(Boring) Tales of (Self-Involved, Mostly Illusory) Woe

I have virtually nothing to say. But wait, I can’t go into this second guessing myself. This is, after all, a blog, by the process of elimination. In that, I mean that I am not selling anything, providing truly noteworthy (Up-To-The-Minute Sports And Weather) content. It must be a blog. And if one is to write a blog, one must have the unerring conviction that no matter how infantile or ridiculous one’s opinions are, they are giants in the minds of what must be the vast readership of the internet. Nevermind the fact that you can type any word you can think of in between “www.” and “.com” and you will likely get a result. Mine must be special, because it’s mine.

I must project my self-importance, make all of you realize it, chase internet fame and likely fortune. Publish a book of poorly photoshopped things, or obtain some real world evidence of my greatness. It’s truly my only chance. If my words are simply to sit here, being scanned by several people, then I will fade into obscurity. My chance at stardom and greatness—My chance at making an impact in someone’s life, imprinting myself on someone’s gray matter—will likely be lost. Not to mention that at least one of the aforementioned “several people” is likely some robot that catalogs the whole internet, an indiscriminate reaper, taking wheat and chaff alike. Another is very probably an NSA virtual spy, who scans long bits of text for words like “Al Qaeda” and “Man, do I ever hate freedom.”

These aren’t the ideal audience, you see. But I find a frustration growing inside me, a vexing lack of internal purpose with regards to the internet. It is a communication tool, I recognize that, so perhaps my problem is not so much with the internet as it is with the scant few co-communicators I have. This could easily be blamed away by time zone, by distance, by differing lives. People move apart and together on sort of tracks, parallel to one another, as we trundle along to our doom on the great X-axis of history.

See that? Great stuff, right? Well, no one will read it. It will cached and parsed and given a spot-check for terrorism, and then trust back into obscurity. Yet another loudmouth in a sea of swarming, flatulent whales.

I’m not sure why, but I do believe I find that image amusing. Deeply so.

These feelings, comically enough, have roots in the most ridiculous of locations. I don’t mean my self-esteem-forsaken psyche, I mean social networking. Twitter, Facebook, etc. Those are the only two I really engage in—If “engage” is really the word. Those are the places I most commonly stalk my internet prey. What was once known, in common parlance, as the “friend.” I don’t mean to sound overly cynical. I have a great many friends. Or rather, several great friends. But it seemed, back there, in the other place, in the long-long-ago (I’ve now been here long enough to refer to my normal life in post-apocalyptic pre-apocalyptic terms, if you follow) that I always had hearty chatter on tap. Perhaps it is just the time zones, or perhaps the flimsiness of social networking has been exposed by the lack of human contact.

I don’t mean I need someone to come along and pinch my nipples for me to believe they’re interested in what I have to say, of course.

But, it would be nice to hear a human voice. For someone to have a reasoned response to something rather than a joke at its expense.

At any rate, I’m sounding a bit like a ziggurat of self-pity, built upon the bones of my own dashed dreams. I suppose, if we have to get down to the bottom of it, the real issue is simple: I no longer want to be here. I long for familiarity, and what I view as “real life.” Rather than attempting to exchange Facebook wall-quips or 140 characters of well-phrased bullshit, I would rather have an utterly terrible time in person with someone I know.

And I don’t mean to say that I have an utterly terrible time with people I know. What I mean is that all the laughs and gags and comical animal photographs in the world are paltry when compared to a mediocre evening spent in the company—the physical, visceral, often odorous company—of an actual fellow human being. One whom I have chosen to share my time with. At this point, I would rather watch a friend disrobe, spread his furred ass-cheeks apart, and recoil in horror as his anus reverse-winks open with the emission of gas, than read a status update. (Yes, that was about you, Paul.)

I’ll be returning in under 4 weeks now. I can’t wait to freeze in what will seem to be Arctic cold, drive aimlessly through the bucolic New Englandiness of Connecticut, and wander through stores I have no intent of patronizing.

The internet is a hollow existence. So if you have something better to do, for God’s sake, go and do it.

But thank you for reading. And maybe even commenting.

RJC