2001-12-16 - 12:26 p.m.

Welcome. The Girlfriend has put up a link from her diary to mine. I imagine that several followers of the Girlfriend's diary will be reading this narrative (to learn more about what a friggin' jerk I am?). If so, that's cool, be my guest. Before you do, please read the following disclaimer.

I started writing this thing:

1) So I could remember things better.

2) To write in a pressure free environment.

3) To give me something to do.

Then the Girlfriend started a diary. But can she just write a simple friggin' diary? Oh, no. She bought the membership, she put up all the bells and whistles, and now apparently she has an (instantly) overflowing guestbook and she gets nine trillion hits a day. People are telling her that they feel "connected" to her.

Yesterday, she told me that it is considered declasse to just write in a friggin' diary. Apparently, I have to take a class in HTML to write this thing. I don't have the right backgrounds, I need to have the right "templates" (I'm waiting to find out what this means), I need to be a member of the right diaryrings, and I need just the right images. Otherwise, other members will not take my "work" seriously.

To me, doing all that stuff kinda defeats the purpose. When I started writing this thing, I had no intention of displaying this material to the world, nor did I have any intentions of making it more "attractive" by adding pictures and by using wacky fonts.

I didn't think that I was joining a community, either.

So. I'm sorry if I put up my cardboard shack in someone's massive back yard. I promise I won' swim in your pool (or pee in it). I'll stay away from your children. I won't put my Trans-am up on blocks.

If you choose to read further, please remember that I'm not writing for you. There will be rants, grammatical errors, offensive language, and some of this content may offend the more politically sensitive.

The material contained here is most often written under the heavy influence of alcohol, and is usually written just before I go to bed. Please don't "evaluate" me as if I chose to leave this material out for your evaluation.

Thank you.