I just made the decision to go through this blog and remove a whole bunch of highly personal information. So some eight or nine posts have now been trashed and only exist in my documents folder. I thought I’d feel self-censored, but I feel relieved.

I’ve written before about my weird blind spot over self-deletion; added here has been a sense of honesty: This is who I am; this is what’s happened to me; this is what my life is like now. Like many bloggers, what I’ve been posting here has also served somewhat as a journal. But now that (some) people are reading this (You Are Here), I’ve been feeling slightly naked.

The impetus for finally doing this was my Googling simply my unusual first name this morning. I pop up on the first page of hits, and I take up at least half of them for the next page or so. I’m apparently a busy little bee! I didn’t know my tweets were just plopped out there for all to see. Yeesh. And public Google+ posts are indeed public. (I think I thought it just meant everybody in all my circles, not . . . everybody.) My Klout score is 44 now, which means . . . well, something. I think it mainly means that some random people follow me on Twitter in the vain hope I’ll follow them back.

I find this disturbing.

I don’t have anything to hide particularly, but I’ve decided to start treating my public persona a little differently. Although I’ve never been the sort of shamelessly constant tell-all that many are, I now think I should at least leave out whatever I wouldn’t necessarily want the stereotypical example of a client to read without knowing me. Duh.

I hope this doesn’t disappoint; in all other ways my silver prose will remain unchanged.

Well, I hope not in one way: At the beginning of the year, I resolved to post at least once a week. Now here we are, in Week 51–and I’m thirty posts short. Cowabunga! Fail! I wouldn’t try to shamelessly sneak them all in now even if I weren’t pushing hard to finish Max, but next year, things will be different! Or at least improved.

We put up our tree tomorrow. I hasten to reassure that this disgusts me. If I thought harder, I’d tie this in to the rather narrow-viewed thing floating around Facebook now exhorting people to drop “Happy Holidays” for “Merry Christmas,” Christmas being of course the only holiday of the season. I think the common link is the general societal unease about The Birthday and how it turns winter into a melange of hope, dissatisfaction, and the words you say when you’re trying to get that sliver of broken glass ornament out of your foot.

As faithful readers know, I had one of those childhoods, and thus my holiday memories are fuzzed with things like my Dad’s drunken statement that “Christmas was just another day in the year.” This was at Thanksgiving dinner when I was 11. Put a damper, let me tell you. Not a lot of reindeer on our roof, either. So after a deliberate intention as an adult to NEVER have that happen again, I married into a family where the red-veined screaming needed no alcohol whatsoever. Trips to my in-laws were a mixed bag of anticipating my wonderful mother-in-law’s godlike corn pudding, and anticipating the time when I got fed up and became the only member of the family to scream BACK at my father-in-law. Fun times! However, seeing as he was a lawyer, it did serve to promote my talent for on-the-spot argumentation and strengthened the lower part of my mezzo range.

Nowadays, I’m just after peace and warm happy fuzzy stuff like carrying a Louisville Slugger to keep people from sheeping up my Christmas. And this understandable goal is forwarded by the Thanksgiving Tree.

For a couple of reasons, we have a fake tree. One, if you can afford one without serving the smallfry coal porridge for two weeks, good on you. But you don’t live in my house. Two, we don’t have the vehicle or the moxie to haul the damn thing home from the tree place and up the stairs to our palatial abode. Three, between making sure your tree fits your tree stand, having to water it, and needing to bring it back because it died the same week-before-Christmas day that your cat curled up and died underneath, it’s just not worth the energy. (OK, maybe that last isn’t a common experience for the rest of you. But still.)

As I write this, our tree is in the pet room (meaning the tiny storage room where we also store the ferrets and the cat accoutrements) in several red’n’green plastic bins. (The trunk sort of surfs around loose, just to further the joy of early-morning navigation already punctuated by kitty kibble under bare feet.) The branches are of course color coded by shades that are as close to each other as mechanically possible, and because they are all scrunched in there, are now far more like green wiry hairballs than something pretending to be tree-like.

My daughter owns the tree-construction process. She hates it, but will not give it up. The branches scratch, the color codes confuse, the lights get tangled. And she radiates such (understandable) rage and loathing that it makes me cry. (I’m a cream puff about the crying thing, but it is a crying occasion if you have any misconceptions about the family closeness Hallmark tree-trimming thing.) If I offer to help, she sees this as a criticism and stomps off to her room. And a Merry Christmas to you too, sir!

