Breaking the Silence

Two months?! What happened to my blogging habits? I can't believe it's been so long since I've blogged.

It... reminds me... of something...


The warrior bard came upon his blog, lying wounded on the forest floor, pierced by many arrows with the name "Zuckerberg" inscribed along the length of each. The bard knelt down and gingerly prepared to remove one of the arrows from the blog.

The blog placed its hands over the bard's wrists and spoke in pained breaths, "Leave it. It is over. The world of Blogspot will fall, and all will come to darkness, my website to ruin."

The bard regarded the fallen blog with somber determination, tears welling up in his eyes. He softly asserted, "I do not know what strength is in my blood, but I swear to you, I will not let Land of Song fall, nor our readers forget."

The blog's eyes became distant. "Our readers," the blog repeated, with more than a touch of pride.


Between my job and the demands of my misleadingly named "free time," I realized that my imparting of personal updates or impersonal musings were more expediently accomplished by way of Facebook, condensing them into bite-sized morsels and disseminating them at a fairly even pace. The blog, as shoot-from-the-hip-and-don't-worry-about-cohesiveness-or-proofreading as it could be sometimes, still required too much foresight or motivation to use as a venue anymore.

But I have Facebook friends who don't read the blog (even though I post each new entry to my wall) and blog readers who aren't my Facebook friends, so there's probably a lot I could blog about to catch up. And, perhaps soon, I still will. But, for now, I just wanted to stir up the coals and toss a bit of kindling on the dying embers.

Either I'll forgo Facebook status updates in favor of posting links to the blog, or I'll just segregate their respective functions. Maybe the deeper musings and more well-constructed thoughts will be Blogger's domain, while random humor will be relegated entirely to Facebook. I don't know. All I'm saying is, I'm still here.

Really quickly, I want to mention something that I talked about on Facebook. A while back, someone responded to the "if you see something, say something" wisdom and reported my dark humor to a detective in Bowling Green, Ohio. Someone who was still at BGSU, someone whom I deemed reasonable enough to add as a friend on Facebook, actually misjudged me so incomprehensibly as to think that I was threatening a violent return, because I had also mentioned Josh K's wedding this July, about a half an hour's drive from BG. Someone took that as an "intent" to return and make a scene. (By the way, I'm not going to the wedding because the logistics of such a trip would make it pure insanity.)

So, yeah. Someone actually reported me for supposedly making threats. It's absurd, insulting, and hurtful. I unfriended sixteen people as a result of it. I didn't know who it was, who could be that stupid and unhelpful as a friend (if you think I'm troubled, you're supposed to reach out to me as a friend, hence the Facebook-bestowed rank of "friend," dipshit!). I had several suspects, and I realized that the fact that anyone could even make it onto the list of suspects clearly meant that we had an irreconcilable problem.

So, if for some magical reason you were one of those I unfriended but still actually check my blog (I doubt anyone fits the bill), then you know why I disappeared from your contacts. And, in turn, you must be offended as well that I could possibly misjudge you.

Anyway, the detective probably knew it was bullshit but had to follow up. We had a friendly chat. I did not muzzle my sarcasm, though. It was a waste of my time as much as it was a waste of his. And then I went to Facebook and posted a slew of zingers on the subject. Made some people laugh. But I felt betrayed, and I felt a sense of loss over dropping sixteen contacts just to be sure. Some of those people I would regularly read their posts, but not after this.

It is important to note that everything I say is weighed carefully--considered and reconsidered--before posting. Therefore, everything I said about anyone--whether a direct reference or sly insinuation--was calculated well in advance. I knew that my criticisms could get back to certain individuals, and in fact I was counting on it. In a way, my plan had succeeded beyond my wildest aspirations. But how anyone read them as threatening still confounds me. (Fucking idiot!)

That's the short of it. I could have made a full post just on this subject, and I practically have already, but I'm at work, and can't afford the mental focus to compose a well-written essay.

Actually, that occurred just a couple days after my last post, and that's probably the biggest reason why I haven't posted: for a while, I was turned off of blogging, especially since I knew my posts were being read by some investigator in BG. I just needed a break, but then I lost too much momentum to get back on the horse again.

At the end of March, I opened what looked like junk mail, and turned out to be an invitation to a private reception ("business casual") on a condo rooftop in downtown Austin, to meet the new president of BGSU, of all people. My mind reeled, wondering what the BGSU president was doing in Austin to begin with, and then I pondered how I could meet my long-loathed erstwhile professor nemeses. Never mind running into them this summer at the wedding in Ohio--they were coming to me!

And then I saw that the date of the event was mid-October. This was old, old mail. I don't know how it fell through the cracks, but I guess I tossed it in a pile of junk mail to throw out, and eventually decided to read it all. The lesson is: open all of your mail, and open it immediately. What an opportunity I missed!

Really, though, not much has changed in the two months since my last post. Justin McAninch (my roommate from Truman) visited in March, and we had a blast. I guess that should have been an epic blog post, but it's a little late for that.

I got a digital camera, a new mattress from IKEA, and a membership to 24 Hour Fitness, so I've taken three great strides at improving my quality of life. Other than that, I can't think of what else to say.

...except this: Facebook sucks.