April 28

It's going to be a random blog post today. Yay.

It's so cold here right now that I'm blasting the heat. It's almost May, and the heat is on. What the hell.

Yesterday on Twitter, Wheezy Waiter asked for suggestions for what to name his new Ford Fiesta, and then in the evening, he had a live BlogTV show while he made a BLT and talked to his family on Skype. When I got to the live show and said hi, he said hi to me, and then later he said a few times that he really liked the suggestion I had tweeted for the name of his Fiesta. I had suggested the name of Balki. Yes, Balki from Perfect Strangers. Wacky and memorable? It's perfect. Plus he talked about Perfect Strangers on his podcast The Zen Men. He has some other suggestions that he likes too, so I guess at some point, there will be a poll for us to vote in.

So why am I reporting all of this? I am reporting this, because our exchange made me feel less like a crazy creepy fangirl than most of my recent tweets and interactions with him have made me feel. It made me think about how much I work stuff up inside my head, and how much of what I invent and believe simply doesn't turn out to be true, especially when it involves my fears about other people's negative judgments about me. So the whole thing was a valuable reminder that maybe I don't appear to others the way I fear I might, even in my ridiculous fangirl states.

The next random thing I want to talk about is the kind of girl I am on the internet and the kind of girl I am not (besides fangirl of course).

Some of my new friends started a show on Sunday nights at 11 PM Pacific Time called Live From Hollywood. This past Sunday was their first official show, but they had one other sort of trial run show one night when I was up way way too late (or early). So three of them have a show in which they talk about movies, chicks, and tech geeky stuff. This past Sunday, only two of them were there (the third was delayed by work), and they got pretty drunk during the show. After the show was officially over, they came back on to hang out and chat informally with the people in the chatroom. All of the people in the chatroom were Twitter people.

Long story short, one of the girls in the chatroom (she's 28 so not a girl) ended up taking nude pictures of herself (or her boobs at least) and emailing these pictures to my friends, and even a few days later, I am still kinda creeped out by it.

Clearly, I don't have an issue befriending people on the internet. But there was something kind of sad about this girl, who had never chatted with us before, immediately serving herself up for the scrutiny of these drunk boys. (And yes, the drunk boy who suggested it was a douchebag for doing so.) I guess there are people who don't mind letting it all hang out, and who knows what myriad of factors motivate people to act like they do. But the whole thing felt very desperate to me -- like she felt that the only way to garner the attention or respect of these guys was to send these photos. But what kind of attention is that? Hell, the same drunk boy asked me for pictures too, but I just told him that he was wasted, to fuck off, that I'm not his puppet, and anyway, we're friends.

All insecurities about my body aside, I can't imagine I'd ever be the girl who would send photos of herself to total strangers. But then again, in what ways do I seek approval, attention, or respect? I didn't take a picture of my boobs or anything (not much to photograph there anyway, truth be told), but what tricks do I play, or how do I present myself? How much of myself am I showing, and what parts of myself do I minimize or downplay? I actually think I am largely myself with this group, but it got me thinking.

Finally, this weekend I'm going to see a musical written by Abby Simons, who is one of the artists on YouTube I love. Here's my favorite song of hers. Very short. I hope you'll give it a listen.



See you tomorrow. (Only two days of BEDA left... wow.)