Needless to say, this unpleasant task gets put off until it can’t be put off any longer, and the closer to Christmas it gets, the more of a holiday-killing bummer it is. Days aren’t merry and bright when loving mom and devoted daughter hate each other over the seasonal symbol of joy. (And of course we have to have it. It’s a Christmas tree. I’ve had tree-less Christmases. Please. Moving on.)

So instead we have a Thanksgiving tree, so the passionate spasm for hatred gets dissipated on her bus-ride back to school. Sure, it makes it feel like the holiday marketeers have taken over my living room, but when it comes down to it, a little peace at Christmas itself is something to be thankful for.

Just stop me from getting all Martha Stewart with the gold leaf and the turkey bones.

Loyal readers will by now have noted my use of the word “sheep” in non-ovine situations. I started seriously cussing at eleven, because I thought Harlan Ellison was really cool. Now that I am in the middle of my life, I have determined to restrain myself, at least in print. But sometimes I just need . . . a word. I went to the Random Noun Generator, et voila!

Because this word is thus dear to the Nova Terran heart, and because border collies are my favorite superdog, I will now break with my tradition of all me, all the time, and share the following. All the way from Wales, it’s the LED Sheep!

Don’t say I never did anything for ya.

Anybody got a button reading “Not in the Tea Party?”

I was grabbing some painting shirts in Boomerangs, and there it was.  A hot pink baseball cap. Score! (I wear caps instead of sunglasses. They look kind of dorky, but they’re way cheaper than prescription shades.) I turned it over, and there it was in large yellow letters: Smith & Wesson. I immediately got a big kick out of this–girly pink ‘n’ packing.

It was bright pink. It said “Smith & Wesson.” It was only a dollar. What’s not to love?

Now, understand that my views on Guns and All That Stuff are moderate. I have no problem with guns. They’re nifty little machines and shooting them is fun; I’m talking about targets, which are the only things I’ve shot at, although hunting for food is A-OK in my book. I don’t own any, but I might well if they weren’t pretty expensive. 

On the other hand, I hold gun nutdom in mostly amused contempt. It’s a fetish; it’s a collection of dangerous paranoiacs clinging to a few carefully selected myths about American culture so as to support their insecurity and yes, racism: When only criminals have guns, we all know that the criminals are black and Latino. I strongly suspect that this issue, like immigration, would be profoundly different if the well-armed interlopers were white.

A few of my friends shoot, but one of them is a gun nut, and I am dismayed and sad. Guns and railing against gun control have become this man’s entire life. He used to have other interests–music, books–but not any more.  In fact, I have become morbidly fascinated by his ability to doggedly bring any other topic around to the 2nd Amendment. He is passionately convinced of his need to defend himself; he is overwhelmed by the fantasy of somebody attempting to mug or carjack him. (He lives in a comfortably middle-class neighborhood, not Harlem or Dorchester or North Philly.)

I believe that it’s foolish to have shooters wandering around loose with no gun laws at all; I think the issue should be handled much the way driving is: You need to be taught how to do it responsibly before you are allowed to do it at all, and you should be held strictly accountable for yourself. (Consider how very many more people die at the hands of drivers than at the muzzles of handguns, and consider how laughable our drunk-driving laws are. Parity isn’t a lot to ask here.) That’s pretty much what Massachusetts’ gun laws are, and it’s one more reason I’m proud and happy to live here.

The people who taught me how to shoot also insisted that I be able to take the thing entirely apart and put it back together, and they took my being able to do all that completely seriously. And if you think about it, that’s a good thing, because soldiers are the end of the gun-using curve and nobody wants them to be bad at it. I wasn’t physically tough enough to get out of basic training, which is where I learned I have exercise-induced asthma and that my upper body strength allowed six pushups maximum, but I learned to respect and admire the M16A-1. Hell, I loved it–the sensual feel of it barking forth the bullets, the smell of the gunpowder, the feeling of accomplishment when I hit what I was aiming at, the intimacy of the mastery of screws and spring and firing pin. (We’ll skip over the time I put the cleaning brush down the wrong end of the barrel.) I would be well willing to be responsible for a gun, as I am for my pets and my children.

