I have noticed, as many of you have not, that I do not write about myself in this diary. I do that elsewhere. I write about those around me. I write about the way my environment affects me. I write about the banalaties of a world over run by bureaucracies and politics and bullshit. I write about things that really mean very little.

These are the subjects that make up the entries of this diary. But I don't just write about these things. I fictionalize them. I exaggerate. I compile. I disassemble. I even dissemble at times. I take my tongue and I plant it in my cheek and I type.

Let's have some examples. This is a total fiction. This wasn't nearly so traumatic. This did not go down in such a romantic fashion. And this, well, that I made up entirely. Except for the part about being a baby. Obviously.

It's all lies. I take these things that have a kernel of truth and I turn them into a couple of paragraphs that I would like to read. I turn them into something else. Something mine. I do it because it's fun. I do it because I like to get my ego stroked by the generally positive reaction I get from the things I set out for you to consume. I do it because it's amazingly reassuring to make somebody up and do terrible things to him. That's why.

Today, however, I just don't care to do that. I don't have any pithy remarks to be made about soda crackers. I don't have a witty insight to share about the complexity of wig making. I don't feel like adding another fiction to these pages. I just don't.

This is, seemingly, a symptom of what I have come to realize has been a very foul mood. I have been absolutely rotten to everyone today. I've managed to pick fights with a number of people I dearly love who just managed to have the misfortune of running into me. To these people, and they know who they are, I offer an apology and the promise that I'll pull myself together. I don't know exactly what's wrong with me, but I do know that it was me, not you. And not in a Seinfeld way.

To everyone else reading this, I'm glad I didn't run into you today because I've got too much fence mending to do as it is. Remember what I said about fiction. Will Smith isn't Muhamad Ali. He just played the champ in that platitudinal movie. It's the same concept.

We could all do well to remember that if you read something here it is of no consequence in the long run. I understand that there is a power to seeing something in print. When someone, anyone, takes the time to write something down, they endow it with the energy used to create that writing and they give it an urgency, a legitimacy it may not actually deserve. My promise to you, dear reader, is that nothing you read here deserves such scrutiny. Nothing.

So there you have it.

Posted at 1:37 a.m.

previously on Sooner � next on Sooner

last five entries

making Sense of the State of the Union -- 2

Making Sense of the State of the Union -- Pt. 1

But I'm Willing to Learn

Rough Draft

Political Action