– or sadder – than what the honorable republican from ohio wrote in his own comments in response to my post.

so here it is in its entirety. my friends, i give you joshua martin who says he “could have been” me if he hadnt gotten married and knocked up his wife. and wait till you read what he has to say about you:

Tony’s response (see first link above) is typical. He honed in on the fact that this blog doesn’t receive very many comments. This is true and is also because my writing style is the type that ends discussions rather than begins them. I learned a long time ago that silence following your gig is a good thing–it means that its sinking into the gray matter of your audience or that they didn’t care or weren’t listening in the first place–either way, even better for the person on stage. Here is a man whose entire sum worth is measured by his blog’s place on the Technorati 100 list (of which it like 256)–it’s just pathetic.

And he of course goes back to attacking my politics and how Ohio sucks because we hate black people and elected Bush twice, blah blah blah…

But the bottom line is that there is one of us who was accepted into creative writing school. There is one of us who earned the respect of other serious writers by putting their work through the fire of workshopping and having it come out cleaner, better, sharper. There is one of us who has been able to maintain a long-term monogamous relationship that has resulted in children and a stable family base. There is one of us that has maintained a steady career by developing business and networking skills on which we can stake our personal fortune.

And then there is one of us who has huddled up in a little room in front of a little computer for five years, eschewing proper grammar because we probably wouldn’t get it right in the first place, and trying to convince the world (successfully in some cases) that what we had to say was worthy of being reread in ten years.

See, I could have been this man had I not made the choice to accept the love of a great woman into my heart, to settle down, have a family, and vote Republican in the ’00 and ’04 elections. I could probably have 50,000 page loads a month also if I were willing to let my heart wither into a little black shrub that I would wear around my neck as a pathetic badge of honor in place of real talent. I’d probably be able to dump every piece of shit thought onto the page, jumble them together, and try to convince everyone that I knew how to tell a good story.

But I’m not like that.

I believe in giving back to the world around me–sometimes it’s advice, sometimes it’s criticim, and sometimes it’s both barrels of the shotgun. Sometimes it’s enough to stand up and speak your piece. Sometimes you have to shout the other guy down. But sometimes you just have to pull out a can of spraypaint, tag the other guy with a red “X” and say to the crowd, “This guy’s an asshole to the core of his soul–don’t go here!”

I started reading the Busblog because I wanted to learn how Tony did it–how he amassed a core of readers. But what I’ve come to learn is that I would rather have ten readers capable of interacting intelligently with what I’m writing than 5,000 yes men, perverts, and social misanthropes daily who did nothing but help to further solidify my already massive and immoveable ego.

I’ve said it privately, now I’m saying it publicly. There is nothing more for me to learn from this man’s writing style or his blog.

Get thee behind me…

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