It's funny how this blogging thing comes about. I don't know how you got into it, but although I've been an on-line kinda guy for eight or so years now--having racked up months of time in various chat rooms--I never read any blogs. I knew they existed. Heard some were funny. Never read them.

How did it start...

A friend sent me a link to a page on the St. Louis City Paper, The Riverfront Times. Something about a band. I read it and commented, but I was much more interested in the "HOOK UP WITH ME TONIGHT!" ad on the side of the screen. It was a link to the singles service that the Riverfront Times uses.

I signed up immediately and looked for people in the St. Louis area. I grew up there, so maybe I'd see someone I knew. Yes, the chances are stupid, but what else do you do on a singles page when you're not a single?

It had been a while since I'd had any sort of internet addiction. Chatting, porn, chess... They've all come and gone. How can searching through women by age group and zip code like they were so many jackets on a shitty mall store rack not be a temporary fixation? The questions in the forms are stupid, sure, but that's part of the fun. I WANT to know what celebrity you think you look like. Almost everyone said, after listing the name of the resembled star, "or so I'm told." A natural repetitive phrase. I like those.

I soon got tired of searching through the lonely of St. Louis, which is when I found out that this service is nationwide, getting picked up by various on-line sites everywhere. I can look for women in Iowa! (I did.)

So then I started looking for people in D.C. I found HUNDREDS more people. I guess the wimmins in D.C. are just lonelier.

I found a really cute girl who lives only a few miles from me. I really liked her personality (as much of it as I could determine from that goofy questionnaire). She was cute, first of all (blurred picture, but enough to make out what's important). She had a good prose style. She didn't use the standard "I'm a woman and a professional and something of a slob and sexy and well-read but I only said I'm something of a slob so you won't think I'm conceited." Amazing how many clichés pop up when the masses are told to pour their personalities into a form.

So this girl was not form-like. She was cool. I liked her a lot and wanted to say hello. Here's where I found out that in order to contact anyone, you have to pay a whole dollar.

That's not a big deal. I hope I'm never so hard up that I can't invest a buck in chatting with a stranger who seems cool. But you can't just spend one dollar, you have to buy twenty-five dollars worth of credits.

Like I'm going to strike up conversations with twenty-five people I don't even know. How many interesting people can there possibly be on this damn site?

I almost paid the money (yes, she seemed that cool). But this girl was smarter than those other girls. She had written in one of her profile answers the name of her blog, adding that "maybe, just maybe, if you ran a google search... and you did a little reading, you'd find out whether you'd like to get to know me or not."

(You aren't allowed to put e-mail or web addresses in your profile for obvious business reasons, but apparently the trolls who roam those boards aren't all that careful.)

I did a quick web search and found her blog. It was a nice blog, going back almost two years. I spent a few days reading her entries, getting more and more enchanted and wondering why this girl felt the need to put up a profile on a singles board? She's cute, smart, funny, and admired by at least hundreds of internet readers, probably more. She was even nominated for a blog awards (I forget which one. Wil Wheaton won it two years ago).

Reading her blog, I thought, "Wow, the proverbial Beautiful Human Being." What an interesting life she's had, and what great insights she offers for otherwise insignificant events. She instantly charms her readers without using a single idiotic affectation. How amazing is that?! I'd really like to know this girl. So I sent her an e-mail that ended up being much longer than I meant it to be. I didn't notice the typos and shitty wording until after I sent it. Here I didn't even know the girl and already I was feeling like I wore the wrong outfit to the school dance. Maybe I did. I never got a response.

A few weeks later, I wrote another e-mail, telling her my other one was much too long for an introductory e-mail, and dammit, I don't even know if I wrote to the correct address (Is it possible to be that stupid?). Write back. You sound cool.

Again, no response.

I got to thinking that she's just really, really busy. She's probably spending all her time warding off the freaks who write to her daily and tell her that, unlike everyone else, they get her, so move in with me here in my mom's basement in Memphis, 'cause you'll like my weird pets and never having to work again outside of good ol' Woman's Work and Marital Duties...

