the skeptic

i'll scribble in the margins for all of lecture. i'll doodle in a moleskine all day. hell, i might even put down some coherent thoughts in my journal, old fashioned style, with ink and paper. it's rare, however, that i will elucidate entire frames of reference and careful consideration in the medium used by most civilizations since god knows when, most likely since we were picking fleas from behind each other's ears. no, these pages are usually relinquished to non-sensical streams of consciousness and unconnected images. i used to fill old spiral bound notebooks with drawings, stories and little clues into my head. those notebooks, either 70 or 80 pages each, would rumple at the corners, tangling and snaring at the spiral ends after all of five minutes after being pulled of the shelves that apparently held them in some sort of ion forcefield, protective against those bent on loose-leaf destruction. the covers of would collect scratches, ink circles from thought to be dying pens and small cartoon heads that seemed confused and perhaps not all comfortable with their current state: that of the poorly and hastily drawn. but those days, the days of licking the tip and bending the stiff paper, seem to have gone the way of the ever reluctant dodo.

now that my computer stays on my persons nearly all of my mobile day, it's hard to imagine a world without 8-bit information transference. i'll constantly be updating, or at least hopelessly checking, online accounts that i claim to hate having. these accounts are justified in my head with the tired notion of keeping me in touch with friends. is it just me or does that never quite seem to work out? what has taken the place of cracking the spine of a hardbound journal for the first time? or breaking the pencil lead for the umpteenth time because you're far too involved with what you're writing to care about seemingly costless carbon?

these questions, at first glance, appear a far cry from the sensibility of the medium of transference. i'll grant you, graciously i might add, that. but to counter this sudden bolt of intelligence i'm going to share something that may or may not completely pique your interest: not a fortnight past, i deleted my myspace account. "but elliott, isn't that the one you've had since high school?" why yes, perceptive (and oddly informed) reader, that would be the one. due to a ridiculously poor design, ugly templates, a psychotically slow server network, being owned by fox news corp. and existing most generally as a malevolent cancer to the internets, i canned my account. weary of complaining about the site and even wearier of it making its way into daily conversation with friends who also had accounts, i simply snapped. the unchecked hypocracy of labeling myspace as one of the worst inventions since the helicopter ejection seat while owning one myself simply could no longer stand when tested against scientific (common) logic.

this may seem odd and i feel someone could tell me that i'm paying an unwarranted amount of attention to a thoroughly useless story, but the truth is that this was actually quite the event. and it's only quite the event because my friends who also have accounts were visibly shocked (even the ones who emailed and facebook messaged me about it) when they got news that i decided i was too good for it all. some were personally offended, some were elated with the joy of persons who wished they could escape but had that omniprescient "tom" character watching over them and lording their lives, some could not have possibly cared less. who needs those friends of the latter persuasion anyway? assholes. but that's beside the point that i'm trying to reach.

the point is that by deleting this rotting leper of an online divertissment, i freed myself of one crippling crutch: the idea that i need websites to keep in touch with people. also, it has been of great importance to my newest moleskine, a little black companion that shadows me and lets me know whenever i'm feeling a little emotional, musical, critical or any other -al you can think of. i can doodle those poorly fated bubble headed stick figures and i can turn myself into anyone i prefer in my journal but mostly it just allows me to be me: my handwriting is ever indicitive of me, chicken scratchy in the most ruthlessly emotional moments and cold and calculated whenever i've chanced upon the frame of mind to think through something in a critical fashion.

i've always hated the word blog. it just looks like shit. it sounds like shit, too. and if it looks like shit and sounds like shit, it must be shit, right? well, not exactly. perhaps to an outsider this may look like an addict's attempt at covering up a kicked addiction but i'm convinced (and this must be the unwilling addict) that it's more than that. to serve as an accent to my growing notebooks, moleskines and margin notes, here's the aggregate of many of my thoughts, possibly neatly complied but most likely thrown onto the page in a manner, hopefully, befitting of my early journals.

enjoy.

-e