What This Blogger Believes
Hi. How are you? I’m a blogger, apparently. Although I don’t like the word or term “blogger.” I call my blogs “articles” whenever I get the chance, because the word “blog” makes me think of people who write daily updates about their four cats on WordPress and uh ugh.
ANY-way, as a blogger, I am very excited to finally get to write my own personal “mission statement.” (Or whatever this is.) I have always wanted to do a mission statement, and then I want to get really famous, and then be interviewed by people about my writing. (I’d like to be interviewed by Charlie Rose, if at all possible.) …And what do all these things have in common — getting interviewed, being famous, and penning a mission statement? Well, they’re all actually easier than sitting down and writing something good and real — which is actually a pretty goddamn hard thing to do.
So any-WAY…
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WHAT THIS BLOGGER BELIEVES
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So what does this blogger believe in, anyway?
This blogger believes in liking stuff, and in liking other people who like stuff. (This blogger wishes that he could make that less vague, but he can’t.) This blogger is all about occasionally overusing the 1st person plural. This blogger is about not being snobby, about occasionally even being reverse snobby. This blogger tries not to be too sarcastic or ironic, but sometimes, he fails. This blogger likes going to thrift stores and occasionally watching televised sporting events. This blogger likes eating McDonalds food, especially the Fillet o’ Fish — but not too often. This blogger likes porn.
This blogger is not joking about any of this. This blogger believes in what J. D. Salinger said — that if you read something, and you like it, you should be able to call the author up on the phone. Therefore, this blogger is giving you his telephone number: (484) 883-8963.
This blogger realizes that someday we will all die and someday return to the stars that we were born from, not in a creepy, cult-ish or Scientologist sense, but because, as the Moby song once said, we are all made out of the subatomic particles of decaying stars. Because we will all one day die and return to those stars, in the interim, we should all be as nice to one another as we possibly reasonably can.
This blogger believes in run-on sentences and the excessive use of semi-colons. And because we’re all going to die and go back to those afore-above-mentioned stars, this blogger does not believe in wasting time in discussing the following things: philosophy, awful poetry, things where the only point is to be mean or make fun of someone else (with the exception of the G.O.P. presidential candidates — ChristdoesRomneysuckorwhat? Though I sort of miss Herman Cain now), current events (with the exception of the G.O.P. candidates), music reviews, movie reviews, book reviews.
Instead of doing stuff like that, this blogger will concentrate on writing funny, quasi-funny, and sad and interesting stuff, because really, what else is there? This blogger would like to be your friend. He would like to hang out with you — why else would he give you his phone number? This blogger would like to hang out all night, and possibly get drunk, maybe even in the same bed, with parts of us awkwardly touching but not quite hugging or making out, sort of like in that movie, Lost in Translation, with Bill Murray and the skinny girl.
This blogger would like to say more, though this blogger realizes that he has a tendency to ramble on. Instead of saying more, the blogger would like to quote, approvingly, the following quote from Dave Eggers, who has always been a source of inspiration for this blogger, even though his second book was bad and even though he, like us, is occasionally too sarcastic.
Here is the quote. It is from a book where he talks about the death of both of his parents:
–Are you sure you want to be telling me all this?
All what?
–About your parents, the paranoia…
What am I giving you? I am giving you nothing. I am giving you things that God knows, everyone knows. They are famous in their deaths. This will be my memorial to them. I give you all these things, I tell you about his legs and her wigs — I do so later in this section — and relate my wondering if I should be having sex with my girlfriend in front of their closet the night of my father’s service, but after all that, what, in the end, have I given you? It seems like you know something, but you still know nothing. I tell you and it evaporates. I don’t care — how could I care? I tell you how many people I have slept with (thirty-two), or how my parents left this world, and what have I really given you? Nothing. I can tell you the names of my friends, their phone numbers—
Marny Requa: 415-431-2435
K.C. Fuller: 415-922-7893
Kirsten Steward: 415-614-1976
But what do you have? You have nothing. They all granted permission. Why is that? Because you have nothing, you have some phone numbers. It seems precious for one, two seconds. You have what I can afford to give. You are a panhandler, begging for anything, and I am the man walking briskly by, tossing a quarter or so into your paper cup. I can afford to give you this. This does not break me. I give you virtually everything I have. I give you all of the best things I have, and while these things are things that I like, memories that I treasure, good or bad, like the pictures of my family on my walls I can show them to you without diminishing them. I can afford to give you everything. We gasp at the wretches on afternoon shows who reveal their hideous secrets in front of millions of similarly wretched viewers, and yet… what have we taken from them, what have they given us? Nothing. We know that Janine had sex with her daughter’s boyfriend, but… then what? We will die and will have protected… what? Protected from all the world that, what, we do this or that, that our arms have made these movements and our mouths these sounds? Please. We feel that to reveal embarrassing or private things, like, say, masturbatory habits (for me, about once a day, usually in the shower), we have given someone something, that, like a primitive person fearing that a photographer will steal his soul, we identify our secrets, our pasts and their blotches, with our identity, that revealing our habits or losses or deeds somehow makes one less of oneself. But it’s just the opposite, more is more is more — more bleeding, more giving. These things, details, stories, whatever, are like the skin shed by snakes, who leave theirs for anyone to see. What does he care where it is, who sees it, this snake, and his skin? He leaves it where he molts. Hours, days or months later, we come across a snake’s long-shed skin and we know something of the snake, we know that it’s of this approximate girth and that approximate length, but we know very little else. Do we know where the snake is now? What the snake is thinking now? No. By now the snake could be wearing fur; the snake could be selling pencils in Hanoi. The skin is no longer his, he wore it because it grew from him, but then it dried and slipped off and he and everyone could look at it.
This blogger agrees wholeheartedly. More is more is more. Sharing is good. Communication is good. This blogger wishes that he was as good at expressing that as Dave Eggers is, but unfortunately, he is not.
Because more is more is more, this blogger pledges to tell you everything about himself, to not prevaricate or hide details in the interests of “being cool.” This blogger will do his best to tell you every last embarrassing funny awkward unpleasant detail of his life, even at the risk of saying too much or being boring. This blogger will do his best to tell you all of these things — except if telling you these things would cause the blogger’s parents to cry or cause the blogger’s friends to stop hanging out with the blogger.
This blogger is about done now. In fact, he really can’t think of anything else to say, at the moment. But this blogger thanks you for listening and hopes that, wherever you are at the moment, you are having fun.
Thanks and ave atque vale,
Your pal,
The blogger.