One cannot help but conclude that the adults- who passed themselves off as a teenage boy- enjoyed the cruel emotional destruction that they wrought on the poor girl- there doesn't seem to be any motive other than pure evil meanness and sadism.
Cable news has created a new "reality" genre- one in which the lowest life-forms on the planet (Internet Trolls) are lured into fake trysts with underage decoys that they met in chat rooms; when they arrive at the meeting place, they are met with TV news crews and , later, the police. Strangely, many of the men (it's always men) have seen these programs, yet they can't resist the trap...and there seem to be an endless supply of these 'predators'. It's disturbing, to say the least.
All of this negative attention makes me increasingly reluctant to discuss blogging with my non-blogger pals, so I'd like to take a minute and point out a few of the positive things that blogging has brought into my life:
Yesterday I had something that I wanted to discuss with somebody- but most of my local friends know each other and this town has an amazing ability to distort gossip- so I called a long-distance blogpal and had a long talk about football, sex, politics, religion and stuff...it dawned on me that I was watching NFL football while talking on the phone with a woman about sex (and football!)- for free! A lot of men would pay for that...
...speaking of paid, I made honest money last week, and I couldn't have done it without my blog. A while back, I got a comment or two from a fellow music fan who had found my blog by googling obscure bands... we exchanged a email or three and it turned out that we live in the same city, so he came down and sat in with me one morning during my show- we found that we live exactly one block apart, small world, eh?
Last week I fed his cats for him while he moshed across England- upon his return I was rewarded with cash, a tin of travel sweets from London and assorted music-related geegaws not typically found in the US.
Honestly, I'd rather clean catshit than work for lawyers again, but I do need to find a real job soon...
Blog also helped me through the long painful months after I got sick and had to quit drinking. I quit cold turkey without any outside help, which is probably the hardest possible way- I started writing about my experiences on my blog and I soon found that I wasn't alone, which helped a lot during the worst of days.
I got hurt a few times too, but that's part of life, ya know? Stronger for it and all that...yeah.
I've been blogging nearly four years, which is a long time by blog standards. There's a big world out there that doesn't involve blogging, and I've had a slow, difficult time adjusting to it since I quit drinking- that sort of change just doesn't happen overnight- things have been really rough lately but I haven't started drinking again, so I feel like some real progress has been made...but I've also started slacking on my blog as I get more involved with real life; it's as if blog is a sort of therapy for me ( I know I'm not alone in this) and maybe, just maybe I don't need therapy as badly as I once did.
At least I hope that there is some truth in that.
Anyway, this isn't the end, not yet...I've come close to deleting this blog many,many times... something always keeps me from doing so. I've had at least a half-dozen other blogs over the last few years and never formed any sort of attachment to or from them, but this one has survived every purge, weathered every storm...and there's an election year coming up, so I imagine my political outrage will keep me on-line to some degree, but things are changing for me. There are things happening I don't feel like blogging about- perhaps they'll be fodder for future posts, perhaps not...
I've been becoming more interested in writing fiction, but I find that blog is a terrible platform for long, serialized fiction- the chapters are presented to the reader in reverse order- and the reader, unless they are well-versed in the logistics of blog, often doesn't realize this, entering in the middle or at the end...one of the first blogs I read was like that.
It wasn't until the author printed out the entire blog in manuscript form and mailed it to me that I caught on- it was excellent...that seems so long ago , but it's the sort of thing that keeps me coming back to blogworld- one of the finest unpublished writers I've ever read once sent me an entire manuscript- that never woulda happened without my own blog.
Strange things can happen- sometimes that includes good things.
Hmm...it occurs to me that I am giving myself a pep talk- and that means :
Puppies!See ya soon.