But I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is a very progressive community–and by and large, that’s one of the things I love about it, being on most issues a screaming liberal myself. I had a vision of the possible consequences of wearing this item, but encouraged by some friends, I went in and got it today. Put it on and after five minutes or so, I forgot all about it. As far as my head knew, it had on my usual nice khaki from Eastern Mountain Sports. I continued on my errands.
Upon exiting the post office, I passed a man who gave me one of the scariest looks I’ve ever seen. I cannot adequately describe the hatred, the loathing. In sheer malice it was right up there with an occasional look I’ve gotten in KKK country.

“Whoa! What’s that about?” I thought–and then I remembered that I was wearing the hat. This man would have signed a petition to have me run out of the neighborhood. Or maybe beaten or something. Glad he wasn’t armed.

Unlike the hat which was a freebie from American Idol, this is after all Smith & Wesson and they don’t make crap. And I shouldn’t care that every liberal in Cambridge will now judge me despite our common grounds on at least 90% of the issues, because I am who I am and I believe what I believe.

And it’s pink. But man, do I want that button.

(Perhaps Obligatory Disclaimer: I myself am a Person of Color and I own no Confederate flags.)

Before Barack Obama, people just called certain other people niggers and got on with they bad selves. Now, some (*psst* half) black dude inherits a country teetering after eight years of Republican-engineered doom–and we can’t use the N-word anymore. Well, shit.

But we can say “entitlement people!” Hell yeah!

We haven’t started putting the elderly out to die of exposure yet; and the last time I looked, throwing wheelchairs down the Porter Square escalator was still frowned upon. So despite the looming threat of Social Security being dismantled, for common trolling purposes, “entitlement person” doesn’t really mean them, per se.

It means, of course, Tawanda and DuShawn. Tawanda has two of DuShawn’s kids and two others from Keval and Jerome. She hasn’t married any of them, and none of them pay child support, because Keval is a pothead and Jerome and DuShawn are in jail. Tawanda has two-inch air-brushed nails and lets her kids stay up until 11 before she heads out to the club. She gets food stamps which lets her eat at McDonalds, and free housing in a project building filled with other people just like her. She has a weave and wears skimpy clothes which she’s busting out of like one of the People of Walmart.

And (unlike the 90% of the rest of the Deserving and Hard-Working) she has a cell phone! (It is kind of funny watching her text–in Urban, of course–with those nails.) The kids’ noses aren’t wiped, and they’re into everything, until she screams at them without following through on any of her threats. She has a stroller that doubles as a small Cadillac which is big enough to almost completely block the aisle of the average bus. Her voice is very loud, and she can be heard complaining about them people down to the welfare office.

But at least she’s only dealing a little drugs, because DuShawn is with a gang. He spends half his money on fly boxer shorts, because his pants ride very low. He carries a gun, has low-quality diamonds in the caps on his teeth–and sells crack in the doorways of those damned free-rent buildings. He has six kids and brags about his women and his manhood; he’s been on Maury twice. He sweet-talks the woman of the moment into supporting him and refuses to wear a condom, because if she really loves him, she’ll have his baby to prove it. Right now he’s in jail for aggravated assault, but he’ll be out in two weeks.

Fucking n-  uh, I mean, entitlement people.

And you know and I know in all seriousness, that Tawanda and DuShawn really do exist, and that I’m not exaggerating. BUT THEY’RE NOT “ENTITLEMENT PEOPLE!” THEY’RE SCUM! GET IT RIGHT, PEOPLE!!

And they’re in a minority. And some of them are white.

But no matter how desperately working poor Americans need a little help to get by (did I mention “Republican-engineered?”) their “entitlements” are at risk because Tawanda and DuShawn are black.

And so is Mr. Obama. See? We wouldn’t be overrun with Tawanda and DuShawn if we’d been smart enough to elect the white guy!

The problem is that the president’s negritude has finally justified the faulty logic connection that “we knew all along that ni– um, er, that ‘entitlement people’ were getting stroked by the government, and now there’s proof!! Hey, I bet Tawanda’s a Muslim too!”

Obama, being naive enough to try to do the right thing instead of the um, er, n- thing, has failed to enact anything resembling welfare increases other than for the banking community (who are Rich White Men). He has reluctantly listened to a large and shrill number of the people he’s supposed to be leading in a democratic republic (instead of a dictatorship) and dragged his feet on gay rights, which isn’t all that bad, because that means people can still use the words “faggot,” “tranny,” and “dyke,” which will all go the way of the dodo once we elect a queer president and we have to pretend that our hatred isn’t really about their identity.

