No doubt some of you have noticed that my output, of late, has been spotty and shoddy. "Why," you ask, "can't the American Mastodon regale me bi-daily with his whimsical tales of retards, wolves, small-breasted women, and Tom Friedman?" The answer, of course, is that this isn't about what you want, you greedy bastards, it's about what I need, and what I need is to finally figure out what this whole ticker-tape parade is all about. Let me explain.
I started blogging about a year ago because I was working at a really boring, shitty job. Probably like most of you pathetic assholes. So, with nothing better to do than read "the trades" or talk shop with Betty down the hall, I started blogging. Oy vey!
Well, it's a year later, and look where it's gotten me. My job still sucks and my life is just as pathetic, lonely, and unfulfilling as it was a year ago, with the sole exception being that right now I'm listening to Teenage Fanclub's "December" and last year I was probably listening to the Sleepy Jackson or some tripe. You see, even when we slide backward we still can't help but move forward, or something.
The fact is, I need to decide what I want to do with my life. As some of you know, I've narrowed it down to being a neurologist, taxidermist, landscape architect, blown-glass artist, filmmaker, journalist, allergist, urban planner, shaman, mystic, oracle, or bum. Nowhere on that list do you see "blogger". Nor, to be honest, is there room.
And let's also face facts. Blogging is a lot like those MTV Real World/Road Rules challenges. You start watching at one in the afternoon on a Sunday and pretty soon you realize that it's six o'clock and you've wasted your entire day. It's not like it's good television - you're not going to ever buy the DVD when it comes out. It's just that you're a lazy ass with nothing better to do than watch other people act like idiots at adult summer camp. Well, maybe blogging is different than that. But if this is the day of my blogging tenure, then it's getting to be around six o'clock and I'm starting to get hungry for some Taco Bell.
Besides, blogging is dying, people. Look around you and you'll see the scattered remains of people who've tried it and decided that it's not worth it. I mean, yeah, they're fun and silly, but does the world need more fun and silly? Aren't we all just sort of prolonging our adolescence? What's up with this generation? We don't really want to grow up, we want everything to be a joke. Maybe it's because I live in LA, where 50 year olds act like they're thirteen, or maybe it's because I live in America, where we expect everything to always work out for us because we live in the Greatest Country Ever, or maybe it's finally the result of parents who actually did give their kids everything they wanted, and the result of this long succession of better-lives-than-our-parents is just confusion and self-hate and unjustified entitlement or maybe, just maybe, I take myself too seriously and can't reconcile the incessant and binding morality of my superego with the bounding recklessness of my id, and just how that all seeps into my decision to stop blogging should alert you to the fact that yes, I do take things way too seriously, yes I do think about things way too much, yes I do want my life to be more than the sum of flippant comments about bands or movies or books that I may or may not like, that I don't want to maintain old friendships through the comment section of my blog, that if I really am to be a happy, glass-blowing neurologist (who spends part of the year at his Peruvian clinic/studio), then I better get off this pot, or shit, or shit and then get off the pot, or just stop fucking around waiting for something to happen.
Basically, I can think of better ways to spend my time. These include looking for other jobs, writing something of actual quality, and acting like I'm reading the trades when really I'm reading the New Yorker or Scientific American: Mind. Of course I may still post things on a weekly or every other weekly basis, but don't count on anything consistent or significant. Just like Mr. Fisher, whose website seems to be fucked right now but who last night performed his own hari-kari, and for whom I couldn't be happier. Not because his blog was insufferable, but because I know Danny and I think he should just concentrate on being what he's trying to be right now. And if blogging factors into that, good, but if not, so be it.
Why all this endless justification? I don't know. I guess maybe because part of me feels like I'm letting some of you and myself down. Which is just absolutely ridiculous, if you think about it. What sort of fruits were to ever come from this labor? Obviously, none. This was just supposed to be a fun little place for me to ramble for my friends. Well, I'm done rambling. It's time to put this walking fossil to rest.
Fuck all y'all, and peace in the Middle East.
Monday, June 06, 2005
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14 comments:
Why you gotta go and point out the lack of clothes on this emperor? Of COURSE it's about ego. Cheap, tiny little methadone shots of ego boosts.
I promise I'll start hating Coldplay if you come back.
The AM was a good bowler, and a good man. He was...he was one of us. He was a man who loved the outdoors, and bowling, and as a surfer he explored the beaches of southern California from La Holla to Leo Carillo, and up to Pismo. He ended his blog.. he ended it as so many young men of his generation before his time, and in your wisdom, Lord, you took him. Just as you took so many bright, flowering young men at Khe San, and Lan Doc, and Hill 364. These young men gave their lives, and so did the AM. The AM who loved bowling. And so, American Mastodon.. in accordance with what we think your dying wishes might well have been....we commit your final mortal remains to the bosom of the internet, which you loved so well. Goodnight, sweet prince.
Color me heartbroken.
is this thing on?
so it is.
sweet lord. a farewell letter. a call to authenticity, no less. and that's a good thing. well good luck, goddess bless, and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out of the blogosphere, or whatever.
And, in doing so, you fulfilled the ultimate blogging cliche.
Were what you say about getting off the pot true, I'd endorse your decision 100%. Perhaps I'm a cynic, but somehow I still don't think you'll have time for the mastodon script....
this is the final straw. i can't keep my mouth shut anymore.
Hey, let's go grab a beer, now that we've got nothing better to do.
How dare you! I come here in the wee hours of the night for mindless entertainment and you give me a sentimental suckerpunch on your way out the door. I might as well move to Africa.
You will be missed, assuming you actually go away. I hope for your sake you don't get drawn back in by the immediacy of it. Blogging is a sick scam perpetrated by the Bush administration to make us waste our time and energy. Start shopping your short stories to literary journals. If nothing else, you can say you're published, which looks swell on a resume. Also, there are a lot of cults in Southern California...
TJ: Did I ever leave? Was I ever here? Is it possible that I'm like the David Blaine of the blogosphere? Next week I plan on blogging from a glass box suspended above the Great Salt Lake.
KK: These men are nihilists, Donny, they won't hurt you.
JS: I think that perhaps the defining fault of your personality, if there is one, is that with you, there is no discernable difference between sincerity and sarcasm.
TS: Go away. Gawd.
Cabin: Color you a cynic? Never!
Isabella: I wondered how you might take the news. Wait, no I didn't.
DF: Let's go with the hard stuff. Straight-up bender. I've got pills.
Anon: Finally, someone agrees with me! Let's move to Africa...together!!
Rob: I thought Jimmy Saffron was bad, but Jesus, I can't determine what among that was authentic and what wasn't. But I do appreciate the sentiment nonetheless. I still plan on blogging, just not as frequently, not as negatively, not as flippantly, and not as sexily (as it gets the older ladies and some of the younger men too hot and/or bothered). I think most of all, I just need to get off the internet for most of the day. And so on.
Also, if you click on Russell Crowe's face, it goes to a video of him acting like a douche.
that smarts, but not enough to convince me to refrain from leaving you another comment -- i'm just that egocentric. Leaving comments on peoples blogs with opinions.
I'M A MONSTER!
I was being sincere. And never say I'm worse than Jimmy Saffron. His comment was pure venom, the way I read it.
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