i really hope that tommy writing about his xbox will increase readership. maybe now charles and jon will read it, too!

who cares if anyone is reading? i mean, i know deep down in my heart, i want to be validated as much as the next insecure girl who was unpopular in high school, yet remained convinced of her superior intelligence over the homecoming queen. it would be nice if this blog had hundreds of hits every day from people we didn't know, but unless this gets linked anywhere else besides myfamily.com, it's not going to happen. and i'm happy writing about stuff that i find interesting, which at the moment happens to be politics and the democratic campaign, with the occasional marc jacobs spring purse thrown in. people can read it, or they can not.

i really think a huge problem with blogs is that people are always writing for outside attention. they're writing to be viewed in a certain way. they're writing to increase readership. they're writing for popularity. COME ON. blogs can be the voice of the nerds! i don't want to conform to be the most popular blog! i want to be MY blog. i want to be happy with what *i* write. i don't want to have to care if others think it's boring or mis-informed. when did the voice of the minority start caring about if the majority was interested?

none of this is to turn away people who might read this blog now - i love that through blogs i can connect and communicate with people i wouldn't otherwise. but i'm not going to pander to any readership, existing or potential. i think my friends are smarter than that.

so, now that i've self-therapied myself about my experience in high school via my blogging, i'm going to ask: who does read this? i don't care if i know you or not, if you're my grandmother or a stranger, friend or foe. please leave a comment saying who you are - or not even who you are, but just that you read. and even if no one leaves a comment, even if tommy and jeff are the only ones here - that's okay. i'm going to keep writing.

addendum: could we be the first couple to have a fight through a blog? how retarded is that?

I like to think that I need to write about nonpolitical things here, in order to keep our (our, he says, after 3 posts) readership coming back. But since our readership is limited to Jeff, and he only shows up because he wants us to keep reading his blog, maybe I should just give in to my feverish partisan instincts.

But I'll try to keep it brief. The SOTU is always godawful boring, and last night was no exception, although it was relatively short. No moon, no dead soldiers, no Osama, no new economic initiatives. No apologies on tax cuts or unilateralism. Some pandering -- abstinence education, the total nonstatement on gay marriage (all he actually did was describe how an amendment is the only way to stay the courts -- well, duh. Can you tell us how a bill becomes a law again?) -- which was actually kind of brilliant, since his base will view it as support but he can always disclaim it if the political winds shift.

Anyway, the really exciting news of the day is that Charles, Jon and I bought an XBox. This is very exciting to me -- the XBox is highly modifiable, and once I get a mod chip and replacement hard drive (and do a little soldering) all sorts of cool things are possible -- the usual (stealing games), the neat but useless (running linux) and the truly pointless (an XBox IRC client? YEAH!). I'm much more excited about the idea of stealing games than I am about actually playing them, once stolen.

The modchip sites are backordered from the holiday rush, though, so I'm stuck playing the games that came with the system for now -- all of which suck, with the exception of Grand Theft Auto. Now, I am not a huge GTA fan. I realize it brings my manhood into question to say this, but I am somewhat bothered by some "features" of the game. Patronizing, then robbing and killing hookers just doesn't quite sit right for some reason, even in virtual form.

The problem is that the game is just really, really well done -- and you don't HAVE to do these horrible things to complete the missions. So I try to be a socially responsible drug-dealing thug: I don't run over more people than absolutely necessary, I try to kill a maximum of two police officers per day, and I almost never, ever play the mini-game where you torture and eat children. Still, I will admit I have kind of a problem respecting other people's property, and I'm worried I may one day find myself climbing through the smashed window of our neighbor's Corvette before I even realize what I'm doing.

well, i don't have any super insightful thoughts into the state of the union speech. which is good, cos i'm on a sugar high right due to the fact that one of my coworkers has bowls and bowls of candy hearts on his desk, and i've eaten about half of them, and my eyebrows are twitching a lot. so anything i said would come off as an insane candy-fueled rant. which might not be that different from the way i usually come off, but let's pretend i'm not biased sometimes, okay?

anyway, i watched the speech with tommy and julie, and i didn't think it was particularly terrible, but it was in no way good. it wasn't confident - it was arrogant. it wasn't specific - it dealt in generals. it wasn't about inspiration - it was about inducing even more fear. and did anyone else see bush do that terrible terrible eye-brow raising/smirk thing a few times?? GAH! like, dude, i totally rocked that speech, heh heh. i did enjoy seeing hillary clinton look like she was about to puke, and the ted kennedy eye-rolling.

also moments of infuriation - spewing abstinence (do you think bush had premarital sex?); implying he would support a constitutional amendment on gay marriage; the oh-so-subtle use of "weapons of mass destruction....programs;" talking about the evil of STEROIDS?? where did that come from? wp notes that he spent twice as much time talking about steroids as he did social security reform.

the wp's editorial is pretty damning.

oh well, that was a little bit of a rant. in summary: it was a short-sighted simplistic speech that refused to deal with the serious problems and complexities that the nation is facing, and will face for a long time. i wish i had played a state of the union drinking game while watching. it would have numbed the pain.

la la. okay. i'm going to write another post today that has nothing to do about politics. i will instead rant about music.