My Enormously Presumptive and Haughty Mission Statement

This in my e-mail:

"Dude, you need to post more.  That History of the world thing was amazing.  Are you a professional writer?  I think you should be a professional writer.  Your stuff is hilarious to read when stoned.  But you need to put an entry in every day!  I need to read some good stuff between my summer school classes.  Why don't you post more?  You need to post more.  Okay, gotta run, Justice League is on."

Although this stoned young man is clearly a poor judge of talent, he raises a point worth addressing: Why don't I post every day, like a Joel Achen or an Instapundit or a Gawker or a Defamer or a Wonkette?  Like most bloggers? 

Well, first, the best-known blogs are generally quasi-news and celebrity tracker sites.  You will find no news here, or even quasi-news.  If I ever speak directly and in an opinionated manner about politics or current events, you are required by law to drive to Baltimore, take a cab to my house, and stab me repeatedly with a makeshift knife--or shiv--in the ribs.  There are plenty of people who write about politics and culture, and do it far smarter than I ever could.  Plus, I work in Washington and have lived in Hollywood, and frankly I have substantially lost any taste for dwelling upon the lives of royalty.  Once you've been backstage, the show loses its magic.

Except for those well-known blogs, pretty much all other blogs are personal journal entries.  And I don't want to bore anyone with the details of my life in an "I got up and ate me some Sugar Smacks and then I went and showered and my soap had dwinded to an unmanageable sliver" crap that blogs can be, and usually are.   You know what I'm talkiing about: pages and pages of countless diary entries cataloguing the mundane, recording the banal, interesting no one but the author.      

Let me say this and get it out of the way before moving on to my story about the Gay Bachelor Party and the Crack Whore Incident, so there is no confusion between me and you, the reader about where I stand on the issue of using blogs like a daily diary.  Here's my stance: 

I hate that shit. 

I hate that like talent hates Jenna Elfman, and refuses to be in the same room with her.  I had an ingrown hair on my upper thigh when I was 16, and it morphed into an enlarged pimple that became a blister that became a boil-type thing, filled with blood and pus, and I couldn't lance it or treat it because it was excrutiatingly painful to even look at, let alone touch, and one day in Algebra class that thing popped--I mean, I heard an audible pop--and looked down and there was a circle of red, stinking infection spreading on the front of my khaki pants, and I hated that boil and that awful, embarrassing moment, but I hate Dear Diary blogs worse than that. 

A blog should be for storytelling, for entertaining and delighting, to the extent your meager talents can, the 10 or 15 people who will ever read it.  There may only be a handful of people that ever see this, but that does not mean they have to be subjected to The Continuing Adventures of My Battles with Verizon or experience the torture of Amazing Stories of Things I Ate Today or be made to suffer The Myriad Problems of My Love Life and Why I Must Bother You With Them While Writing in Third Person Emo. 

If you are using your blog to discuss the new razor you bought or to chronicle the fabulously dull adventures of your new puppy, or to inform the whole wide world about your wedding plans, then you should be visited with the painful beatings you so richly deserve. 

Because no one wants to hear that shit.

No one.   

Here's a good rule of thumb:  If it's not something that you would discuss at a dinner party with all eyes on you, then don't put it on the page.  Contrast this:

Bob:  ...and to think that that one cab ride would inspire Jane and I to go on a safari to the Congo is crazy to us.

Jane:  It was just nuts.  I mean, who goes on a trip to Africa on a whim like that?

Carol:  That's insane!  And then to have your caravan attacked by a lion, that's unbelievable!

Jim:  God, what a great story.

(General agreement among party guests)

You:  Hey, speaking of great stories, did I ever tell you about the time I took pictures of my cat playing with my feet?  Oh MY GOD!  It's was out of control.  Out.  Of.  Control.  Okay, so I was sitting there reading the classifieds--I was looking to buy a pretty inexpensive chiffarobe--and I looked down, and my cat was pawing playfully at my toes!  He'd never done that before, so I took pictures!  Wanna see the pictures and listen to me talk for the next 15 minutes about how cute my cat is?  Especially when he is playing with my toes?

Host:  (looking around at the other guests)  I...I really think you should go.

With this:

Bob:  ...and to think that that one cab ride would inspire Jane and I to go on a safari to the Congo is crazy to us.

Jane:  It was just nuts.  I mean, who goes on a trip to Africa on a whim like that?

Carol:  That's insane!  And then to have your caravan attacked by a lion, that's unbelievable!

Jim:  God, what a great story.

(General agreement among party guests)

You:  (Pause)  I once gave a full body massage to Catherine Deneuve.

Everybody:  What??!  TELL US MORE!!

You see there?  Why be the person who makes everybody count their spoons when you can be the doyen of the dinner party, the master storyteller, the maker of worlds, the giver of life?

Look, I am under no delusion that I am the hottest thing to hit the scene since Kit Marlowe, nor am I one of these astonishingly unrealistic bloggers who thinks that their webpage will one day have a readership comparable to that of US Weekly.  If a dozen people see this page in the course of its life, then I'd be shocked.  And this is true of 99.9% of all bloggers.  But I try to live by my own rules of thumb.

So if I am blessed to have even one person stick around long enough to read what I write, then goddamn it, I'm going to be that person's monkey, and I am going to dance.

 

Comments

Dance, monkey! Dance!

[cracow_couture]

I stuck around long enough to read it but then again I am in Poland and there is nothing to do here other than watch Father Dowling Mysteries.