No Wonder I Don't Have Any Readers

This article will change the way I blog.  To quote Xiyin Tang:

It's like, why go to a party if you're not going to get your picture taken?

I'm intrigued.  Continue.

It’s either documented online for other people to see or it’s not, but either way you’re still doing it.  So my philosophy is, why hide it?

My (new) sentiment exactly.  Why squirrel away stuff no one cares about when you can share it with the world?  Selfish much? 

In the spirit of compulsory sharing, I offer the following secondary elaboration of a dream I had last night:

I fell asleep and woke up in August of 2001.  I tried to tell people about 9/11 but only one man believed me.  His name: Tony Gwynn.

We attempted to warn the nation on Charlie Rose, but were shouted down by the studio audience.  Jay Leno called Tony a racist.

We took a cab to the Houston airport and tried to board the plane, but Tony couldn't find the "Mohammad Atta" identification he'd purchased.  Someone yelled my name and we saw a chicken.

I feel so much better now that I'm not hiding it.  Now, which one of you has the camera? 

I'm ready for my shoot.

Comments

[CR]

we saw a chicken

Obviously, a condensation of Tony's anxieties into your own. He really had nothing to worry about, though:

career avgs:

Boggs: .328
Gwynn: .338

But, then again, the Chicken Man got to ride the pony.

[CR]

I feel sort of good about about your non-us readership (looking at you Adam Roberts) having no bloody clue what I'm talking about. Adds to the mystique, you know.

(Very nicely, they just added the Mets channel to my cable line-up. I was SOL watching the other league last year...)

[Adam Roberts]

Is that "non-us" or "non-U.S."? Or do the two conflate for you, CR? ("You're either for US or against US..." after all)

[The Constructivist]

You missed the most relevant passage: "When I was in high school, you'd have to be a megalomaniac or the most popular kid around to think of yourself as having a fan base." So how does it feel to have a fan base?

[SEK]

CR, you know, this is one of those moments when I'm liable to be convinced Freud's right. I transcribed that dream straight -- came from my dream journal, which, yes, I still keep, if only to amuse myself -- without even making that connection. But there's a damn fine reason for a San Diego icon showing up when you're dreaming about a San Diego icon. Or, at the very least, there should be.

Adam, here's what CR and I are talking about. I must admit, however, to liking this picture better.

Constructivist, I don't have a fan base, I have an audience. If I had a fan base, I'd actually post my dream journals so everyone would get to know me better. I've thought about writing something about this for some time, actually, because it connects with much of what I taught those four years I spent in a literary journalism department; namely, that you have to imagine a particular audience. If you imagine it as Xiyin does, hanging on your every last thought, eager to hear the latest bit of gossip, then you're going to write something completely different from what I typically do. (Or, at the very least, imagine myself to do.)

I've actually been in a bit of a funk lately over this. I'm researching for my next chapter, am unfamiliar with the material and therefore don't feel comfortable writing about it casually; at the same time, I want to write about it casually, and would have two years ago. (Breeze through my archives and witness the stupidity!)

I feel like a bug who's convinced he's a butterfly, but a conventionally Jewish bug, with all the attendant anxieties.

[SEK]

Also, CR, I hate you. The past three summers, I've tutored in order to afford the Extra Innings package. Now that EI signed an exclusive contract with DirecTV, I'm SOL. (I live in an northwesterly-facing apartment.) So I'm going to have to go with MLB TV this year ... which means I'll be spending even more time in front of the computer. If I can't figure out how to hook it up to the TV, that is; but even if I can, there'll be no more TIVO'ing games and watching them at 3 a.m., a.k.a. insomnia's peak hours.

[SEK]

Alright, so maybe I don't hate CR. (And look! John Kerry did something not horribly misguided. It's a banner day.)

[N. Pepperell]

I generally find myself thinking of some specific readers when I write - problem is, it's not the same readers - which means that my writing contorts between jokes that are often aimed only at one or two people I know, dissertation updates that are likely only of interest to me, periodic nervous breakdowns (held in public to save on medical bills and to ensure maximum damage to my future career prospects...), and social theoretic reflections... I can't really imagine how any individual would actually read all of this stuff, and I periodically consider "standardising" my writing on the more serious side. But I find that I enjoy my current sloppy inconsistency... ;-P

Even on the serious side, my trajectory has been more toward posting increasingly drafty work. My archives are therefore possibly more professional (without making too strong a claim) - they just weren't anywhere near as useful for me to write... So my own stupidity has risen to the occasion... ;-P

[CR]

My dad is freaking about the DirecTV thing too. I'm not sure that congress is going to be able to stop them either. I'm not even sure they should be allowed to stop them.

[SEK]

Baseball's a little weird, though, with the anti-trust exemption and what-not, so there should be some price to pay...whether it's not being allowed to funnel non-DirecTV subscribers to their MLBLive service remains to be seen. Generally speaking, however, I'm all for government regulation of media outlets. Media content? No. But outlets? Certainly so. I still think the abrogation of that responsibility in the 1996 telecommunications act is a thing of shame.

Plus, damn it, I've already lined up the tutoring positions and don't want to back out of them.

[surlacarte]

You won't have to TIVO games if you get MLB TV--it's all archived and available online.

[SEK]

But from what I've read, you can't fast-forward through the commercials, and you'd have to wait a day to watch them. The latter's not a problem, but I like being able to watch a game in two hours instead of four ... almost a necessity, given my "hectic" schedule.