.

Realizing that anyone who reads this with the understanding that it came straight from my brain will probably commit me, I decide it should never see print and delete it. Congratulating myself on getting good work done, I take a break. During my break, I usually think of my topic. There are two kinds of topics I come up with; the first is some aspect of Hofstra to make fun of, and the second is something bizarre, like grass or pirates, that also finds a way to make fun of Hofstra. Excited, I rush to the nearest writing utensil and commence using it on the nearest writing surface (usually a stranger).

What follows is the rigorous process of writing whatever comes to my head, then trying to tie everything in the column up at the end by referencing something weird from the beginning. For example, if I were to end this column now, I would say that I had to visit my grandpa Poopstick. While doing this, I try to think of original jokes. Then I laugh and make fun of Rabinowitz again, occasionally challenging him to a duel. Then, if I am writing within the last few weeks, I write a paragraph about pirates tracking down Rabinowitz.

And that’s how I write Silence Doless. Exciting, huh? I would write more, especially about how I have to regularly dodge several randy T-Rexes to deliver the column at the Chronicle offices, but it’s way past my deadline.

Rabinowitz Update!

“That’s his ship alright,” I say, one eye pressed to a spyglass.

“What? Give me that,” barks the Captain, snatching the spyglass from me. “Hm, looks like a golden yacht. Wonder how that bloody thing floats.” He collapses the spyglass with a snap, and then turns to me. “This is it sonny boy, after this there’s no turning back.”

I nod, the two of us sharing a moment only possible when staring into the mouth of the abyss: or at a miraculously floating golden yacht. I load my pistol; the duel is hours away. I am ready.