just Flame
today we learn:
1) do not mess with dooce
2) sideways was a book first
3) stay in bed at all costs
also, if you make an error regarding any of the above your blog will receive lots of comments. nine is like a new record!
ergo: be poor at fact checking, mildly insulting, and ever-groggy and your blog will become flameous.
see? i just created a new word. flameous. it's like infamous, but with snarkier email/comments.
i'm not sure i want tons of readers who don't know me reading this blog. i am sure i'd like my writing to be WORTH having tons of readers who don't know me read this blog. it seems valuable to research what draws people and how. good info to have in case i ever, say, want to sell any of my writing.
em suggests one of the reasons dooce is valuable is because she shares the dark stuff. i do think i've done that more in the past. lately, i've been trying comedy. originally, i was aiming for honesty.
i spent last night's dinner with my mom talking about how stressful it is marrying a non-jew when your dad, mom, sister, brother-in-law and uncle are all jewish professionals. and my idea of being "really jewish" is arguing whenever possible and generally believing everything i hear is questionable. even theories like evolution.
the conversation with mom made me feel like an extra in Sam Peckinpah movie. those are awfully violent if you don't know your cinema. it wasn't great 'cause i was hoping dinner would perk me up some. no luck.
it took the better part of two hours to convey these two things to mom:
1) being jewish is very important to mom no matter what she says.
2) i do not want mom to change her behavior.
my family is jewish with a capital J. madhavi and i will just have to integrate that. they aren't high pressure or anything, they're just constant low pressure.
i think when you've spent most of your life surrounded by rabbis, like mom (or me), it's hard to see just how completely whacked you are by the jew stick. the jewishness is pervasive. not intentionally, but still. i've spent a long time wiggling my way to a space where i feel like what i'm doing is what i want to be doing yid-wise. now, trying to negotiate life ceremonies with my agnostic fiancee and my family i feel...
tired. i feel tired.
the pressure of the wedding is enough for me. i don't want to spend this year taking a fresh look at practicing judaism.
i want to vaguly insult dooce, mistake sideways for a movie, and crawl back into bed.
last night in bed madhavi said, "we're a family." that's still sinking in.
Dude, you should watch "family fear factor" and then and only then will you understand what "family" means.
(something about pimping your kids to do nightmarish stunts, I'm not really 100% on it yet)
Watch Family Fear Factor? Hell, doesn't getting married count as participating in Family Fear Factor?
speaking of peckinpah, i just watched The Wild Bunch again on sunday, and while i think there are much better westerns (i'm more of a leone fan, myself), you can certainly see how it was the Kill Bill or Natural Born Killers of its time.
and as for blog popularity, do you really want that? seems like the more popular you get, the more inevitable it is that you get fired because of your blog. and then your blog gets *really* popular because of that. but then you still have no job.
and maybe that's fine for you, mr. wanting an excuse to travel, but some of us need their jobs. to buy things that bleep.
i guess i just want to know why some blogs are popular. what makes a blog transcend the authors immediate social circle.
if i wanted this blog to be popular i know just what to do. add porn.
umm...i was out of it yesterday, so i missed the whole dooce debate. darn it! i'm all hormonal this week and i missed all the good fun!
yes, my name is rachel and i am a faithful dooce reader. i'm hooked on dooce for the most part because i really enjoy her writing. she's witty and funny and she has a take on new motherhood that reminds me to not take everything so seriously.
but, that said, i am also a faithful xzackly reader for all the same reasons except for the motherhood thing...;)
Technically you're not allowed to count the comments you leave on your own blog. Dem's the rules!