Tuesday, June 23, 2009

We blog because we can't not blog

Ever have that itch? Call it compulsion, obsession … whatever.

Whether it’s checking your e-mail every two seconds or making a habit out of rounding up the latest gossip on your favorite celeb, we all have something we feel we just simply must do.

I started thinking about the subject after I started blogging again and I read a good friend’s writings (in her blog) on the subject. With all the junk out there, it’s true – do we need more? Does anyone care what anyone else has to say when it comes to the minutia of our lives?

I think not.

And furthermore, I think – if we did care, would we even have the time to keep up?

Definitely not.

But here I am, with the itch that must be scratched. I must write. And I must share what I write, despite the fact that no one (not even my mother, Heidi) will read it. It is entirely possible this is my way of making up for not having newspaper deadlines anymore as a writer, with my feelings of loss coming out in gobs of far-too-wordy exposés on nothing. On topics possibly not even Seinfeld could make a show out of. And if that was the show about nothing, this is the blog about nothing.

I think, furthermore, that this is the common denominator of blogs. Although some (like this one), start off with a theme, a purpose, the actual driveling of entries are so purposeless that it’s impossible for them to truly be about something.

Blogs about sports end up feeding the monster (content-needy readers) with things like the Navy football team visiting the White House, just as does like, every year since it had a team.

Blogs about celebrities devolve into who likes what kind of frappacino, and what ridiculously expensive shoes she wears to get it at Starbucks.

Or blogs expounding people’s training habits for their sports end up turning into either mindless recording of their miles or anecdotes about their shoes, watches and heart rates with personal triumphs and epiphanies sprinkled throughout their massively long pages of daily entries. Their discipline, it seems, follows through not only in their commitment to jog daily, but to keep everyone informed about those jogs by their commitment to blog daily, as well.

So why do we do it? Because we have to. Just as the title of this no-follower, no-friends blog suggests, Because It’s There.

I realize that mine comes from a writing obsession, as my friend admitted in her blog as well. I think she’s like me in that I find pleasure in noticing the oddities of life, and they are best told in writing, not speaking.

And I don’t think it’s out of self-indulgent self-interest, because then we would care if people were hanging on our last word. I couldn’t care less.

And, as itches go, I made myself feel better earlier today by finding ones far worse to scratch.

For example, on the bathroom wall inside Ernest Hemingway’s house in Cuba, you’ll find his weight and blood pressure etched in pencil for every day he lived in the house. I’m not sure I have ever known what my blood pressure is, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know what my weight is on a daily basis.

Two-time Nobel Prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling obsessively took large doses of vitamin C, which he was sure would ward off not only the common cold, but cancer as well. As far as I know, he didn’t die of either, though – so maybe he’s right.

And that brings me to the master of obsession, Mr. Howard Hughes, who spent his free time creating orders for his assistants to use no fewer than six tissues when touching a door knob to open a door, and no fewer than 12 when opening a cabinet. And that’s just the tip of the crazy iceberg.

So if we must write, and we must post these obsession-laden writings to blogs, then it simply must be done.

And does a tree falling in the woods with no one around to hear it make a sound? But I do know that a blog without a single reader still makes its impact: Because the satisfaction is in the writing.

 

Choose your obsessions

By Siddharth Anand

 

Choose your obsessions

For they are unworthy possessions

Trojan horses

They bind you

Without you realizing

They hinder your natural design

And make you completely blind

 

Choose your obsessions

For they are unworthy possessions;

They are the weeds,

You; yourself choose to grow.

Some seeds are rotten..

Still you keep them, them, you don’t throw.

 

And after the tsunami

You wonder why you were destroyed

By; your own army…

 

Choose your obsessions

For they are unworthy possessions;

They determine; the extent of your regression…

Although we must All have some,

Eggs turn into chickens

Choose your obsessions

For they are impressions

Which can determine your future

& Tomorrow’s positions

The journey; and the final decision.

 

Choose your obsessions

For they are unworthy possessions

Saturday, June 20, 2009

What do you get the man who has everything?

Every year, exactly three times per year, I face the most dreaded of tasks: buying my father a gift. 
Whether it's for his birthday, which I complete forgot to even call last year (good daughter, huh?), Christmas, which at least brings with it some seasonal gift options, or the worst one, Father's Day, it's always something I begin as an epic adventure and end by realizing disappointment for myself and my poor father. 
I generally don't have any idea what to get a guy who is not a good consumer to begin with (my dad has been known to wear dress socks until so many toes are sticking out a bum wouldn't even wear them) and has enough money to get basically anything he wants. Or, at least he can buy anything that I could ge
t him, which isn't saying much.
The problem is, I've picked the low-hanging fruit. I've already given ties with cartoon characters on them, books, and the easy standby bailout gift: Anything with his favorite sports teams' logos on it, from embroidered checkbook covers to flasks with a set matching shot glasses (He doesn't even really drink, by the way). Alas, most of these items were either thankfully disposed of years ago or are collecting dusts as relics from a different age down in his home office, which has shelves upon shelves packed with sports memorabilia shit.
I've also done all the sentimental gifts, which are always good for getting better mileage with less cash. I've given framed photos of daddy and his little girl, picture collages, poems, and even spent a month carefully crafting a scrapbook for him chronicling me and my brother's lives in pictures from birth. It was the first and last I'll ever do. Spending hours hunched over a book covered in glue trying to get little handprints to stick to a page is not my idea of fun. A year ago for Christmas, it was the picture above in a frame. A picture he dislikes, by the way.
So this year, I planned a get-together with us kids, and we're taking him to a Rockies game. I thought I had it in the bag. I bought tickets for everyone, worked with my brother to arrange a post-game bbq at his house - I was on top of it. Until my brother asked, "So, any ideas on what to get dad?"
Uhhh ... "This is what I'm getting dad?"Apparently, I overestimated that my presence was present enough. 
So, I'm back to square one ... he's going to Paris, a beret as a joke? A book on French? (So many people have had so much success learning languages this way) A ... money belt? (I want to up the dork level a little for his vacation - why not just get a fanny pack?)
Another wine opener for his burgeoning wine-drinking hobby? (Because those are rare and hard to find) A gift certificate for a restaurant? (A nice, impersonal gift for the man who raised you and answered your crying phone calls twice a week during your freshman year in college).
Movies? A CD? (Actually, that was last year's present, as I recall. I thought he was getting more than just a CD by me introducing him to Jack Johnson. Your welcome, dad.)
OK, I'm stumped. So plan B is to go to the mall and see what I find that reeks of "dadness" and I determine he absolutely cannot live without.
Because football season is almost beginning — and who can't use another Broncos car flag with matching license plate frame?