I know this guy from college, name of Robi Mookerjee. I hope that in some way I can claim he’s my friend, although I’m not sure I deserve that honor for the small ways I’ve been connected to him over the years.

Robi is a unique human being. It’s really hard to describe the guy. When Robi looks at the world, he sees things you and I don’t see. I’ll give you an example in the form of a single web page:

http://www.robimookerjee.com/arsgratia/mustard.htm

Yeah, right? Crazy as hell. But also strangely revelatory.

He also once spent an idle moment sketching me a coat of arms. It’s not that I’d asked for a coat of arms, it’s just that this is the sort of thing Robi does in his spare time:

[Initial sketch for the arms of Duke Smashworth the Cammervoltaic, of the Space Duchy of Sass.]

As he described it:

Cito maturum, cito putridum: Quickly ripe, quickly rotten. A caution against wasteful and undue haste, a wise maxim for a Duchy so intimately involved with the politics of empire. Originated in reference to the Duchy’s renowned software-development caste, whose diligent and rigorous testing protocols are the stuff of legend. Not that they are slow, by any means. Rumour has it they once made the kessel subroutine run in less than twelve parsecs.

Anyway, Robi does a lot of stuff, and he does a lot of it very well. But the one thing he does better than anything is write. I mean, I know a lot of good writers, but Robi is the kind of luminous talent who proves to the world that there is such a thing as “talent”, and that you don’t have it.

The trouble with telling you this is that I can’t really support it with evidence; casual descriptions of Space Duchy’s aside, I don’t know of any public Robi writing I can show you.

I know it because I went to the same college, and that college has a private forum for students and alumni. On this forum Robi has quietly published dozens and dozens of stunning stories, essays, and unclassifiable compositions.

But the treasures are all locked behind a private wall, and Robi, despite the incessant pesterings of his college tribe, is not yet publicly published.

Well, Mr. Mookerjee, I’m calling you out: it’s time to get real. It’s time to get published. And no, I don’t care if you’ve already “tried” to get published. Whatever that idea means to you is wrong. I know this because you are not published.

Somewhere in this world is a company that will create high quality paper books fit for a man of discerning taste. That company probably has a web page. And if that company does not print-on-demand, but instead requires a traditional up-front payment for the run, then I direct your attention to several dozen rabid fans who would very likely contribute to the up-front costs. At least in the form of a pre-order. (And by the way, how did you get the power of leveraging several dozen rabid fans? By publishing your stuff free on a protected piece of the Internet. So: reconsider that no-blogging rule you’ve set for yourself.)

The age of needing a company to publish music, text, software, or other artwork is over, man. The barrier to “making” is now lower than at any other time in history. If you want your thing made, it’s your fault if it’s not.