Blog thoughts

Abbie asked me if I really didn't want people to read my blog, since I don't link to it from our podcast website. It was something to think about.

A website is a public thing, but a journal is a private thing. The way I see it, a blog is a bit of both.

My pal Big Anklevich has a blog he's been writing in a great deal lately, and while he started it with the intent of reviewing Pixar films and audiobooks, recently he's started using it as a journal, talking about his trials in life, his wife's sharp nails during their thrice-yearly lovemaking sessions, and his attempts to send out his fiction for rejection (or possibly for publication, I may have misunderstood). I know he's got a lot of people reading it, since he now Twitters about it and reposts everything on Facebook.

That sort of thing sounds pretty tempting to me, but I have also had my increasingly-flabby arse bitten by way of my blog, and I worry about that sort of thing happening again, since I tend to say things like "Bryan Roman has to shave twice a day because he was born with three nuts" . . . without making sure Bryan isn't going to hear me say it.*

My buddy Matthew used to say (quite often) that while Americans have Free Speech, they are not free of the consequences of what they say. I guess I agree with that credo, but I still want to be free to speak my mind in these pages and not have to censor myself out of embarrassment or fear.

And there's one other thing.

On Friday, my sister and her husband moved out of their little house and into a new place, a second floor condo in the same town as Triple Threat Bryan Roman. She is pregnant and due in September with her second child. On Monday, she was called into a meeting at work and laid off. This sort of whatever-the-opposite-of-serendipity is the sort of thing I probably ought to blog about, since that means a lot more to me than the loss of TV's Robert Culp this week. But I don't blog about things like that very often. They're too real, and maybe too private for just anybody to read, at least how I see it.

And maybe I'm wrong. My buddy Jeff has two blogs, one is public (where he reviews comic books and cyberpunk) and one is private (where he talks about things like personal regret and family outings and scabs on his inner thighs). I think only his wife can read that second blog, but for a while there, I could read it too. And one time, he blogged about something we did together and the shit his wife gave him about it and that we couldn't do stuff like that anymore, and it bummed me out most totally. It made me angry at his wife, angry at Jeff, and also a little angry at myself for reading Jeff's private, personal thoughts. I never went back.

So, what if I blogged something really personal here, like, I had a buddy who was a drug dealer, and one day the drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers came to his apartment while I was there to score, and Pat said . . .

See, I don't know if I could do that. But I'd like to be able to, if the desire to do it hit me. I guess that would be for some reader's benefit too, since I remember the experience without having to mention it to anyone.

It seems to be something of a conundrum, and I'm not nearly smart enough to deal with connundrums. Or spell them.

Rish "Blogmaster" Outfield

*If you're reading this, Roman, you should be proud I revealed your secret, not angry. Three balls just makes you more manly than the rest of us.