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[ Mad Brunette ] This weeks' ReEntry editor is currently suffused with a bitter, seething hatred toward the entire online journal phenomenon for the number of hours it's viciously sucked from her precious life. Meet...

Mad Brunette



FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1999

Vivid, descriptive writing; a healthy dose of cynicism and/or humor; a sense of the intelligence behind the words. This is all I'm looking for in a journal. Is that so wrong?

I Am
Neural Noise

"I am loud music in a quiet room. I am green clothes. I am shaved heads. I am old, weird, smelly books. I am watching you right now. I am an addict. I am Lou Reed, circa 1968. I am downtown NYC. I am not downtown NYC. I am wishin' and hopin'. I am the number 37. I am an icy car window on a surprisingly chilly spring morning. I am Star Wars and G.I. Joe. I am more than the sum of my parts."

It was hard to cut this entry down to a bite-sized sample, because it's the whole of it that's so memorable. Inspired by another journaller who'd done the same thing, Matt did an entire "I am..." entry that veers from the goofy ("I am that little flashing thing in the night sky that you like to pretend is a UFO.") to the serious ("I am idealistic. I am humanistic. I am privately religious.") This was one of the first entries I read in this (to me) recent discovery, and the one that got me hooked. Cynicism, punk, New York City, and the heart of a hopeless romantic (hey, sounds a little like me).

My Little Mac
Pandora

"I wanted to be normal too, so I went out with him, hoping it would rub off. It didn't, and it turned out he did have his own fucked-up aspects, which ultimately cost us the friendship, but sitting here playing with the little Mac I don't really remember so much that as the nice, warm, fuzzy stuff. Like that he installed Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing on it so I could learn how to type, which I did, thanks to that program. And how on the weekend he'd get up and make coffee and sit out in the driveway reading the paper till I'd get up and steal it from him and finish the coffee."

Another recent-to-me discovery (and another New Yorker), Rikki has a fun sense of humor, a feminist perspective, and an eye for the innate surrealism of the NYC subway. I like this entry because it starts with the most mundane of mundane (her grocery shopping list) and free-associates through a variety of topics until it lands on reminiscences of a years-ago relationship, and what feels like an epiphany. Check out her 1980's homage while you're at it.

The Dream Life
Toasted Spiral

"I told Sirr my theory I had been pondering as I was falling asleep. Usually when I fall asleep I become immersed for a few moments in the last dream I was having before the last time I woke up, and as I was thinking about this, I got the very creepy feeling that I really did have another life being lived in dream consciousness, suppressed during my waking hours but living in full force as I slept. Would consequences in my dream life subtly damage my waking soul? It's a little more to think about when I'm having insomnia."

Satya has the ability to flash-freeze and perfectly capture a moment, even when it didn't really happen. She writes a lot about her dreams; now, there's normally nothing more boring than someone's dream stories, but the writing here is sharp and intriguingly hallucinatory. This particular entry starts with a dream of confusion, then to one about a secret "mini-Disney ride" in a neighborhood Irish bar that made me laugh out loud when I read it. I love this journal because its moments (both awake and asleep) are so vividly realized.

Driving Ambition
Life as it Happens

"I think I mentioned somewhere way back when that I can't actually drive. Notice that helpful but meaningless word 'actually'. It's just one of those you put in to make reality less bleak. It's like 'as such'. It's one of the expressions you use in job interviews to cover up the glaring gaps in your adequacy to do the job. "Well I haven't had any experience of brain surgery as such". Which means, "However I am pretty nifty at slicing up cucumbers, and that's pretty close. Sort of. Slightly. Okay, I know nothing about brain surgery and I doubt if I'd even be able to spot a brain if I saw one." So okay then, I can't drive. Not as such, anyway."

Rodney writes smart, wry, wittily self-deprecating, engaging entries, even on days (like this one) when there doesn't seem to be anything to write about.

The Twelve Days of Pamie
Squishy

"I sing to my cat, okay? Here's the words, if you're interested: Taylor. Taaaay-lor. The cat with the fur on his face! Taylor! I was in a class once with this girl and we started talking about our cats. She mentioned that she sings to her cat as well. We started singing our songs at the same time. The name of her cat escapes me at the moment, but her song was something like: Murray. Murray. He eats a lot of food because he's a pig. Murray! Cat people. We are all one."

And finally, Pamie. (C'mon, everyone knows Pamie.) Consistently hilarious, and not in an annoying way, either. And I didn't pick this entry because I also sing to my cat. No, no, no. No cat-singing-weirdness here.

Original "ReEntry" concept by Gus () and other DIARY-L participants.


Updated: 18 February 1999 © 1999 Diarist.Net Contact: