In which I tell you a story.
Once upon a time, way back in the late 80’s when I was in junior college and majoring in voice, I was a stoner. I smoked pot all the time. I smoked it in the walk-in cooler at work at 7-Eleven, I smoked it at Dead shows, I smoked it in public parks and in friends’ living rooms and at parties. Sometimes I kept my bong on the shelf by my bed and smoked before even getting up, but usually I kept my bong in the ‘fridge.
My drug dealer was this guy out in Gresham. I can’t remember how I met him originally, but he was a few years older than me, and both myself and my highschool girlfriend D. had slept with him at one time or another. He wasn’t terribly good in bed, but we both gave him an A for enthusiasm. He had been the guitar player in the local band Quarterflash at one point, but carpel tunnel or something had ruined his hands before they ‘made it’. He had a bunch of gear set up in his bedroom – keyboards and guitars and sequencers.
He was incredibly anal. His house was completely spic and span all the time.
He grew dope up in his attic. I only saw the grow room once, early on, even though he offered to show it to me again later when he went totally hydroponic. He had an air exchange system that blew the pot-scented air out of the top of his house; you couldn’t smell anything on or near his property, but on certain days there was an area several hundred feet away in the middle of a nearby intersection that absolutely reeked of skunk.
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In which I rant right at the whole entire blogosphere. Including myself.
Okay, so, my cred is that I’ve been blogging since before the word had even been coined. (Okay, not really, since it was coined in 1997. But still, I’ve been doing it for years.) Since I coded all my pages by hand. Since before I even knew what a CMS was.
Everybody blogs these days. Anyone can sign up for a free, easy-to-use account that allows them to post any damn thing they want on the Internet. This is totally awesome. But. Considering the diversity of human experience, I find it exhausting that at some point all bloggers start blogging about blogging.
I propose a ban on blogging about blogging! I hate blogging about blogging.
Bloggers worry endlessly – in posts! – about their content, about their motivation for blogging in the first place, about whether or not they’re boring their readers, about whether or not they’ll ever get any readers, about maintaining their integrity or their anonymity, about inspiration, about being an attention whore, about being indifferent or less than committed to the act of blogging.
To which I say: can’t we all just shut the fuck up about it, already? I don’t read you because I want to hear you agonize about your traffic numbers or your fears that nobody likes you: I read you because I already like you and I want you to continue being yourself! Blogging about blogging is boring to read. Blogging about blogging is non-content.
Posting that you feel boring is one thing; posting that your terminal boring-ness will somehow affect the balance of the Internet at large is absurdly vain.
In the interest of a better intarweb, here are a few guidelines I’m proposing. God knows I need to follow them myself:
- Don’t blog about blogging.
- Don’t blog about having nothing to blog and how it makes you suck as a blogger.
- Don’t blog about your lack of traffic.
- Don’t troll for compliments – be direct. If you want compliments, say, “I want compliments.” Don’t be all coquettish about it. I hate that passive/aggressive shit.
- Don’t troll for comments – be direct. If you want comments, say, “I want comments!” Don’t be all coquettish about it. I hate that passive/aggressive shit.
- Don’t blog about your motivation for blogging in the first place, unless you’re a damned good writer and have a really solid thesis.
- Don’t put your blog on a hiatus and then keep posting sporadically. There should be only two settings: on, and off.
- Don’t behave as if the act of blogging is a truly refined artform, unless you’re the proprietor of one of the Very Biggest Blogs Evah and have already earned the right to do so. What it is, is a journal. It’s not playing first chair violin in the London Philharmonic.
When I visit a blog, I want to read about whatever the author’s doing or thinking. I want to hear about your reaction to something that’s occurred, or read a funny or moving or embarassing story, or get your unique take on a topic. I do not want to see you blathering on incoherently about blogging, because it’s just not that complicated. Nor should it be that stressful. Nor should you use it to define yourself. Nor do I want to hear about how much you agonize over it.
We put ourselves on the ‘net because we are all to some degree wanting attention. Period. The creativity of self-expression is the smallest part of it. Let’s just acknowledge these truths, right along with the fact that none of us are really all that goddamned special, and move along merrily into the land of non-self indulgent blogging! Yeah!
*smooch*
~+~+~+~
More conversation:
Plus, really, blogging doesn’t even really exist.
gapingvoid: top ten reasons why nobody reads your blog
In which I want, I want, I WANT!
I want to see this so, so bad: Roving Mars. It’s about Mars. It’s made by Disney. It’s total space porn and it’s IMAX!
In which I rock.
I’ve rocked myself to sleep for most of my life. It’s a rather violent, whole-body rock, and if I don’t braid my hair it ends up incredibly tangled and snarled and takes twenty minutes to brush out. I’ve always preferred to sleep on mattresses on the floor, in order to avoid having to hear the sound of springs creaking.
I’ve rocked for so long that I can’t remember not doing it. My parents say I started when I was tiny. My father once commented that it was a rather autistic behavior.
When I was a kid, I worried I’d do it in my sleep at slumber parties and be teased for it. When I started sleeping with guys, I worried they’d see me doing it and think I was a weirdo. I’ve always been vaguely embarassed by it because one can’t necessarily control what one does in one’s sleep, but I’ve known a lot of people over the years and my rocking, in the grand scheme of things, really ain’t no thang comparatively.
Everyone I’ve ever slept with for more than a few nights has witnessed me rocking in my sleep. Most ask about it, I explain I’ve always done it, they say it annoys them to have the whole bed sway like that, and that’s that. I could usually manage to not do it for a few nights here and there, but I always did it when sleeping alone.
