Monday, June 26, 2006

Today's Featured Blogs

I recently discovered the “Next Blog” button on blogger and now I spend a small portion of my downtime clicking to random blogs. I only read a few blogs on a semi-daily basis, all of which are left-ish political, the majority of which are funny. And sometimes I click on the links at Eschaton where I find little more than a political circle jerk, everyone discussing the same topics, typically the White House talking points, from the same perspective. That’s all fine and good. Everyone should have essentially the same opinion on what that cabal of lying murdering scum we call our government are doing to this country and most of the rest of the world. I’m happy, in fact, that people care enough to write about it and find an audience. And although it saddens me that the best of the left-ish bloggers are doomed to disillusion and failure, and that the worst of them will turn into that which they most hate, I sincerely wish them all nothing but success.

Still, I need more. I need art outside of the political. I need literature beyond the noble tradition of skewering the puffed up and the powerful. And these are the things that I find when I click the “Next Blog” button. Oh, not every time, to be sure. Not even once out of fifty, but sometimes it happens. Sometimes I find great writing. Sometimes I find art. Always I find humanity. Out there among the hordes, the forty billion or so people who have started their own blog, usually having no idea what to do with it, the people who put their diaries on-line, hoping, fearing, that anyone will read them. Finding that rare combination of people who have interesting stories to tell and can express themselves effectively is, for me at least, a genuinely awe-inspiring experience.

Anyway (removing finger from back of throat), today was a good day. It’s possible to go for weeks without finding anything the least bit interesting and then today I get two great blogs in a row.

Green Eyed Brunette is a southern California woman. She is having problems with her marriage. She and her husband are seeing a counselor. She likes to write about sex. She writes very well and her little escapade with vasodilators is hilarious.

That horrible fucking gel ignited me on FIRE (not literally, but it felt like it) and since it was on my lips and I was wrapped around his cock…you guessed it. Let’s just say that it was a very disappointing experience for all involved and ruined good night of sucking him off.

I find the whole marriage counseling thing interesting. I’ve never seen the point of it myself and can’t imagine how it could ever possibly work, but I guess it must for some people (mustn’t it?). And I especially don’t see the point in it if the couple is young and there are no kids involved. I suppose there could be financial issues, or religious nonsense, but for the most part who gives a fuck? Of course I know that the fact that I don’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there, just saying...

And as a neutral observer, I have to say the marriage prospects don’t look good. The guy doesn’t want to have sex very often, but wants a kid. I always tell people who are having relationship problems that they should get married, cause that might solve their relationship problems, and if marriage fails, they should try having a kid. It’s scary how many people actually take that advice.

Green Eyed Brunette reminds me of Some Watery Tart, although I’m not so sure t hat they really have that much in common beyond being southern Californian women, which reminded me of my experiences with southern Californian women. Those experiences were mostly painful when I was just a seventeen and eighteen year old from Hicksville run away to L.A., but in later years I’ve known several who I learned to like quite a lot. I am not the kind of guy that your typical southern California woman is attracted to as a lover or marriage material, but we can get along quite well when they are married to good friends of mine or in a Platonic relationship. I don’t mean Platonic like laying in bed talking about Plato after sex Platonic, but the kind of Platonic where people don’t even think about having sex together.

In the very next blog I found Gotta Be Me, who has a few relationship problems of her own. Let me pause here to note that I am somewhat uncomfortable doing the “Next Blog” thing and reading the intimate details of people’s lives and then sharing them with a wider audience. On one level, we can say that anyone who puts the intimate details of their lives out in such a public space has no reason to complain when others read their thoughts and link to them, since linking is the nature of the blogosphere. And although that is true, I am not an asshole in that regard and have already deleted a few posts when asked. And I have my some morals in this area. Although I have spent a lot of energy ridiculing right wing idiots on the internets and elsewhere, I have no desire whatsoever to ridicule the people like Gotta Be Me whose writing I find so intriguing. That said, I’m a little uncomfortable with linking to her particular relationship problem because it is, frankly, a bit ridiculous.

Still, that is not my point. For me,Gotta Be Me’s relationship disaster is a good story and a good story told well. It’s not worthy of a novel or a screenplay, but it could certainly be a very funny or moving scene in a novel or a screenplay. And the deeper you read into Gotta Be Me, the more interesting it gets. I never would have suspected that the naive-sounding young girl who made the unfortunate marriage proposal on a whim could have a gonzo-violent crystal meth history.
Two years ago on my birthday (July 2nd) my boyfriend at the time, who was also my drug dealer, and I were living together. We were out of drugs and I wanted him to take me out to dinner. Of course, he did not want to get out of bed because there was no meth to give the needed energy to step out of the bedroom. After a few hours of checking around we discovered that there was none to be had and I continued to harp on him, Please, Please get out of bed and take me somewhere, it is my birthday, please?

...I stormed out of the house, determined to have a happy birthday anyway, with or without him.

Along the way, I immediately starting getting phone calls from him.... The messages were horrible. It was like something out of a movie:

"Do you hear me bitch? Do you f-ing hear me? Do you hear that noise" (crashing noises in the background)

"That is your precious piano"

"You fucking bitch, you fuck with ME, see what happens?"

"You just couldn't leave me alone, could you? Well, happy birthday bitch!"

Now that is a great story and she tells it very well. It could easily be a scene in novel or movie and I think it could even be the basis of a short story or a play or possibly a film.

But of course these stories are not fiction, they are real life with real people suffering and overcoming, or not. It is me, and through me, you, who are the voyeurs, the detached readers of these narratives. I think it’s a great thing that people write their experiences, and that they write them well. Is it right that we read them? And comment on them?

You tell me.