� Pauline Kael, in "Going Steady" (linked here via here)

Hell yeah, that�s exactly what I�d been meaning to say, to try to get at, as regards the issue of self-legitimizing pop-culties. I don�t mean Udovitch, I still have more to say about that piece and maybe yet will but right now there�s another one on my mind and it�s here. What bugs me is towards the end where once again we see in action the bias that a thing called a blog is inherently better � smarter, more adult, less narcissistic � than a thing called a diary, and apparently so is a Friendster profile (!). "Many [profiles] are perfectly earnest attempts to raise a flag against anonymity, in much the same way as a weblog. But where a blog offers the chance to expand on one�s self, diaries are for emotionally stunted, attention-starved crybabies who believe they�re more interesting than they are." OK I made up the last part, but the quotation is accurate up until the expanding on one�s self, and if you�ve read the parts about online diary-ing � based entirely on the author�s whirl around LiveJournal (!) � then you know that the tone I took isn�t even far off the mark. (Question: would it have been possible to write this piece minus the condescending, regretfully censorious, what-does-it-all-mean tone, the one that is scented with eau de Gopnik? I�m asking for real. I like to think that I�d have been able to do it, but then again look at the little swipe I just took at LJ, which although you hope a newspaper writer would do a little more research and figure out that that it is not the only fruit I agree with him about its "institutional character." Or am I taking the whole thing far too personally just because I myself happen to maintain a stupid dumb diary? Or am I feeling feisty about the Stranger because I�ve come up with an idea, and an idea for an idea, that would involve pitching them an article that I�d write as a freelancer, and subconsciously I�m Duffy Mooning myself up, trying to make myself believe, because I have to, that I could? Discuss.) I resent the generalities. Why are Friendster profiles and weblogs assumed to be raising flags against anonymity and my diary is not? Fine, my name is not on it, but that is *because* the ego says no, and you will also note the absence of a hit counter "to show how many people to date have peeked into [my life]." Is it not equally valid to raise a flag against institutional character? Is there no love for the genre-bender? (Answer: not a lot.) I think the most Gopnikesque sentences in the piece � article? essay? � are these: You can�t blame anyone for reaching out. You can wonder, though, if they�re settling for a list of names when what they�d prefer is a friendship less� virtual. And by Gopnikesque, of course I mean that which makes the reader want to yell No shit you poser: I resent the hell out of the implication that I keep this diary because real life scares me or because I like myself better than I like other people, and I resent and am also covetously jealous of Nelson, who has no truck with any of the online stuff, he points out, because he spends "more than enough time socializing" and to whom half of a random sample of Seattle Friendsters were familiar. (Question: Was he the best person to have written this piece? Mightn�t someone more susceptible to the lustrous possibility of actually meeting others with whom to socialize in the first place, more able to meet the phenomenon head-on with ambivalence, have done a less ponderous job?) Me, if I could have a job like Steve does where I�m busy the bulk of the day doing work I like and from which I take lunch breaks and coffee breaks during which I slung the psuedo-intellectual b.s. with my colleagues who were also my after-work, sporting and drinking and party pals, I�d let this diary die on the vine without a second thought. How can anyone be so obtuse as to think that living in a bubble is widely viewed as preferable to living in the world? I dig my diary but I hate the factors that have led me to continue it in this form, and I add the qualifier because, all right, I can imagine preserving it in some less tortured, lesser format � remember that its original impetus was to encourage me to write every day in order to get to a fighting weight to apply to MFA programs � more along the lines of a weblog, I�d log in and dash out again because I�d have things to do and people to see. I don�t do this because I want to. In fact, I don�t want to, I don�t want to at all. But what I want I have not found a way to have, or even to begin to get.

Here is another one from L�etranger, in case you think I overreacted to that runner-up ranking among educational and intellectual cities, that examines Seattle�s premier literary salon. See, I wasn�t kidding. I am overjoyed to see this article published.

What else? Steve and I had a party on Saturday and we have promised each other that it�s only the dinner variety from here on out. Too much uncertainty, too much stress, too much beer. My hypothesis that human beings will eat exactly as much guacamole as you put in front of them has still not been challenged. I saw "Pirates of the Carribean" and a documentary about James Ellroy. Someone has a crush on me and it�s gross. I met the Somerset, sort of, and WHOA. I�m in that weird phase that always befalls me seven eight nine months after a bad breakup where something boomerangs back and I blame myself for everything and I want to cry constantly and am aching to travel back in time armed with What I Know Now and make it work because I know I could; note that this feeling and the crying have zero to do with the breakup object and are focused on a more generalized and more interior sense of failure. Sundry, thanks for the tip! In the shower on Saturday afternoon, I had an epiphany of sorts that relates to the reading-writing-socializing tip, the wanting what I want, that I think is going to be grand for me x amount of time down the line, and basically it is that it wouldn�t do me any harm to start thinking that I might maybe want to go to some manner of liberal-artsy grad school a few years down the line so once I get my (work, money, no more Gastro, back from vacation, new residence) ducks in order there are a few things that I could be doing. Look how effacing and tentative I am, isn�t it sweet? Shutup I mean it, I am leaving it in.

I think Friendster�s more like a video game than anything else, if there could be a video game with competition but no violence, and as I can personally attest to how the six-degreesness of it can give you a harmless-even-if-false sense that your life has coherence, there�s that word again, you will not find me pondering the existential meaning of a briefly Friendster-struck culture at the dawn of the new century. I have decided to give Friendster the benefit of the doubt, which means that sometime this week I�ll list some interests and dig up a photo to scan and give myself the assignment of not being sarcastic about it. I am honestly interested to see how that goes, and I will keep you posted.

Friday at breakfast Steve told me very bluntly, for that is his way, that he had dated a depressed person for six years and it was no fun for him and he didn�t relish doing it again and that I should know in advance that his was a lousy shoulder to cry on. If I wanted to get full-on depressed and have myself a Depression, I was welcome to do so, but he needed me to understand the terms of engagement. I appreciated this. Then last night we were coming back from dinner and I�d mentioned that I was afraid I�d have trouble sleeping (I did) because of all my free-floating anxiety. Anxiety about what, he asked, and I made my list. "It�ll all work out eventually," he said as if this was any old conversation we were having, and because of what he�d said on Friday and how he�d said it, just the facts as he saw them, it almost did feel like it could be any old conversation, I began to imagine a sense in which it doesn�t even have to be the main thing in my life.

There�s a special place in Hell, by the way, that�s reserved for people who in response to your party invitation e-mail you back right away and are all Oh I can�t wait, that sounds like so much fun, haven�t seen you in ages and have been dying to meet Mr. Man, is there anything I can bring?, etc. and then on party night they are no-shows. (Question: am I merely getting what I deserve for having issued invitations electronically?) There�s another, hotter spot reserved for rich kids, as in sitting on seven figures, who tip in the single digits. I�ll show them a single digit.

Might not write tomorrow. I have some things to do here.