I Want One VLOG I Wanted to Come Through, Oh, To Come True

[Title from this Tegan & Sara song, which you can listen to in the sidebar for burning-a-little-brighter purposes.] FYI, none of this is real. It's all a trick ... I mean illusion. Although you may've suspected that Riese is actually a cover for a 50-year old SARS-infected Unabomber living in a Nebraska basement/crystal meth lab, the truth is way hotter. In fact, Riese is a cover for someone even cooler than actual Riese! Real Riese can fly, obvs, is 75% lesbian, rides to and from work on a unicorn and when she dreams, she dreams in big bright colors about worlds resembling Milton Bradley board games, specifically Chutes and Ladders and Candyland. Her real friends are Gloppy the Molasses Monster and Princess Lolly. The former offers good advice, the latter has an agile tongue, which is handy. I think I've been reading too much experimental fiction lately.

Back in the days of Livejournal '03, [I believe I have 2-3 carryover readers, yes? Jenna? Carl? Hello.] I got frustrated that my boy's other girlfriend was [understandably] combing my LJ for hints about his secret life and, in reaction to this, I began posting on LJ as if I was in the Witness Protection Program. The best part of this game was taking new photos for my icon in my roommate's Marc Jacobs sunglasses. Everyone [all five of my readers] got really confused like "Are you really in Montana and if so why?" So I gave it up, though it was way more fun than telling the truth. I never expected my banner to be such prophecy, w/r/t honesty being a bitch, etc. Speaking of prophecy, what is truth? I don't know, I don't believe in it. I believe in only one thing and that thing is heart: is your heart good or bad? That is all that matters. You know the answer. Disowning your daughter for imaginary reasons, P.S., is bad, though I guess it's easier to handle when your wife is her age, it's like you can still be connected to our generation and not miss out on the latest developments in facebook applications, etc.

Also. Also. Also. I've got all these ideas, like for a glossary and a cast of characters and a more useful organised blogroll and such things, but for now I've sort of created this blog just where I can keep all the stuff I want to copy down every day, which's a lot of stuff, and also [also. also.] to archive the auto-fun of the day. Just so you know. The more you know, you know?

"I do not mind living
like this. I cannot bear
living like this.
Oh, everything's true
at different times
in the capacious day."
(Stephen Dunn, "Between Angels")
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"No man has ever dared to describe himself as he truly is." (Camus)
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So, I'm still gonna like, explain stuff later this week, 'cause it's obvs more complicated than it seems and I feel I owe y'all that after um, deleting my entire blog etc. But things'll be okay. There'll be no Dream Job [the hours/pay/perks were so incredible, obvs too good to be true], but I'm lucky to be surrounded by dreamy people, including Olive, who believes in follow through, which's also something I believe in. Last night Haviland and I discussed, for about an hour, the possibility that Olive is in fact an angel.

For now, I'm still riding the "fuck it" end of major depressive disorder, obviously. Thus, this week's VLOG, in which Haviland and I play "I've Never"/"Never Have I Ever"/"The Ten Fingers Game."

FIRST: If you're considering paying me to do something and are reading this blog to uncover my true self -- you know, all the secret and terribly relevant aspects of my past and recreational activities that will absolutely bear just as much upon my job performance as it does upon the performance of your other employees who've committed similar sins but don't have blogs -- I'd like to provide a disclaimer/rant ...

How has our culture come to this: we are obsessed with "uncovering" the truth, but we despise honesty ... and, right, what is the truth? After all, ultimately Olive and I were punished for deductions based on a version of truth I offered up here ... clearly we're dealing with a maniac and therefore, truth is about as real as the word "truthiness," or is about as real as Auto-Win. Whoever I am. I don't know who I am. I can't even write an "about me" for any of the 500 social networking sites I'm on, I can just give quotes. I mean, old-school AutoWin was so unlike my actual self, it was/is/was/is a character. We all become characters we become the stories we tell about ourselves, Often the facts I present here are about as true as fiction, and sometimes it's fiction but totally true. All I know is this: whatever I do say is somehow important, essential, necessary, honest -- to me, and hopefully, to you. Above all, I would like everyone to LOL as much as possible and LMAO or ROFL whenever possible and not to take anything too seriously.

Mostly I just want to make fun of myself and all the follies of my past & present and yours too, because life is obvs hands down totes RIDIC.

"I want to be consistent
with the truth as it reveals itself
to me," Gandhi said, and I felt
the hard permission right words give us
to disobey, to become ourselves.
I loved thinking that integrity
might be fluid, and still do,
though the indulgent, rudderless
and without shame, love to think so too,
and the truth is
the indulgent are my careless brothers
half the time."
-from "Loves," Stephen Dunn
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Dan: When I get back please tell me the truth.
Alice: Why?
Dan: Because I'm addicted to it. Because without it we're animals.

-Closer, Patrick Marber

"You can doubt anything if you think about it long enough, because what happened always adjusts to fit what happened after that."

-Ani DiFranco, "Reckoning"

This is my weirdo story, for whatever that's worth, for whatever is true or untrue, good or bad, wrong or right, hidden or revealed, for whatever I've done or the ordinary events of my life I've converted into legend. I've obvs got more than this to say on the topic of truth, story, character, it's one of my favorites, clearly. But for now, this is like, the brillest vlog of all time. I'd like to subtitle it "a hot mess," and add, also, that there's so much brill footage from this one, there'll be another later this week fo' sho. Also, we weren't making out in the bathroom, P.S. and also I didn't ... who cares.

""None of us seemed to know the nature of the coincidences that bound us together, as I know now, or that junkies and masochists and hookers and those who have squandered everything are the ring of brightest angels around heaven."
(Rick Moody, The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven)"