Besides maintaining a blog, I also keep a diary. Diary or
Journal? Which is it? ‘Journal’ makes you sound sophisticated and hip while ‘diary’
makes you sound like some girl fudging together lengthy descriptions of her
first period in a flower-patterned
notebook with a cruddy golden lock.

Of course some girls don’t even remember their first period,
right Shelly?

Anyway, I’ve always
had my inhibitions with regards to keeping a journal, or even a blog for that
matter. For one, even if you don’t immediately post an entry on the internet,
you know that someone will read it eventually. With regards to a diary, you can turn the key
on that little heart shaped lock, hide it in a chest, or hide it between the
mattress and take comfort in knowing that despite all your efforts to safeguard
your secrets, someone will eventually get their sooty little mitts on it and
read it. Your journal is a secret until you leave town for a vacation and your
mom, dad, brothers or sisters sit down and laugh themselves dead reading it.

Well this sort of
thing might not happen immediately, but when you die, several years down the
road someone is going to find it. It’ll tumble out from underneath your now
antiquated mattress as your next of kin pillage and loot the prized possessions
you left behind. And after they laugh themselves dead reading it, they’ll take
it to a publisher and it’ll sweep the world like wildfire. Before you know it,
you’re bigger than Anne fucking Frank.

The Amazon
editorial review would read: “His
exquisitely detailed, heart warming personal entries gives the reader an account of over twenty years of battling
halitosis, excessive masturbation, and an improperly intimate relationship with
a hairy truck driver named Sergio who somehow, finds Michael’s eloquent
profanity sexy. Hands down, the best book of the century!”

Someone is definitely going to read it; and you sure as hell
know that. With that knowledge, how can you possibly be sincere? How can you
resist padding your journal entries to try and sound more intelligent and
profound? Which would you write?

“I sat in front of the
window tonight filled with wishful yearning. With arms wide open, I beckon the
wind to gently caress my face while I contemplate the paths I have taken in my
life. Alas, it is regret that embraces my frail body tonight. There were a lot of
women who came and went in my life; I should’ve told them; I should’ve been
honest; instead I let my cowardice take the better of me; I fled. Now it’s too
late to have a circumcision.”

Or…

“Tonight I popped ‘Monster’s
Ball’ into the DVD player and masturbated ferociously as Heath Ledger entered
that Vera whore from behind. I would’ve masturbated to Halle Berry in the couch sex scene too, but for some
reason, slapping my monkey while Billy Bob Thornton’s hairy chest is on screen
distracted me. The sight is a tad too weird for me and my purple headed warrior
just had trouble staying in the game if you know what I mean.”

One thing I noticed about journals, blogs and diaries are
either they make you want to hurl with their quasi-incisive-profundity, or they’re
seriously lacking the balls to be truly interesting. I’m not barking up all of
them mind you, and I’m not saying I don’t want to read yours unless you admit
to having masturbated to Billy Bob’s hairy chest.

So where am I going with this? When will this long-winded
ramble end? If you’re going to maintain a paper journal or keep a diary. Unless
you think your life is interesting enough for a book publisher to read; liberally
sprinkle it with lies. You don’t want to miss out on your one and only chance
of achieving post-mortem stardom do you?