As a result, Tawanda and DuShawn won’t vote for him next year. (Well, DuShawn’s a felon, so never mind about that.) And neither will a lot of other people who wanted to see the poor bastard free the slaves, flog the corporations, and pull gold bricks out of his ass. All they got was a schmuck who was given the hardest job on the entire planet–and who happened to be black.

And then apparently forgot about it. Here’s the deal: He was elected because he was black; he’s blamed for everything because he’s black–but the voters won’t re-elect him because he apparently hasn’t been black enough. Because as we know, Tawanda and DuShawn are the only black people there are.

Poor bastard. Oh well, let’s bring on the neo-con white guy (or *shudder* gal) and see how the next four years go. I’m sure they’ll put the niggers back in their places. And all the rest of the entitlement people too.

I was lucky enough to go to a high school where most of the girls were nice, because I was the Geek of Nerddom. It didn’t change. But back at the turn of the century, for a tiny minute before the dot-com crash, I was the cat’s pajamas: working at a Beltway Web firm doing that edgy thing called *snort* HTML. I was hip, baby! OK, still way more comfortable hanging out with the codemonkeys than my fellow producers, who were mostly marketing droids, but still. This was 1999; and to give you an idea of the zeitgeist, while on my way to a client conference, I spotted a PA license plate with the state URL. Enormous impact. The Millenium was at hand. All of a sudden, the little things started popping up everywhere. Revolution!

And then all of a sudden a whole bunch of us were on food stamps. So it goes. It was still a valuable experience, and I’m very grateful to be able to pop the hood under the little tab in front of me labeled “HTML” when I need to tweak. And did you know that Google Calendar needs formatting in its event details? Doot-do-dooo! Captain Codelass, to the rescue! “Never fear, choir music list! I’ll save you!”

But what this has mainly done for me is turn me into that person those other people ask about their computers. I’m not rich (heh) or trendy. Although I’m reasonably tech-edge, what with Singe and the Snow Leopard here, my wired-ness leaves something to be desired. I’m just a little writer nebbish, out here in cyberspace. I only have 187 “friends,” and about 50 of them are people I (*shrinks down in the chair*) play games with. And I got my Twitter account just to communicate with some people I needed to reach who weren’t responding to their e-mail.

There’s nothing like spending five years writing what turns out to be three novels, and then realizing that the world is NOT, in fact, clamoring for it automatically at your door. In fact, more negative souls might mention the word “depressing.” What helps is knowing that there are legions of famous, successful, and gloriously talented people out there who also went through a period of morosely continuing writing although admitting its complete futility–and who, moreover, took drinking very seriously. Sooner or later, I figure. Sooner or later.

But no! It’s actually true! I really am a fa-a-aa-ailure!! There’s this new thing called a Klout score, and it will show me up as a loserbabe with only 187 “friends.” I’m only an e-ee-ee-ee-leeee-vennnnnn!!!!!!! Fail! Epic life fail!! *storms up to room, slams door, falls on bed, cranks tunes, calls all friends*

My life as I know it is now over. I am clearly wasting my time on all the sheeping prose. 140 charactahs baybee!!!!! (Note the partial deprecation of Standard English in this post. Preparations are at hand, is all I’m saying.)

The HORRIBLE thing is that now I really am going to keep up with Twitter. Maybe I’ll start doing that whore thing where I’ll follow random people in hopes that they’ll follow me back. In other words, I wanna be popular. At least I have a reason: I want to be published and/or at least have people read my stuff. (Some hipster dweebboy completely harshed on one of my posts on Plinky, and I thought, “Ooh!! My words have touched a life!”) But I think the majority of people will want it just to have it; and by the end of the summer, there will be an explosion of frantic tweeting and re-tweeting. Gotta be cool kids, because that number those marketing geniuses made up now tells us who and what we are, and if we’re really cool, then we get free potato chips.

Obviously, they’re what you have for lunch with all the other cool kids. Save me some.

Brace for impact and get the she’s-a-bad-girls a-ready: I can’t sleep at night without meds, and it pisses me off.

There are a number of things in my life which have made me admit that there’s better living through modern chemistry. (I should say here that any and all herbal remedies are about better living through classical chemistry, so hush up. It’s all about tinkering with that cascade of molecules in your brain; I would be psyched to drink a tea . . . if it worked. What, you think I haven’t tried it? Glad it works for you, you lucky thing.)

