About me

Or where the author gets vain for information sake.

One of the most common complains I run across on "The Weblog Review" is the lack of a page devoted solely to the author's likes, dislikes, pets, favorite food, favorite movie, some pretty-pretty celebrity that gets the blogger all hot and bothered, etc.

And as you may have noticed, this blog doesn't carry a biographical page. Frankly, I consider this entire blog a giant "About Me" page. Plus "About me" pages tend to let the air out of the balloon. Once you know everything about someone, demystification sets in, if you can trust s/he isn't lying to you in the first place. It's most interesting to reveal yourself in bits in pieces in this textual soap opera. Life isn't always laid out neatly, and it's more intriguing to find the bits and pieces, akin to the character Senhor Jose in Jose Saramago's "All the Names," gathering the vital pieces to the puzzle in the shape of an anonymous woman. Sometimes you have to be patient and thorough in learning about the person in front of you.

Ironically, you see celebrities, people who are in the glare of the public spotlight, with "About Me" pages on their sites, and it always turns my head. Why? We know who they are...that's why we Googled their site. If you're a fan, you already know about any movie roles or side projects. "About Me” pages on celebrity sites are just a bit of an ego pile-on, words I know that'll come back to haunt me if I ever get famous.

So, I suppose I have to reveal some bits about me. Some are tedious...well, all are tedious, but it's about my life and you are reading it. Remember, if it appears self-indulgent, remember that you're in blog country.

For the record, I:

*have bad dreams after eating day-old Caesar salad.
*own a Gamecube and Xbox.
*invent new swear words daily during my commute to work/home.
*have one contact in my MSN messenger thingy.
*was born in 1972.
*came from a divorced family. It was for the best.
*listen to Bjork, Radiohead, Massive Attack, Peter Gabriel and anything with an Indian/trance vibe to it.
*don't listen to all of them at once.
*am currently listening to The Clash.
*have never taken hard drugs.
*can't play a musical instrument.
*was a semi-finalist in the Dow Jones Newspaper Contest in 1994.
*write poetry for my wife.
*have two pairs of brown corduroys, two pairs of blue jeans and two pairs of black jeans.
*am married and am the father of two cats.
*work at a Seattle newspaper.
*hung out with Penn Jillette for about 10 minutes.
*want an iBook because it looks cool and I can blog from my couch, once I get a wireless modem installed.
*live near Seattle.
*vomited from alcohol overconsumption once.
*have a master's degree in journalism from ball state university.
*have recurring bad dreams about "missing an assignment for some class in some school." It's all vague and maybe related to the bad salad I eat.
*lived in or near Chicago, Houston, Muncie, Indiana, and Colfax, Washington.
*spend way too much time in Salon.com's message boards.
*rarely look at the people I talk to. It’s nothing personal.
*am getting bored writing about myself like this.


Tick Tock

My entry at One Word today. The word to write on, in 60 seconds, was "flash."

It happens like lightning, this felling in my head. I see it temporarily and then try to piece together the after-effects, like a blast of light from someone taking my picture. I see after-images, halos of thoughts dancing like angels.

Note: spelling as is...note to self: need word-of-day calendar.

It's sort of heartbreaking, typing for so long and that's all the words I could crank out in a minute. Except for "felling," it's coherent, if not dreadfully self-referential.

Yeah, I know, blog country.

Some fluff with this cotton candy

Otherwise known as a Bridget Jones moment.

I gave the book critic at my job the URL for William Gibson's blog. He's supposed to interview WG in a couple of weeks and didn't know about the site's addy, his blog or the whole brouhaha about galleys and uncorrected proofs of Gibson's new book appearing on eBay. Looked v. smart. Go me.