about july

I spent one afternoon with two people who kept calling everything weird. A man dancing in the dollar store to a kiddie piano? Weeird! Someone's brother named Setee? He's weeird! Weather? It's weeird! Strollers without mothers? That's weeird! A pamphlet with seven pieces of advice for pedestrians? How weeird! People wearing clothes from Hot Topic or pink, polka-dotted belts? Ugh, they're weeird!

Later, over the phone, they kept making jokes about someone in the background having my baby. I asked the phone person to ask this background person if our baby were an underwater dance. The person on the phone refused to say it. They were just words. Is the baby an underwater dance? See? I typed them. Just said them. My capillaries didn't fizzle. But she refused. It was "too weird."

Refused to say them!

Earlier, these two people had argued about spatulas. Two spatulas, red and blue, were ugly -- and one, white, was okay.

Also, one of these people received numerous phone calls, during which she said things like "Yeah, totally, I've just been so .. yeah, I really need to clear some time for 'hanging out.' No, no, I need to catch up on 'hanging out' with people.."

I thought it was dumb and sad, how she thought everything was weird. I wanted to tell someone about it, but she is friends with a lot of my friends, so I decided to blog about it.

Welcome to the new model of confession, Michael. There is no vestibule to cross. There are a million priests next to my speech, and none of them are certified.

I had an email discussion with John Wang about blogs. We talked about the possibility of students blogging as they learned to write. Like from third grade on. He said: "If everyone blogged we’d cut crime and juvenile delinquency and adult illiteracy down in no time. We’d also hear more about aliens and bicycles flying over mountains..."

This post has changed. I'm sorry. From talking about my disgust with the word "weird" to blogs. Blogs aren't the venerators of self-obsession. All a narcissist needs is water or body odor.

People act like blogs are old news, tiresome. But they haven't been around that long. Most ancient tribes thought written speech would erode memory. One time I memorized a three page monolog in twenty minutes. And my brain is clogged with Nickelodeon quotes.

Why shouldn't every emo-person write a blog? A weird blog. The grunt of "no one cares about their stupid life" is always more true without the blog. You have found and read more random blogs than attic diaries.

The anti-blog argument is so asinine that it makes my ankles itch, like seventy-nine trillion hobo phytoplankton trying to make me trip. It goes sort of like this: "Don't publish pointless emotional or intellectual diatribes on the internet because other people will think you're wasting their internet time. Too many people write blogs." This is like saying "don't talk to anyone when you're in a tall building; you are wasting tall building time" or "don't think when you're on a submarine; you are wasting our submarine thinking space."

Who cares if other people have already tackled emo-person's mishmash. Who gives a shit if nothing is new news. If I decide to not post this, turn off my computer, and save electricity, the electric company will save money on operating costs and use that money to expand their services through new equipment, which will be made in factories that employ oil and render my conservation useless. Most conservation is useless.

Conservatism, thinking most things are weird, is useless. The more you shun people or pretend to ignore them, the more audacious go their self-performances. Clap or spit in their ears: it's all acknowledgment currency. I want to meet Setee and give him a jackrabbit and a free coupon for Greek food.