The first time I lived with someone I was sharing a bed with, I made an effort not to rock at all. I still did it sometimes in my sleep, especially when stressed or sick, but with some discomfort I managed to learn to fall asleep without rocking. It took about six months for me to learn to be able to lie down and just fall asleep while holding perfectly still.
When my first live-in relationship ended, I went back to rocking. I stopped every time I had a live-in boyfriend, and started again when I had my bed back to myself.
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Sunday’s rehearsal recapped.
I hopped into the shower at one-thirty Sunday afternoon and Bread promptly popped his head in. “Why you bathing?” he asked.
“‘Cause. S’time.”
“Wuffo?”
“Dude, Sunday. Got rehearsal.”
“Oh,” he mumbled, looking downcast. (He’s so bored. He doesn’t do well with too much leisure time.)
After dressing and finding my purse I rolled to town, stopped at Hy-Vee for the ingredients for Caesar salad and a six-pack of hard lemonade, and arrived at PK’s house.
We had another impromptu business meeting – the band as a whole is seriously considering embarking on a business venture as a group so we have to talk about it a lot – so we didn’t start playing for an hour or so. When we did play, we alternated between song-writing jams and running through previously rehearsed tunes.
WTC had written a fantastic, melodic bass line that turned into an extremely hot jam for awhile. Well, until PK reined it in – a little early, IMO – and got us focussed on writing a melody, lyric, and then a bridge.
At dinner break, I had a smoke on the deck with BvB and then made the salad and hung out with WTC while KO and GW ran for the pizzas. We all piled onto the couches in PK’s livingroom and watched 24 and chatted while we ate. I love Sunday dinner with the band, I could hang out with this group of people all the time! I usually hate hanging out with any band I’m in, but I genuinely like these people. They’re all huggy and touchy and funny and articulate, in addition to being great musicians.
It’s almost unnatural, how well we all get along.
We played again after the meal, and broke at nine. I loaned my Prince: Live at the Aladin Las Vegas DVD to the rhythm section and left. I stopped by the bar for a cocktail, and then drove home where my husband nagged me into ravishing him.
I did absolutely no laundry whatsoever the entire day.
In which there’s a full moon, Friday the 13th, and Amazon Blonde’s birthday all on the same day.
Friday night we went bowling for Amazon Blonde’s birthday.
I bowled three games (scored 111, 113, and 112) and drank a lot of cocktails. Bread bowled one game. In each of my three games I bowled a spare and two strikes in the 4th-6th frames. At least I’m consistent.
I have a hand-me-down ball that is actually a reactive ball drilled straight, so it bowls funny. I doubt I’ll ever increase my average without a new ball.
I love bowling shoes.
I hung out with lots of cool chicks.
The whole party was headed to the bar after bowling, but of course Bread didn’t want to go and so I had to go home. I was pissed and didn’t talk to him the whole drive; I can’t even count the number of events we’ve left early over the years because he didn’t want to hang out and he was driving. He’s selfish like that: must get his way, never making a little goddamned personal sacrifice for his wife.
In other news, we’re obsessed with Tang. We bought a container of it at the store and in the past 24 hours we’ve consumed like five quarts of the stuff.
In which thin-crust pizza is the best. And knitting.
Yesterday, Bread and I had lunch at Revelations. We had their house pizza – pesto, Greek olives, feta, and carmelized onions – and one of the pizzas on special, plus a salad. While we were waiting for the food, I scanned the fantasy/sci-fi section and found myself a trilogy to read. There was a buy-two-get-one-free sale on fiction, so I got $11 worth of books for $7. Yay!
This series is beautifully written. Behold: Overhead, a whirlpool of Skyhorses cantered in training circuits, and the sun was a goldfish in a blue bowl.
The sun was a goldfish in a blue bowl. Is that not gorgeous?
After we ate, I sat with Girija and Sarvani for a bit; they were knitting and I had to give them the URL to Iowa Chicks Knitting. Sarvani had picked up a stitch on the sock she was making and wanted help frogging a row but she didn’t have smaller needles with her to pick the stitches up with so she ended up tinking.
After lunch I sat in the jeep for an hour while Bread had a business meeting. Thank God I’d just bought a book, that’s all I have to say. Then we went grocery shopping and went home. There’s so much good food in the kitchen that I can’t eat for the inability to decide what to make.
In which you leave a comment, bitches.
In other news, it’s Delurking Week, so if you don’t comment I’ll – I’ll just – well, I’ll just fucking cry.
I know you’re here, I have tracking software you know!
In which you hear me sing a song that was written for me to solo on. For real.
Remember my trip to New York last September? To sing on a friend’s acapella album? Well, I saw her over New Year’s and she gave me the tracks.
She doesn’t like them and isn’t going to use them; she wants to re-record the material later this year. I don’t blame her. It’s kinda rough, really. It’s really hard to record acapella material, especially without a conductor.
But anyway. Here, for your listening pleasure, is Sweet True Love by Barbara Morillo, recorded at LiveWire studio in NYC last autumn.
I’m uploading this track specifically because, hey, this site’s all about me and I’ve got a solo in the end of it.
Enjoy! Do please tell me you love me.
VSCO
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4 random books from my Library!
![The gospel of Sri Ramakrishna [microform] - Ramakrishna](https://pics.cdn.librarything.com/picsizes/41/30/4130982-c-h200-w100-pv25_593659495077426b414d6741_v5.jpg)
