Slow Burns

I decided when I started this blog, I wasn't going to spend a lot of time blathering on about politics and religion and news-item types of shit. Quite frankly, I can blather on about my own stupid shit without needing to resort to that kind of material. Other than my craigslist material, I've been fairly true to my word about not getting all involved in that. But today, I just have to say this: mad, mad, mad props to Karen Owens, the brilliant author of the Duke Fuck List. A girl after my own heart. And mad props to my buddy at work for showing it to me, because I don't watch the news, read any news shit online anymore, no nothing. I find it's actually easier to be totally ignorant because there's not much of anything good out there. I mean, I'm not totally ignorant altogether, but I just need a break from all that stuff every once in a while. So I have come to rely upon my friends to get the news out to me or for it to come out on facebook.

I read the DFL, written by a girl who is DTF (yes!) this afternoon. The damn thing is so big I could only get Subjects 8 through 12 to load, but damn. Can I go to Duke? Is it too late for me? I think she slept with 12 guys between her sophomore and senior years of college, which would be about four guys per year on average. Except from the little bit I read it seemed like it happened much closer together, like all 12 in one year or something. Whatever. I don't care, because here's a girl who is out to have some fun and tell a few friends about it, because some of us girls like to brag about our conquests. I would be one of them, if I had any conquests to brag about. But again, I've put no effort into making this happen, so I can only blame my own lazy ass. 

So my girl Karen does her thesis and then sent it to a few friends to show them, because she's a writer at heart and wants to show them her shit and because she obviously put a lot of time and effort into her thesis. This is what she labored over, what she spent years researching. My god, can I be her research assistant? Karen, are you hiring? I might be able to corner the market on 30 and 40-something divorced guys for you. But uh-oh, her friends thought it was so awesome they forwarded it. From there, exponential forwarding. And now, the national media. It has, if you will, gone viral. In the most viral of viral senses. Boom! The morality of the media and the country at large is bearing down on Karen. Karen, sweetheart, stand strong. Everyone wants those kinds of hookups, at least with some of your subjects, like the guy who was rated at 12/10. Hell yeah!

But now there's discussion of legal problems, being sued because I assume that some of those guys who didn't score so well on those handy-dandy graphs are kind of upset, because no man wants it known that he sucks at THAT. Most of them can't even admit it to themselves, although we women know. We know, and we tell each other. Hence, the thesis. And here's where Karen went wrong. It's totally cool to screw all those guys; I'm fine with that. But you have to keep your subjects anonymous. No pics, no names, no identifying features. Just go with Subject 4, Subject 9, so on and so forth.

I think I've done a pretty good job at keeping my blog fairly anonymous. I haven't told any of my co-workers, not because I discuss work in great detail, but because I don't want this to become the water cooler discussion of the day, or have people at work try to engage me in conversations in hopes that I'll write about it later on. I hope that I can't be swayed that easily. I haven't told anyone in my family, other than my cool aunt, because no one else would get it. My mother would be mortified, and god only knows what the rest of them would say. My friends whom I trust know about it, and then whomever else has stumbled across it on the web or the few sites I'm linked at. I got linked on this Russian site last week and had a pretty good amount of hits off of that one. I checked out the site and I think it might have been soft porn. I don't know; I can't read Russian. I think it goes unsaid that I obviously haven't told The Ex or any of his friends.

I also haven't provided any names. I haven't named The Ex, the children, my family, my job, my bosses or any of that. I've mentioned where I grew up and where I live now, and the first half of my first name. That's it. No more than that. This is for two reasons: to make some kind of an attempt at remaining anonymous, and because I don't want any names polluting my blog. I want the people in my blog to read about who is in my life and be able to form their own opinions. Sometimes that's hard to do if we name names, because everyone's got memories or baggage attached to names. Read about my unnamed children, and maybe they will become your children too, or at least just like your children. Maybe my mom is your mom, and my Mothbrain - well, you have a Mothbrain just like her. As for The Ex, hey, ya'll can have his ass. Just take him, take that motherfucker right out of my life. Send me your address and I'll arrange to have him show up. I'm not kidding.

My future conquests? Yeah, they won't be named either. In fact, they might not even be discussed, especially if they know about my blog, and they will probably not be discussed while I am deciding if I like them enough to keep them around. If I don't like them enough to keep them around (in my bed), then I'll have at it. But no names, because that's not cool. They will be named after whatever exploit I will use to describe them. Hence rugburn guy, lazy fucker, smacked my ass guy, electric fence guy, Army barracks guy, etc. I'll respect them enough to keep them anonymous, because I can respect the hookup. Even if it was just a hookup, it was two people liking each other enough to arrange to have their genitals touch. Maybe it was two people liking each other enough to have their genitals touch a lot. Maybe it went beyond genital touching and turned into heart touching. Who knows?

On the surface, I'd love for my blog to go viral. Who the hell doesn't want everyone in the English speaking world fawning all over their shit? And yeah, I know that criticism will come with that, but you have to take the bad with the good. For real, though, going viral is the equivalent of a flash fire. It's an internet flash fire that usually ends up with the writer self-combusting. And then it's on to the next flash fire, the next viral sensation. So going viral really isn't a good thing. I want to be a slow burn. The kind of slow burn that you see in peat fires, the fires that burn for years and decades and that you just can't get rid of, and the fires that everyone knows about and accept because that's just how life is. That's what I want to be, because that kind of writing is how you make it out there. You hang in there, through the good times and the craigslist, you go with what you've got and sometimes you make up shit when you don't have much. But you stay.

Actually, I think that's the kind of hookup I want, too. The kind that's not a hit-it-and-quit-it, but a long slow burn that just keeps on burning. The hookup that turns into something more because of the smolder, the passion, the ignition.

Slow burns = good stuff. Karen, thanks for teaching me a lesson in all of this. I owe you one, and will raise a glass to you tomorrow night at the bachelorette party I'm going to, right before I get off of my lazy ass and work on a conquest.