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blackolive666

age:

	33 this week

location:

	Brooklyn, NY

looking for :

	nice and mellow

more about me:

	I'm not going to pay alot for this muffler.

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Over and Out
10/2/2004 3:04:20 PM

Well, people, it appears that this is the official goodbye. I’m shedding a tear as I type (well, the pollen count is rather high today). I will no longer be bringing you blog breakfasts in bed.

My decision to refrain from further blogging was not a knee-jerk reflex made in the heat of the moment. Attentive readers will note that I haven’t posted anything in two weeks, and it was at that point that I decided officially that I had reached my maximum output capacity. I was blogged out. However, upon voicing my decision to others, I was gently reminded by my attorney (aka – Mom) that it was never good business conduct to violate a contract, no matter how seemingly minor-league it is. And so I didn’t pull out at that moment, but I also didn’t put out anything further. I was losing the ratings battle anyway, so I just decided to not make a dramatic exit but rather just ease on out. (Weird, though, that they don’t have anyone to replace me immediately – with all the attention-seeking random outbursts in the feedback column, I’d have thought that Hooksexup would have a whole crop of fresh eager would-be blog contestants creaming their collective jeans to claim the spot – especially if it meant dethroning someone like me.)

So why did I choose to stop? Well, as previously observed by my erstwhile colleagues Snarkiest and later Strumpet22, not all of us have the blog in our blood. Some, such as GirlGoneMad and Marking_Up, seem to have an unrepentant zest for blurring, if not totally erasing, the lines between their public and private lives. (Can I say “unrepentant zest” without getting crucified by the online vocab police? Alright then, what I’m saying is that it seems like they live for this shit.) I am not one of these people – in fact, I’m the polar opposite. I never realized how private of a person I was until I began blogging for Hooksexup. Posting about my love life for consumption and analysis by such a ruthless public turned out to be a highly adverse concept for me. And I had good reason to be apprehensive – I’ve been confronted by no less than three former lovers regarding my blogging about them.

And what could I say? “It’s just a job”? They don’t care – they see it as a violation of trust. And in reality, they’re correct. There’s no way you can expect your bedroom experiences to stay in the bedroom – both men and women are going to want to share it with their close friends. But that’s verbal – published text is entirely another matter. In fact, the dating columnist that Snarkiest blogged about very early on was someone I had dated as well (after he did) and one of the conditions I put on her was that our bedroom activities were never to appear in print. She agreed and then of course wrote about it anyway the following week. I flipped. It was all positive, as she took care to remind me as a defense, but I flipped anyway. Now I’m on the other side of the fence, and it ain’t easy to go ahead and hang other people’s, as well as my own, dirty laundry on the line with all the faces of those former laundry-wearers staring angrily over the fence at you.

In addition, I found much of the “feedback column” muckraking to be discouraging and distasteful. I mean we’re just trying to do a job here, and as I said, for someone like me, it’s a challenging job – baring your soul to strangers in static print that is read by thousands. It was especially lame when this mud-slinging came from spineless cretins who couldn’t even post a profile name. I mean, I’ve got broad shoulders, thick skin and a sense of humor about myself – you can’t call yourself blackolive666 and not expect some deserved and undeserved flak. But if you’re gonna parry, at least give the kid an even chance to riposte, hmmm? (And by the way, if you think my blogs are pretentious now, you should have read some of my original drafts, where I blogged entirely in foreign languages, changing languages within sentences. Tee-hee.)

But since I decided to stop blogging a few weeks back, I actually have been more laid-back and humorous about the whole thing. The time I spent thwarting off loser naysayers in the feedback column during my lame duck period was almost more fun than being an active blog contender. I mean, my last blog drew 46 responses! 46! Not counting my own responses to the responses, I guess it’s about 40. Still, though, I’d say that’s a record. And the funny thing is, nearly all of them have little or nothing to do with the actual blog at hand, but rather me in general. My style, my attitude, my cowboy shirts, my coffee selections. There have been some pretty harsh hecklers and some equally vociferous supportive exponents, all going at it in my absence, either on the attack or in my defense. It’s almost like I’ve become a sort of shadowy figure in the background, inanimate, and as the subject of debate, less important than the debaters themselves. It’s like I’ve become like a political figure, standing back watching two camps go to war over my sterling merits versus my crippling faults, occasionally adding my two cents where I see fit. If nothing else, I’ll go down as the blogger that polarized the Hooksexup audience like no other. Nobody liked me – I was either loved or reflexively hated. Yeah, well, it be that way sometimes. You’ve got your 15 minutes of fame, so why not make `em go to war over you, right? If you’re gonna be a bear, be a grizzly.