Do blog celebrities use special spam guards?

As I mentioned, I'm not single. I didn't and don't want any sort of fuckaround fling. She just seemed really cool, and somewhat lonely, and close by (same county, at least). And I know I'm not a freak and that I'm generally fun to be around. So I thought we'd make good friends.

Whenever I think of "making friends," I immediately think of all the times in my life I tried to do so and failed miserably (especially in grade and middle school). I have never made a friend. All of my friends "happened," for one reason or another. I don't have a single friend that I didn't meet at either work or school, our relationship building over varying periods of time into familiarity and then friendliness. Making a friend these days seems way too close to stalking, especially if the object of your interest is someone you found about on an internet singles page.

So I never met her or heard from her or had any interaction with her at all, but I did read her blog, which lead to several other blogs, and now I'm again experiencing that bizarre feeling of familiarity you get with any group when you start to know a few of its better known people, words, and phrases. Sorta like after you read a Star Trek encyclopedia and run into a Trekker at a comic shop somewhere. You can get what he's saying, even if you can't get all he's saying.

Like today, at the library, I picked up "Never Threaten to Eat Your Co-Workers: Best of Blogs." Flipping through it, I recognized at least half the names. After getting home, I looked up some of the blogs I hadn't yet read. (How did I miss Ali Davis's great porn clerk entries?) I enjoyed the majority of these blogs. I like that blogs mostly consist of ideas or experiences that are shared without regard to how well they can be marketed. The only reason anything is punched up or deleted lies solely with the discretion of the writer. This is too personal, too stupid, too boring. Or maybe it's not. Read it. If you don't like it, fuck off. A good attitude, I'd say.

Lately I've been reading a lot by Harlan Ellison, just starting his "Watching" book of essays about film. It seems very blog-like to me. What's the difference between a book of essays and a blog, anyway, except that one's been edited, revised, and edited again, and the other is fresh and new and shitty with only one person to blame and honor? The idea is the same.

By the by, Ellison and William Goldman are my two favorite writers in the film field. They're such assholes! But passionate ones, and I love them for that.

I hate the phrase "But I digress," even when I do. I could have called this blog "TangentMan." I didn't because that would be dumb.

Back to the girl: Very soon after not hearing from her, I started this blog. Still not sure why. I'm sure I thought it'd be fun, and unlike those others who are too lazy to commit to anything, I won't ever go more than a week without writing something.

Hurm...

Did I complete a point here? I think I was writing about how I found out about blogs. I also think I had something of a nice little story in mind. Once again, I rambled.

I'm a bit too tired at the moment to rework this entire entry. Should blogs be edited at all? Doesn't that kill the spontaneity? Do you ever wonder if someone spends hours writing the perfect blog, then goes back and puts in a few typos so it'll look like he just quickly tossed off something from the back of his mind? Does "tossed off" make you think of masturbation?

Y'know, looking over this page, I notice I wrote this entire entry without mentioning the girl's name or blog. I'm not sure why I did that.

Okay, now it's ten minutes later and I'm still not sure why I did that. Does anyone care? This is a blog, after all, so probably not.

Ah, I see. I'm thinking if I put her name in here, she'll find it somehow (searching the web for references to her site, you see), dig up the two e-mails I sent to her, write to me, and say, "Wow, you sound like great fun! Let's go hang out and not have sex!" But then I'd always wonder if she's thinking I'm really a psychotic freak in my mom's basement in Memphis, who stole the bulk of this entry from someone else and put it here to make it sound like I'm not a freak, and then, at last, when she least expects it...

I'm really not paranoid. But I do like to think up funny stuff.

Her name is--


Ha! Now it's about three weeks later (June 27 at 4:45 A.M).

I DID post here name here, but now I'm taking it down. Why? Still can't give you a clear reason.

But it don't matter, do it? Nobody's reading this goofy thing. Call it bonus points if you've REALLY been here since the beginning. If you haven't, then I'm glad your life is interesting enough to not spend it reading the blogs of unknown and unaccomplished people.

I feel like popcorn!