In my natural, untampered-with brain state, I can eventually indeed fall asleep by about 4 a.m.: I just don’t stay that way. I awake often, and spend long stretches either in that almost-asleep&dreaming state, or chasing the critter I call the “3 a.m. squirrel” (regardless of time of arrival), who nibbles you awake and runs about in your head, largely sowing a path of destruction.

After a while, I tell myself and El Rodento that the time-honored advice of just getting up is what’s happening, and I do; most often I get some writing done. My head and face are tingly, my muscles are throbbing, my eyes are dry–and everything else screams in unison that less than six hours=not enough sleep–

–but it doesn’t matter. I’ll stay up for at least an hour, and then by the time I can go back to bed, I’ve got maybe an hour before the alarm lets me out of hell, so I can wake up and (in this non-drug scenario) hide in a dark room trying not to puke from the migraine.

Thus the medication. Ah, modern chemistry . . .

My being pissed-off isn’t because Drugs Are Bad. Golly gee, everybody is supposed to be able to SLEEP, right? Easy as falling off that log you’re sawing. I feel like I’ve failed a course.

Even with meds, nothing is certain. I had an unusually brisk romp with the 3 a.m. squirrel this morning, concerning a somewhat complicated and highly detailed scenario starring a yet-unborn kitten and a subsequent trip to the ER. (Not directly involving said kitten–as I said, it was complicated.) I think things will go better if I scruff myself and get up as soon as the beady-eyed little buck-toothed fiend shows up. I do in fact have writing to do. The squirrel gives decent dictation.

Poor kitten. I’m sure it won’t do anything of the sort.

Please note that the kitten as such does not exist. The 3 a.m. squirrel, on the other hand, is chewing it a little kitten basket out of worthless Civil War banknotes.

OK, so far neither the kidlet nor myself has found a job, and I’m doing angst about it. Last night it took the form of waking up at 3 a.m. and obsessing about all the tragedy both real and projected I could dredge up. (It’s the “3 a.m. squirrel” because it runs round and round in your brain.) I called it quits when one scenario started with the kitten I’m planning to get this Christmas, and ended with my trying to scam the ER out of some opthalmic antibiotic ointment. I’m leaving the several intervening steps out of it, because we try to run a family blog here. Just note that again, said kitten is currently a twinkle in some tomcat’s eye right now, and we’ll move on.

It’s probably as well that the storyfying part of my brain is kicked on high, because Dark Crimson Corners is officially off my desk until it goes pro (heh; see angst) and Max is well underway. I’ve been underwhelmed by my plot idea for this, partly because Max told me I had to come up with one and I’m unfortunately my protagonists’ bitch whether I have one ready or not. But after a couple of months of flailing around in backstory, I’m finally getting good to go, and it looks like it’ll be ok-so-far. The thing that’s been hardest to shut off is the fear of Too Longness–DCC ended up 320K, I think–after cuts. I’m going to do my damnedest to ignore it while I write, and edit down later.

Meanwhile, the Achilles continues to heal (sorry), meaning I can now interact with the sweaty beauties of the Canterbrigian summer. (As opposed to the Jamaican Planiferous summers of the previous three years, which were merely sweaty.) My couch potato-hood lasted long enough for me to watch the entirety of Buffy on Netflix; it’s kind of embarrassing how comparatively little writing I got done that month+. I made a New Year’s resolution to update this blog once a week; this obviously hasn’t panned out, ’cause I’s lazy. And this catch-up doesn’t count, so I suppose it’s on to Plinky, which is the writing equivalent of that workout you have to add on because of Aunt Inez’ carrot cake at the family reunion. Hidey ho!

Breaking up is hard to do, but getting into a new relationship is a lot, lot harder.

So fifteen years ago I started talking to this guy called T.D. Riverly. He used to come into the library I babysat late at night, and I got to know him. Sort of. I knew about his main traumas, and what it was like to be him. We stayed in touch during the seven-year hiatus between At Harvard I and At Harvard II, and during the end of my dissertation, we started getting closer.

Finally, he watched over my shoulder as two crazy kids ran away from a crossbow-wielding mob, and he stepped out of his office and said, “Babe, we gotta get serious.” I humored him for old times’ sake. Then he started telling me his real story, all the stuff I didn’t know. About what power and fame had done to him.

And about the vampire part. I hadn’t seen that one coming. But he told me all about it, how it worked and what it was like to be ass-deep in truly whacked crazy. Then he brought me home with him to the District of Nova Terra, and introduced me to Sasha, and Meeze, and Pharaoh. Terry and I were serious.

