the email is flowing, the hits are breaking records, even the la times reporter who i sorta dissed is writing me nice things, and i show up to go to work to save the world and the lack of respect just totally blows my mind.

i was polishing chopper one, detailing it, making sure everything was perfect. perfect is the only standard that we deal in at the xbi. no one admits to it because they know it’s ridiculous but they dont ever correct you if you say it, and its not like they dont love correcting you. but perfect is what they want and perfect is what i give them and do they tell me that i did a perfect job last week, or yesterday, or today?

no. it’s only things above and beyond that gets that sort of “praise”, and since theres nothing over and above perfect, i get no praise.

whatever.

all i want to do is fly the bird and take out the bad element.

it barely pays for anything outside of food and lodging, but money has never driven me. it’s always been fun thats moved me, and for awhile, keeping the mean streets of the city of angels safe was fun for me.

some of the big wigs at the agency called me into a conference room this afternoon. there was a report made out about me. it wasnt good.

we dont think youre taking your post very seriously.

i thought they were talking about the fact that i installed an mp3 player in chopper one. a sweet 100 gig jobber.

but no. they were upset at the tshirts i was wearing.

i said, im in a helicopter. who can see me?

they said, its a red flag. plus its a bad example for the younger guys.

my gwar tshirt only instilled fear in those who ever saw me running out of a flying car to come beat their sorry asses. they werent buying it. they wanted me to wear a tight tucked-in black shirt. i said, if i wanted to dress like a bartender, i would be a damn bartender.

other night i was in front of hundreds of people. strangers. i said stuff and they laughed.

at work, nobody laughs.

not one fucking person.

they told me they didnt trust me, or respected me, they told me that it would take a long while until they did. a long while of being perfect and taking on a ton more responsibility.

what youre doing right now, they said, is a very little peice of

and one of them took his thumb and forefinger and made a motion like he was taking a flea by its wings and removing it from the corner of his desk.

i forget what the rest of what the other guy said.

all i know is i have been working my fucking ass off and some guy was saying that it wasnt good enough, and it was little.

men know what the word little means.

it doesnt mean, fucking a tony, we love you.

29. john m.

30. joh3n

and i walked past the barbershop as i made my way to the busstop, and thought about the many times that they made a comment about my afro.

and an hour later i had no hair on my head.

none.

mad pony

be it comments, email, trackbacks, or simple hit counts after a certain post, effect how you blog? My mind leaps to raymi the minx’s observation that fewer people read when she doesn’t post pics is an example of where I’m going with that.

Interaction is nice in its own vacuum. For the most part the hits and the comments and the email are steady to this blog. In my opinion, the spikes just mean that you were in the right place at the right time, or you were the first to bring up a topic, or you had done something better than normal. Sometimes you can shoot for those spikes to see if you can actually create them. But it’s a game that might lose you just as many regular readers as it gets you.

For the most part I try to ignore all outside influences and just write mostly for myself. I suppose if I wrote 100% for myself I would talk much more about Fantasy Basketball and Baseball, and i’d try to write erotica, but it would be funny erotica, or disturbingly dirty.

many times ive had a young woman want to talk dirty and after a while it makes you wonder what dirty really is. most the times it means sexy. but this is hollywood. sometimes it means dirty. sometimes it means please let me know that my horrendously scary life isnt as ridiculous as im afraid it is, in which cases it does everyone a world of good if you can dig deep in the well and come back with some gnarly ass shit that you would like to do to her, gnarly because it seems possible.

but for blogging, im not at all interested in any outside influences other than what topics not to write about because everyone else is covering it wonderfully.

as for comments, if some anonymous asswipe drops some negative bullshit in your comments, you can react to it if you want, but all you’ll end up doing is attracting people to write dumbass comments to watch you go off on them. And if you address all the nice comments, then you have this sticky sweet makeout session with your readers, which is gross, so fuck that too.

when in doubt, write what is uncomfortable.

2) How much time do you spend looking at your own blog? Not composing it, but after you hit submit.

not enough. lots of times i write during my two government mandated fifteen minute breaks. and rarely can i read what i wrote, or proof read it, or edit it, or even spell check it. if i go back to it later in the day, i wont read it, because if i read it and i dont like what i wrote i’ll be bummed out at work, and my job is way to stressfull to get bummed out over a fucking blog. if i look at it at all, i will read the comments to see if someone wrote something nice. or i will look at site meter to see who’s linking me.

at night i might read a little bit of it, but something usually doesn’t sound right and it distracts me and i stop reading and go and read someone elses stuff. i spend hours and hours reading other blogs on the web. in the old days if you wanted to read all the good writers, you had to buy a dozen newspapers. now you just have to click around the web for a few hours.

3) You can try to pass of Shirky’s analysis as ‘3 seconds after the big bang’, but how do you address the hidden point that although anyone can blog, we have no real way yet of sifting through the mud to find the gold nuggets?

well no damn robot is going to be able to find these nuggets, which means that people will have to and once those people find them they will usually want to report them the way they are on boing boing and metafilter and slash dot.

or more instapundits will pop up.

but one of the best things about the web as it is right now with all these blogs is that if one person discovers something cool, he tells a few friends and it all spreads very naturally depending on its true worth.

if people really find cats singing white stripes songs, they’ll forward it to their friends in email, or talk about it on their blogs.

if you read the instapundit, metafilter, and ten good blogs, you’ll find most of the golden nuggets.