It wasn’t all bad, though. In fact, I did receive many supportive notes from fans and even got approached for quite a few dates as well. I didn’t take any of them up on it, yet, but it’s nice to see that the machine was at least working for me. Probably the reason I haven’t gone out with any of them yet is because the ones I’m most interested in live hundreds to thousands of miles away from New York. One is a super-fine blonde divorcee from San Francisco who sends me late-night e-mails that are crammed with galvanizing stuff that ranges from saucy patter to geeky musical trivia that rivals my own to a near-pathological volley of “Big Lebowski” quotes. The others are no strangers to the Blog a Log: the lovely KaySeven from Chicago and the nearest and dearest to my heart, the Canadian cutie-pie That_Darn_Cat from Toronto, who has been so sweet to me that I feel like her e-mails could send me into a diabetic coma. In fact, tonight I have a date with a gal who actually contacted me off of Friendster, but titled her initial e-mail "you're the Hooksexup guy!"

Plus, I learned a lot as a blogger (other than the fact that I’m not cut out for it.) Do you want to hear what I learned? If not, tough shit. It’s my last blog and the last time you’ll have to deal with my smart-ass mouth, so just humor me and deal with it .

WHAT I LEARNED (in chronological order)

· “Blog” is short for “weblog” (no, I didn’t know that prior to being hired my Hooksexup)
· Rudimentary HTML (yay for me!!)
· Always have a lawyer.
· I hate lawyers.
· Oh yeah, not you, Mom.
· The girl writing you a Hooksexup note could be drunk.
· I’m often drunk when writing girls a Hooksexup note.
· I’m probably drunk far more often than I need to be.
· GirlGoneMad is actually every bit as cute as her adorable sister, who I dated for a spell.
· Marking_Up sure gets around! (Er…I meant around the world. He gives me travel envy.)
· The departed Snarkiest and I dated at least two of the same people – and both read our blogs.
· If you’re going to blog about former dates, at least get their hair color right. (So sorry, Julia.)
· My friend Dustin (the cock-blocker) also reads Hooksexup. Whooops!
· Switchblades + fishnets + heels on wood floor = mad turn-on.
· I’ve gotten laid more off of Friendster than I have off of Hooksexup. Ironic, hmm?
· I did have a latent crush on Cinethesia.
· Don’t arrange to meet girls on a jam-packed boardwalk at Coney Island during a huge rock festival.
· If you’re meeting a date and she keeps you waiting longer than a half an hour, leave. In the big city, that’s called an omen.
· Beware of a girl who writes you saying “Read your blog – you seem like you could be a real asshole but I’d like to go out with you sometime anyway.”
· Even if she tacks on “You’re one cute asshole.”
· I guess I “do” look like a douchebag in some of those pictures.
* A lot of people are fucking Foucault fans aren't they? Well, as a semiotics major in college, I've been gag-fed more Foucault than I ever care to hear again. I hope someday these Foucault-a-philes will come to see through that useless bullshit. It took me a while, but I did. "Foucault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco is 50 times more satisfying than any of Foucault's actual "essays."
· Missmimesis is a red-hot cherry bomb who actually does look like she’d wear sexy shoes. (I swear that I am not her fetishist chat invite, though.) And Christ, that is a fucking HOT main photo. What a smile - damn!

So if my blog style seemed like I was uncomfortable, it’s most likely because I was. I’m not at all uncomfortable with who I am, I’m just uncomfortable posting it all over the internet. As for my writing style, with all the big words and whatnot, I regret to inform you that that was actually not me showing off. I really do talk and often write like that. Sad, huh? It’s all the Lovecraft/Dostoyevsky/Claude Simon literary influence combined with listening to too much Dylan and my unapologetic love affair with his often perplexing lyrical style. A lot of critics slammed all of those aforementioned authors as well for being deliberately misleading gobbledygook that was a chore to get through. So I’m in good company (but no, I’m not even hinting that I’m anywhere near their league.)

I’m just a nerd, what can I say? But I’m a damn sexy nerd and as somebody had ventured a guess about in the feedback column, yes, I am much cooler in person than on the blog. I’m nerdy and I’m often difficult, but I’m a lot of fun. You should date me. You could do worse.

Well, I’ll catch y’all further on down the trail. And if you’re drivin’ home, be sure you got a car. It’s been real (virtual?).

Out. Way out.
Michael Dennis

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