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Firstly there's the deal about that I did actually change the format of this website a bit during 2008, so I mean it's not like I've forgotten about it although the entire world is as indifferent to it as ever. Chances are you were never going to read this until I told you about the website, and if I did, you're probably annoyed about it now. I'm starting to get a bit annoyed, too. I'm basically reusing an old format because I am either too lazy or forgot how to code HTML. So much to say after two years absence. Apparently I've grown up a bit. Evidently I have not, and I have compared older writings to this one and the results are encouraging but honestly: let's not get ahead of ourselves. There is no new school movement here – the same old bullshit applies and probably abounds. That said, fuck the old school: I plan to be taking it to all to task. That means that I am going to attempt a modicum of respectability, which means, sadly, that I am going to cut back on the expletives and begin to write even more scathingly about the Reds. This attempt at a proper website is mostly because I stumbled, maybe a week ago, upon the fact that this website or its earlier iteration are evidence that I have been self-published for the better part of four years. Meanwhile I was having fits of pure dread about ever getting published. I still haven't been published (by anyone but myself) and hope is wearing thin. It is January 2009 and I keep thinking it is 2008. The other day I dated my notes 2007. Delusions of youth, I tell you what... I may reuse code but I don't ever reuse jokes, or writing styles. Anything and everything on this website (or its ancestors) is probably among the freshest, embarrassingly earnest, outright pretentious stuff on the internet*. Well I would reuse certain jokes except I'm not certain they go over well with the ghosts who read this site. They might be funnier than me, and that thought is terrifying. I always have the inexplicable urge to write yet another personal story into the website. I always have ideas for articles, or writings that would be interesting, funny, and filled with the very spirit of brevity. Those go horribly awry, too. Which leaves me with the personal stories, and I'm never very certain about those. On one hand a personal story on a person's website may appear unaffected and unremarkable; the other, it would appear a bloggish thing to do. Caught between these extremes, the internet writer becomes a parsimonious pariah, who keeps his best to himself and whores you out to the flea-ridden stories he flogs half to death every time he greets the keyboard. This leads me, predictably, to my next question. How does one tell a personal story in the least personal manner possible, so that the leering hordes of the internet cannot malign it? One has to attain a sort of journalistic rapport with events as they happened. This leads to some intense self-editing, and possibly uniquely in my case: self-loathing. A moderately amusing story:
becomes thus...
And everyone's left displeased. And I am left not knowing what went wrong, but of course that something went wrong and if I could only apply myself to fix it the whole endeavor might be worth my time. And I go on, ultimately, to wonder why people don't ever come to this website**. Which is a stupid question to begin with. A question so stupid that it tempts me to close this writing business up right now, throw it haphazardly onto the Other Page, and call it a done deal. But that would be stupid of me, because I haven't had a chance to vindicate myself. I am going to talk about the website a bit more, because this is the first time in a while even I have visited it. It's kind of fun. I guess it's a sort of revival effort, and it's either too late or too early for that. There you have it. I hope you're enjoying the experience. 
This is some old promotional art for the website. It's quite an image because it has a gritty urbanness which is accentuated by the lo-fi aspect of the picture. The text, however, is a bad colour of red, looks a bit too jagged, and is generally unpleasant and malformed. Still, it doesn't cover up the best part of the photo so it's not exactly horrible. It's just not up to snuff, is all. The text function on my copy of Microsoft Paint must have disabled itself, you see. My current image trickery will be limited because I don't really have a lot saved up yet. There are some interesting pictures online that I can use, but that's a lazy resort. It's more professional to have your own material, even though that material is often less professional. I look on it as a fact of pride that a page is coded by hand, and I imagine that the entire internet would deride me mercilessly for that. You know what? I ain't shook. I hate to get ahead of myself, though. Linking to another picture is probably the most fantastic thing about doing the website thing. Say I have to make a joke. Jokes are hard to make, and probably translate poorly over the internet. Sarcasm is a nonentity. Everything you write has the potential to simply confuse people. As an internet writer you have no idea what's going on, so you need a point of reference with your audience. A point of rapport. They say a picture says a thousand words, but the important part is the viewer decides on what those thousand words are. 
There's probably a good seventy-five thousand words in that picture, but it would take a team of researchers to come up with them. Unfortunately sometimes an internet image search leads to pictures that have few hilarious qualities but are still too profound to ignore. So there's not a single cheap joke I can make about that picture and that is supposed to reduce my internet writing quality? It doesn't even affect me; this is a highbrow site now. This is some meta-reflexive knee-jerk nonsense, and therefore I don't have to end every paragraph with a killer one-liner. You bunch of guntflaps. Some say it's a bad habit to write unconvincingly but I think it's just a form of experimentation with language. If you don't understand it, then you should probably consider reading a bit more. Besides which, experimentation with writing is pretty much all a person can do if they want to be writing anything useful or novel (if they want people to pay attention). And since all writing is useless: congratulations, writers of the world! I for one don't have any inside information on Hollywood sensations, and since I've been living without a TV I don't really have so much to say that I know will go over well. Because I'd like to turn this into the World's Last Internet Gossip Website. The last time I saw Lost they were trapped on this lush yet creepy island, and someone was smuggling little bags of almonds out of a crashed spaceship. This is the last paragraph of my first internet writing thing in two years. You see, I think it's important to draw as much attention as possible to the two years this site spent gathering dust. The funny thing is, it didn't age. And now, in order to consider it at all worthy, I have to make it age. Which means that you'll probably be led back to a sweet new Homepage: Homepage Otherpage * The internet is full of pretentious assfucks, and I can't really claim any similar level of greatness. Nevertheless I feel the need to point out the existence of pretentious assfucks of all creeds. Also if a good type of professionalism is reached on this website, it will become less pretentious by proxy. This is how one knows that the situation has just gotten serious. ** People don't come here because I'm lazy and do not advertise myself enough. At the same time, it's weird to give out your website to people, and how exactly do you introduce people to something which is arguably always going to be self-indulgent and obscure? What's the value of this website? Lets just say it's a good thing I'm not in the habit of answering stupid questions. |
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