Gentlemen, start your engines...

This blog was, in point of fact, created as an assignment for my English 1020 class. Y’know, the one every university makes you take as a way to bilk an extra few hundred dollars out of you? I went into it expecting another slow spiral into the depths of boredom, like every other English class I’d ever taken, going over the same old crap yet again. A quick glance over the syllabus confirmed my suspicions. A profile paper, a position paper, a…. wait, a blog?

What is this strange instructor with the asymmetrical haircut trying to pull? (And yes, Mr. B., I went home and described you as “hardcore Myspace” to my husband. For that I am sorry. At least until grades are posted. :P)

Now, I am an internet junkie. I admit it. My favorite pastime is to chain smoke and live vicariously through the lives of others. I wake up an hour early in the mornings to get my webcomics read. I am a forum lurker, a blog subscriber, a passive farker. I feel more connection to people who live on other continents than I do about my next door neighbors, whom I know nothing about except that they like to have really loud sex in the wee hours of the morning. This is less than endearing.

I never joined the party, assuming my life was not nearly exciting enough to be of any interest to anyone but the most entertainment starved. I figured that if I were to write a blog, and someone were to read it, it would be because they had read every other thing out there, even the Shatner music aficionado forums. The true end of the internet.

I started a Myspace page (I know, I know… I repent!) a while ago, largely as another way for cute girls I met in clubs to contact me without the pressure of a phone number. It turned into a way for people I already knew to invite me to stuff me without the effort of actually getting it to me on time, and for creepy guys who stalked me in high school to find me and pick up where they left off. The few journal entries I wrote were, well, drivel, usually drunken drivel.

I viewed those with well-read, fascinating, addictive blogs the way one views bestselling authors. Surely there must be some kind of initiation process? At least some kind of screening to keep out riff-raff such as myself?

But then, a revelation! As I made a half-hearted check to see if any of my classmates had deigned to leave their required comments on my scribblings, I found a quick note from an unfamiliar name. And it wasn’t an order from the Powers That Be ordering me to cease and desist pretending at being a true denizen of the net. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? You mean anybody can read this thing? And they did?? Holy crap!

And so, I made a decision to give this a shot. If I get cornered in a back alley by an angry mob of staunch protectors of the purity of the blogosphere, the blame’s all on you, belledame222. And if I end up at a swanky soiree surrounded by fawning admirers who “just love my work”, well, then it was all my idea.

Seriously, though- thanks.

A quick addendum: If I accidentally breach some form of netiquette, please, beat me about the head and shoulders with salmon until I fix it. I'm not entirely sure of protocol around here. Halp!