Okay, it pissed down rain all day yesterday. I have renounced my taking credit for this weather. I was wrong, it doesn't have a damn thing to do with me, I do not accept responsibility for it, and if you ever find out who's fault it is, let me know and I'll kill them.

The journalists all know that I'm back in town, because I'm catching up on their journals and sending them my slightly obnoxious red pencil notes about broken links and stuff.

I'm so anal-retentive...

A couple of months ago (I'm way behind on jumping on this bandwagon), a few of the journals, particularly Off Centre and Fragment and Gregory (and probably more, but those are the ones that I remember) were talking about this cute game where, in order to figure out your porn star name, you put together the name of your first pet and the first street on which you lived (my porn star name is Pirouette Floyd, which is not a good example--it sounds like the lowest rent porn star around).

Anyway, I was catching up on Off Centre today and reading these lists of names, so I turned to Judy, who was the only person left in the office, and explained the game to her (which was slightly problematic as she couldn't remember the names of any of her childhood pets). Later, she was on the phone with her Mom and told her the rules, then started howling with laughter.

"What?" I said.
"My mother's porn star name is Pixie 69!"

Ladies and gentlemen, no more calls, we have a winner.

I've been trading e-mails with this fella recently, who doesn't quite get the idea of on-line journals and couldn't figure out what the hell I was talking about and wondered why I did it, what I got out of it, and why didn't I give more details? I am pleased that he gave me the impetus to write out my thoughts about why I do what I do in the way that I do.

And I'm egotistical enough to reproduce my answer here.

"No, your message didn't hurt my feelings at all! I don't necessarily feel that people need to suck my dick all day long (so to speak) and your message wasn't mean or anything, so it was fine. In fact, you have made me organize my thoughts on this subject.

And yes, I do care if people read it, but I don't feel the need to explain every little thing for several reasons:

1. I figure things become clear in context.

2. Just like when I said before that I like reading personal writing so that's one of the reasons that I write it, I also like it when books and movies and things don't explain everything because I find it slightly condescending.

3. One of the interesting things about on-line journals is just jumping into somebody's life. Personally, I don't think that my life is that interesting as such, but I think I can write about it in an interesting fashion. One of my theories on art (of any kind) is that the subject is much less important than the style. There are people who could write about cleaning out a closet and make it riveting and hilarious and there are people who could write about being flayed alive and bore me to tears. I like to think that I am the former kind of writer, but it's all a matter of taste.

4. I have been writing online for close to two years and there are many people who read it every day, and if every time I mentioned my job I said "At work today (I work at an Oncology lab in New York--not in the lab section, but in the office, in the Accounts Payable department. O, Oncology means cancer and Accounts Payable means that we pay the bills.)" or every time I wrote about Molly I said "she's the almost two-year-old daughter of my friends Cynthia and Francis from whom I rent a basement apartment in their house.", it would be a disaster. Anyone reading more than three or four entries would become bored as rocks.

So I figure that anyone interested enough would either keep reading and all would become clear or go back into the archives, and if they're not, then they'd move on. I don't feel the need to crawl for readers, nor am I interested in readers who want me to crawl for them. That doesn't mean that that's what I think you want, don't take that personally, I'm just giving you my opinion on the matter.

What do I feel when I do this? Interesting question. I am an anecdotal kind of person. I love telling stories, and whenever an event occurs I always immediately work out the best way to tell the story and then tell it to the next person I run into. I am also a writer, and writing daily is like a pianist doing finger exercises--necessary to keep limber. The immediate nature of the medium is very attractive as well--sometimes I'll get feedback minutes after uploading an entry. Plus there is the fact that many more and varied people read what I write than would if I wrote offline, or just told my stories to the people that I ran into. Of course, none of those sentences answer the question what do I feel...I think when I write, I'm saying "Look how smart I am, look how funny I am". Which still doesn't say what I feel, but I'm not really good at analysing my feelings.

I write because I have stories to tell and what good are stories without readers?"

One year ago today:
Bathe on Tuesday or stink on Wednesday?

* Yesterday / Index / This Month / Tomorrow *

E-Mail

Logo by Lucy Huntzinger
Graphics by The Lady

This page was written by hand. My hand. Only pussies use HTML editors.
Last Updated Sat 9 May 19:21:09 1998