the day evel kenievel died

I present the quintessential representation of myself through my most recent discovery, "The Blog." Naturally, one would assume that if I'm only now just discovering this concept in the year 2008, I must either--

a. not own a computer

b. live in the Swiss Alps in a hut made out of sticks

c. have a learning disability or mental impairment so severe that it has taken me the several years of "The Blog" growing in prevalence and importance to be able to spell and/or pronounce the word "blog," thus finally allowing me to begin to understand the meaning of said word.

How to explain this? I was thinking of citing a piece by St. Augustine called "About the Teacher," which I would use to explain why I've said that I'm "only now just discovering" this thing we call "The Blog." It quickly occurred to me that doing so would either--

a. confuse me

b. confuse you

c. make me seem like a pretentious dick who assists his ego in its masturbatory endeavors by citing Augustine in order to explain a reasonably simple concept.

d. make me seem smarter and better-read than I am, because to be honest, it's the only work of Augustine I've ever read.

e. alientate you

f. alientate me from myself (I'm not really sure what that means)

e. all of the above

Mind you, I've read blogs before. In fact, the impetus for beginning this blog was my having stumbled across several blogs by individuals in similar walks of life as my own (what that means specifically I will get to later on). Reading these peoples' entries, I was struck not so much by what they wrote but by the fact that they spend time writing. "Fascinating," I thought, "truly fascinating." And then I thought, "I should be writing one too!" Everyone and their grandma has a blog...well my grandma doesn't, although I'm sure if she went around reading blogs by people she identified with, she would copy and paste this very post onto her blog, being that she would share so many of the sentiments about blogs and have the same degree of blog-envy as her grandson does.

But here's the deal: I should be writing 28.5 hours every day, wearing out the letters on my keyboard, wrapping each finger in gauze to stop them from bleeding (though only for a while as it's difficult to type with gauze wrapped around one's fingers). I need to be writing...otherwise, what the hell am I doing? Studying for a class? Assaulting my housemate's Wii with hours of brain-numbing (although oh-so-beautiful) Mario Kart playing? Getting McDonald's drive-thru? Making designs out of tic-tacs with glue on contruction paper? I've explored the situation mathematically:

Studying= Positive Brain Stimulation - Pleasure - ($47,000 a year in tuition times 4 years)

Mario Kart = Pleasure + Temporal Lobe Damage - The money I lose betting on it with my housemates

McDonalds = Pleasure + e. Coli poisoning + the inability to have an erection - the $3.45 it takes to get there because my car gets 4.2 miles to the gallon - $5.52 for a Big Mac meal

Tic Tacs = Minty Fresh Breath + Tooth Decay - 89 cents a pack

Writing = Pleasure + Money (hopefully someday, though it's free in the meantime) + 140,000 virgins surrounding me at the gates of heaven - Temporal Lobe Damage

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't write at all. In fact, I do so entirely too much. I write response papers about books for class; I write letters to my mother explaining that I need her to help me out with the money for a new printer cartridge for fear that my head will explode if I attempt to print on the library's antiquated printing system; I write emails to my housemates telling them to stop being worthless pieces of shit and wash their goddamn dishes already because the sink is disgusting; I write emails to professors asking them for extensions on essays; I finish writing said essays three minutes before they are due even when I receive said extensions; I write mindless messages on Facebook to people I haven't seen in nine years and who I probably will never see again; I write text messages and instant messages to friends who I'd be better off calling for the sake of saving time (and money in the case of text messages); I write checks to the University Parking Services for $20 at a time for each of the five-hundred and fifty thousand parking tickets they give me every year; I write stories and poems, some of which I attempt to publish although thus far such labors have been unfruitful due to my inability to spell, punctuate, or compose anything coherent (this will be a topic of importance later on); finally, I write angry letters to the worthless and offensive campus newspaper, which I end up deleting for reasons I myself cannot explain.

What I'm trying to say is that writing is something that I enjoy, does not melt my brain, and something that I one day kind-of/sort-of wish to make a living out of.

I did not know what a blog was until I made one. I didn't realize how difficult it would be, how many times I would smash my face against my keyboard while coming up with a title and a URL, how how seemingly complex although truly inane my own "confessional" or "journal" writing style can be, I didn't realize that I should probably have some sort of focus to this whole bit, or perhaps a topic of some sort, to prevent from merely prattling on about my life, driving readers away by the bucketful and driving myself insane by speaking abstractly for 500-2000 words at a time about things that even I could give two shits about.

In conclusion: it only occurs to me now that I've begun how difficult this thing we call "The Blog" is. I'm only beginning to understand this as I write, therefore only beginning to discover the true essence of "The Blog."

However, because I've only used the topic of "The Blog" to begin to post because I had nothing else to talk about, if I put the words "The Blog" in parentheses one more time someone is probably going to kill me in my sleep, and because no one (including myself) really cares about blog-psychology (for lack of a better term), I think I'll drop the topic for a while. Although, for the sake of mentioning it--

a. it wouldn't be a bad idea for a thesis

b. is going to be a new genre of literature, the study of which will be my brainchild. Brilliant!

c. would be a GREAT thing to focus my blog on, although I'm already sick of talking about it after this post, and the idea of going around and checking out more blogs by other people would completely defeat the purpose of me starting the blog in the first place (note 1: that is an interesting little paradox, isn't it? Or is it?


I am tempted to delete this post.

Love,

David