I stopped "journaling", as all those self-help, broken-hearted, woman-empowering chick mag articles call it, years ago because I tire of looking at what I was thinking 10 years ago. It usually boils down to "I feel like crap, wish I had a cup of coffee, a cigarette and a candy bar right now, why am I so lousy at everything?" Just like now. However, I kinda want to place stuff out to look at, like brick-a-brack in the living room and if you want to look at it, too, that's fine.

Right now this brick-a-brack is mostly just disgust at how under-rated writing is. I was flailing for a job and I went to several "freelancer" sites to maybe pick up a gig. Theses sites are nightmares that seem to be run by people who think you can just toss out writing assignments and see who's stupid enough to do it for one tenth of the money a writer should be getting. If you want to be a writer, you have no experience with editors and your friends all told you, "You should be a writer, you're so smart!" then these are the sites for you. If, on the other hand, you know that what you write off the top of your head with no forethought or research is pure crud, you are appalled at the lack of respect for a writer's time and knowledge when you apprehend that eight bucks is what they will pay you for 300 words of prose.

Yeah, I can write 300 words for 8 bucks. It will look a lot like this blog: self-referential, casual, extemporaneous and slightly silly (or stupid, depending on the day's mental sharpness.) Is that what people really want to read? Why?

I'm so tired of looking at magazine and internet text rife with stupidities, anachronisms and redundancies. Only today I read, on MSN, about someone's "emotional feelings". I'm curious as to what other kind of feelings there are? I also read about the "Civil War soldiers at the battle of Bunker Hill". I guess those guys just sat there on Breed's Hill for 90 years waiting for the Civil War to start. I wonder if they won? Then I read about a power drink that was going to "stretch my abilities as long as five hours." Must be those temporary abilities that don't last as long as the ones you always have, you know, the ones that are rubberized so that they can stretch out time. I understand why the writers of these pieces would get 8 bucks for this offensive nonsense. My question is, how stupid do you have to be to publish it? (or read it? But I'm answering my own question because, of course, I read it, didn't I? So we've established that one has to be pretty stupid.)

As a writing professional, I can only say that inundating the public with this drivel underestimates both the skills necessary to be a writer and the public's tolerance for such nonsense. Blogs are fine. You get what you pay for. However, poorly written prose is seeping its noxious pus onto everything we read.

Amateur writers be warned- we will constantly make fun of you as we bitter pros nurse our shots of Wild Turkey in a dark corner of the local bar, lamenting our cashiering jobs and wondering when writers will get paid like adults again. I suppose that's going to be sometime in the future when we will get paid to fix your 300 lousy words. Nah, that'll never happen. We'll get paid 8 bucks, tops, to fix it.

Since I can't keep track of all my goofy websites, I am now trying to blog. Also, I can't afford to keep them all going.
I swear that I shall not ever use the words "blogosphere" or "bloggin'" except now to say I'm not using them. I also swear that I will try not to put up recipes, family photos or vacation pics. I'll probably put up pics of Dave, though. Dave is a parakeet. He lives with me, or tries to.