What the doctor should have meant: dishery.diaryland.com

I kind of wrote a movie review while drunk last night. I came home from the theater all fired up to write it, fired-upness also being a subset of how happy I am to be writing again, and I grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator more than anything as a salute to myself and the vast future possible that begins, and begins to become, with me making up words. Then the review was slower going than I had thought it would be and I went upstairs for beer no. 2, in the middle of which I had one of those moments where all of a sudden one is full-on sloshed without ever having been buzzed, and then I had another moment where I remembered that dinner had been Bloody Marys at the Mecca. But I was safe at home and very much on the equable and self-forgiving end of the emotional whipsaw that�s been flaying me recently, and I had an equable and self-forgiving thought that had something to do with locking the barn after the horses had gone (is that how the saying goes?), and the review was still not done, so I made myself feel better about that by finishing at least one thing I was working on and tramping back up the stairs for beer no. 3. So I don�t know if I want to check and see if the review is up yet, because if it�s lousy I�ll be embarrassed and if it�s good I�ll feel like boozing helps my writing, and when, ages ago, I got that idea about speed, it was a bad scene for a while there. The unfortunate part is that two people know I was going to do this particular review, and one of them is Todd, and I would rather not have him thinking that my writing is lousy.

Oh wait, this is hilarious, I am actually laughing out loud. I totally forgot that as Todd has read every single word I ever wrote in the Monitor, his opinion in that regard is probably pretty well formed. I can�t believe I forgot about that, especially since I was thinking about it in the car on the way in today. I am snickering at myself.

Anyway. So, yeah, I�m not going to give myself the you-dumb-lush lecture, because I know what I have to say, and since the nights a few weeks ago of half a fifth in half the bed, I have made a remarkable turnaround. And it�s good to have ascertained that I�m capable of getting a review together the same night I see the movie. And now I have just received word that the site I�m writing for is still deciding whether or not to publish today, some cockeyed 9-11 tribute, so if I wanted to I could maybe even get my review back and read it over sober-like and make revisions. But what would I say, �Um, I was drunk when I wrote that and I think it might suck but I�m not sure?� Yes, that is the way to impress the people who have taken a big chance on me. I think I have to forget all about it and, tiny lecture coming up, Don�t Let It Happen Again.

Administrative notes:

The previous paragraph contains what will be this entry�s only reference to what day it is.
I don�t think the name of the movie-review site is relevant, and I don�t know why but it would make me uncomfortable if I knew that people who had come to know the Diary Me, who knew me only in that way I mean, were also reading the Critic Me; it would feel like a malignancy somehow. (In a cheery voice: No offense, of course!) Though, reading over what I�ve just written, it seems antithetical to one of the main things I want to accomplish with the Dishery, which in a nutshell is *not* to retreat into that kind of comfortable compartmentalization, not to hide.
Whoa there with the �hide�: See also above, Todd has read every single word I ever wrote in the Monitor; I think that my outwardly rueful characterization of Monitor Me in the language of secrecy is false self-disparagement, a way to suggest to those who hear or read it that I acknowledge having kept a private diary as something to be ashamed of, as if writing in the Monitor was the opposite of being forthcoming, an ugly habit from which I had to be liberated for my own psychological health. When I do that, I am essentially lying, and therefore I must stop. I told Vanessa last night that it�s a relief to have a public diary that I won�t have to fret about real-life acquaintances finding, and this is true, but it is also me trying to find a bright spot in an event that honestly crushed me and sometimes still does when I think about what I�ve lost, what was taken from me. OK, what Todd took. I try not to think about that part of it, because what�s done is done and human beings owe each other forgiveness, and this paragraph wasn�t even intended as a meditation on subject-betrayal-object, all I meant to to do was call bullshit on myself for what I wrote in the previous one. And now I have done that, so let�s move on.
I think this makes three entries so far in which �bullshit� appears. Sorry about that. And, yes, I felt like an idiot for that twee Diary Me, Critic Me, Monitor Me business, but that was the only way I saw to explain what I meant without recourse to ridicuously tortured syntax.
The things I have been calling operative paradigms, the concepts that the Dishery reveals my mind to keep tripping over? I am not sure after all that that�s the term I want to be using, because after writing yesterday�s entry I realized that another one of them is vacations, and I don�t think I can really call the concept of a vacation a paradigm.
Back to the moview reviews, since I hijacked myself with what it led me to: So I�ll think about the issue of their URL, reminding myself that it may be moot and I may be a pompous ass to think that anyone is even curious about them, and maybe I�ll change my mind later. In the meantime, since I don�t want to seem a cocktease, I will try to keep the noise level on that track to a minimum.

And since I do want to post here more regularly and I have other things and other writing I need to get to today, I�m calling this an entry � even though I didn�t address any of the topics I�d planned to, ha � and I am saying au revoir. Also, those administrative notes didn�t start out as a list. (Why is it important to me that you know that?)

P.S. Later, after posting entry and looking at page to make sure I didn't screw up the formatting: For �forgot� in the second paragraph, read �let myself forget�? Yes, I think so. But I also think that is what I *should* be doing. It is time to be moving forward, it is time with respect to my personal projects and my writing to shut up and drive.