It’s Riddled With Insane People

There I am! Everyday me on the left and blogging me on the right with my miraculous dagger boobs.

Child: Where are you going?

Mother: I have reservations for NY on the 6th and 7th of August.

Child: Your whole family is in NY, why aren’t you staying with them?

Mother: Well, this is for some sort of conference.

Child: What kind?

Mother: Uhhh, something from the internet.

Child: You said the internet is filled with 70-year-old ex cons and child molesters trying to lure us to another state and kidnap us. What makes you think this conference doesn’t have those things?

Mother: Well, (long pause) I guess I can’t be sure that there AREN’T any convicts or murderers but I’m pretty sure I have tangible proof that at least a few of these bloggers are on the up and up.

Child: What do you mean, BLOGGERS?

Mother: Well, I guess I blog sometimes.

Child: What!!?? You have a secret life?

Mother: No, it’s not like I’ve got another family across the country that I’m hiding or anything..

Child: LIAR!

Mother: Whatever, I’m going and none of you are coming with me.

Child: That’s not fair. We are going to start a blog to protest your stupid blog and then we are going to your conference with picket signs.

Mother: Enough with the “it’s not fair” bullshit, adults don’t run off to New York and come home in a body bag, kids do.

Child:  Oh yeah? You’ll see. Grandma says that the internets are riddled with mouth breathers who “rent” their elderly mom’s basement apartment and hone their serial killing skills. Just like Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, but without the outfit made entirely of human skin.  You just want a weekend alone, you’re probably going to the spa.

Mother: Just because there may be a back rub and a trip into the sauna that does not mean it’s a spa. It’s a regular old hotel. Plus it’s time to stop listening to Grandma. She’s old and afraid of dying so everything looks to be a perilous journey that holds things that only your wildest imagination can convieve of.  Remember how she insisted there were a ring of fanny pack raiding professional thieves at Disney World who “STOLE HER CREDIT CARD!”?  Then she calmed down and found it in her left pants pocket?

Child: Do you write anything mean about us on that blog?

Mother: (under breath) You have no fucking idea. Cough, cough. No I only write nice things and observations about current events. I even have an alias so that no one from real life has ANY idea except Daddy! I’m like Barbara Gordon by day and Batgirl in the evenings when I type out all my frustrations and destroy crime.

Child: (crickets chirping)

Mother: It’s just for two days and I’ll be home. Consider it my birthday gift to myself.

Child: If some hobo doesn’t kill you and throw you in his card board box.

One week people.

Food For Thought

In the wee hours of the evening when everyone in this house is either sound asleep or otherwise occupied, I usually find time to poke around on the Internet. As I’ve said before, I am utterly ASTOUNDED by the sheer number of people blogging and the number of sites that exist for that sole purpose. My buddies all set out fearlessly ,wrote with abandon, putting themselves out there and were rewarded handsomely. Followers, advertising, accolades. I dipped my toe in (as is the cowards way) and toiled away in happy obscurity telling NO ONE , that I had even attempted typing a sentence much less a crappy little blog.  It just seemed so….self indulgent.   Real writers pen books, I told myself. Besides, you need to be raised Italian or Greek to properly cultivate the creative neurosis of a Sedaris or Notaro. That shit doesn’t come easy, you need to suffer for it.  I see blogging more on the level of  journal keeping with a twist.  This keeps the writer out of harms way and impervious to criticism, because as I just found out, no matter how hard you scrub you can’t remove the stain of failure. It permeates your clothes and eventually your soul. 

Tonight I spent some time on blogher.com and tossed a previously unused entry of mine over the fence to see how I felt about it.  www.blogher.com/mensa-mean 

I guess I’ll see if it still seems like good idea in the morning.