He was my man for five of the rockiest years of my life. Five long, solid years. We grew, we changed. Two years ago, I had an idle convo with a guy named Damascus, who was a completely peripheral pain in Terry’s ass, because I wanted to make some peace. And then he rocked both our worlds in a shattering way that recontextualized a lot of what we had built with each other. (“So, Damascus, where’d you grow up?” I swear that’s all I asked. Who knew serial killers were human? Not me.)

But now it’s over.

Terry and I are adults, and we realized that things would eventually change, and then that our relationship was nearing a point when we needed some space. Just space; not even a separation. This scared me, but I’m proud to say that I didn’t do what so many do in my place, and wrap myself around his waist and refuse to let go.

I cheated on Terry about a year ago, and I met this amazing guy called Max. In one short evening, we had one of those oh-wows that made him a part of my life–and then I went back to my babe and thought that that was it. But he called me up last summer, and I would sneak off to see him every so often as a break from the rockier pieces of my –oh OK breakup– with Terry.

Terry and I are at a good place, where he’s packing up and fishing out the stray socks from under the dresser, and we know that we’ll always be friends–and maybe something more. But . . . space—and meanwhile, that means that here I am with Max now, trying to figure out who we are and where we’re going. He’s no longer the sweet piece on the side, and I have to take everything seriously now. Scary. So scary.

It’s just that Terry and I were so close–unbelievably close. And Max and I are still at the sitting around stage where I feel like we’re Aristotle’s bear cub, which would emerge as a shapeless lump and be licked into shape by his mother. (Aristotle also thought flies had four legs. I swear to God we’re talking psychosis here.)

The differences between the two relationships fascinates me. I don’t know the people in Max’s life at all well, although we’ve spent some time just hanging out–which is, after all, how I met Damascus–and I’m SO the new chick here. There are all these strange people, and they’re all about their stuff, new stuff, taking me on a totally new journey. Stretching me, insisting that I become as good a partner as I became to Terry.

After five years, I have to start again.

Oh, sheep.

When my daughter was in her early teens, there were times when I would imitate one of those old-time radio ads: “W-T-M-I! Way Too Much Information, ’round the clock, seven days a week!”  The Gentle Reader is either familiar with kids that age or is one her or himself, and you know the sort of stuff I mean.

I mean, don’t we? We’re talking about “the ills that flesh is heir to,” as the saying goes–but we’re NOT. That’s not how it really goes–either in the original, or in life.
It’s a misquotation of part of Hamlet’s soliloquy in III,i:

To be or not to be . . .
the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to . . .

Not that mushy “ills” stuff. Thousand, natural, and shocks. Art is in the details. There are lots of them, they are part of life, and they hit our outraged system with the impact of tiny bullets. It’s important to us that we share the details of our best friend’s philandering, all about what happened at that party, just what trick our digestive system is up to today, and exactly what the surgery entailed.

And the auditor usually doesn’t need or want to hear it. They desire that whatever happens in the bathroom, stays in the bathroom (unless there’s some impact upon the host’s rug or plumbing). They don’t want to have to meet those saucy people, knowing what they know, because they’ll have to shake hands while knowing where those saucy hands have been. And anybody with an imagination (or a penchant for the Discovery Channel) can picture all that ucky medical stuff performed upon their own flesh.

And we know this, but we want to share anyway. Pity the pharmacist, bartender to the afflicted. It’s best explained by going back to the primal overshare: toilet training, where information is joyously announced because it is a milestone of control over that mysterious sack of stuff we come packed in. It is a triumph! No poop, there I was!

I survived the surgery, and it was some ordeal, let me tell you! But I kicked its ass! Hey, you know how hard it is to find that much fiber? And I’m sorry you don’t want to hear about my sexual awakening at that Mazola party, but that’s because you’re square and I must preach the word! This last betrays the lot, because the oversharing is “all about me.”

I think the unwilling audience should remember that, either in being sympathetic to the impulse to overshare and bring somebody else into the me-ness, or as ammunition against the onslaught of I-don’t-care-how-uncomfortable-this-makes-you. Because whether you want to admit it or not, it is all about you on some level much of the time, and your lack of oversharing is due only to your greater desire for control; you have a stopper on the bottle preventing the exuberant genie from emerging.

Besides, admit it: Half the time, deep down, there’s a piece of you that kind of wants to know.

So! Guess what happened to me to inspire this blog?