4) Is there a middle ground between personal blogs and larger constructs like kuro5hin? (question asked by lago, but with a slightly different angle).

there’s so much middle ground it’s sick.

buzzmachine

is because i am a sloppy, lazy, ill-informed fiction writer, which is why i clearly state that “nothing in here is true.”

but sometimes it is nice to set the record straight.

And in a stunning display of indifference, the world ignored me when I blogged it at 9:28pm. So, the speed of information distribution really means nothing if the information gets posted where no one is watching.

– lago

Tony,

So even though I am an obscure little advertising blog…I did break it before all the big guys:-)

-Steve

i also didnt properly thank Beverly and Xeni who hosted the event and invited me. thank so much!

and special thanks to

28. Xeni

who flowed the busblog ten bucks to the car fund. muchas gracias!

this weekend,

27. wKen and

26. adam also flowed, so thanks to you, too, gentlemen. and also thanks to the dude who handed over a real one dollar bill and gave it to me right out front the blogosphere door following the event.

that, i could get used to.

Ev’s big announcement (pictured, thanks to Reverse Cowgirl) made me think that i should just keep this drive going until i get exactly what i want, which might not happen come christmas 2003. ev waited until the time was totally right and what happened seemed to be the perfect fit. i think i might wait until the proper funds are reached and no sooner.

katie saw me at the mall.

discussion thingies, and if you wont be there you can see it via webcast here at 7:30pm PST. You must have Real Player to see and hear it.

Finaaly you will be able to see and hear from the Inventor of Blogger, Evan Marriot, or Evan something, who looks like Chris Isaak in his picture, maybe he sings pretty too.

Plus it will star the mighty Doc Searls who pulls the ladies much better than I do.

Plus it stars the inventor Boing Boing, Mr. Mark Frauenfelder who goes as far back as The Well.

Plus it stars the super foxy amazonian Reverse Cowgirl who hopefully has some black and white glossys that she will be signing with ruby red lipstick with sparkles of glitter.

and if that wasnt enough, it also stars my long lost lust the Rabbit, Heather H. who hopefully can break out of her shell and form an opinion about something… anything.

organized by xeni and beverly tang!

attended by vous?

blog panel LA in Chinatown!, tonight. One night only.

hi, anna, happy valentine’s day to you! but since when do you like valentines day? i remember you saying that all valentines day was was an american greeting card day sham.

it is a greeting card sham, but im starting to appreciate the underlying theme more as i get older.

is that so? whats the underlying theme, you old bag?

the underlying theme is this is the day where we should celebrate love of all sorts, not just romantic/sexual/boyfriend+girlfriend love.

very interesting theory. pardon me for having a hard time believing it is from you. didnt you tell me last year that all valentines day is is for those who dont have any love in their lives to feel a whole bunch shittier about their lives, and for those who do have love in their life to be forced to spend way too much money on overpriced dinners and flowers that are going to die?

i can change my mind.

actually it sounds like youre no longer banging enrique.

im no longer “banging” anyone.

so is that the source of your new way of thinking?

maybe. whatever. leave me alone. you should be happy.

i am happy. i agree with you, by the way. i think that the idea of love should be celebrated at least once a year, if not more. love is a great emotion, a powerful stimulous, and pretty much the meaning of life. since days like Christmas are so bastardized and commercialized into not even meaning what they should mean, it’s nice when theres one day where people can think about all the forms of love in their lives.

i love you, tony.

you do?

yes. of course i do.

where are you tonight?

malibu

what are you doing there?

getting my hair done.

what’s the occasion?

valentine’s day, silly.

do you have a date?

i dont know, do i?

anna kournikova, you sly fox.

i flew out here last night after i read that you didnt have a valentine.

flew out from where?

from miami. surprise!

im speechless.

i would have thought that you would be tied up with ashley or chris or clippergirl or someone.

i would have thought that you would be wining and dining with some super famous international studboy.

i am, you.

what do you want to do tonight?

i thought we could get a fire going, order some pizza and think about all the different forms of love there are in the world.

like how i feel about wrigley field, and tivo, and the internet, and free porn and music via peer-to-peer sharing?

i just picked up something at Vic’s that you are going to fall in love with.

more than i love Kazaa?

part of it is leather, part of it has pink straps, part of it has zippers, and its all insanely tight.

youre killing me.

when i came out of the dressing room a man saw me and fell right over.

i told my boss i would work late tonight because i didnt think i had any plans.

i dont mind waiting

it happened one night is going to be on Turner Classics at 5pm.

i’ll make sure it’s being Tivoed.

you still have a key to my house?

i keep it very close to my heart.

youre so full of it, anna.

yes i am, but im coming over, so be ready.

raymi

i love you soooooooooo!

jeanine goes to an art opening, jeanine’s birthday 2002, when me and jeanine were involved, jeanine’s birthday 2001, i heart jeanine, my favorite picture of jeanine.

i really want to apply for the job (it involves much more than I have revealed so far) but I’m not so sure that I really get it about the Internet.

I think the Internet is our savior.

seems to me that when people believed in it, the economy boomed, people were happy, i was getting laid with much more frequency, we were able to live in relative peace, we had a democrat leading the nation (sucessfully) (and her husband wasnt doing to bad either), and my hair was doing way better than ever.

sure some of it was hype, but a lot of it wasnt. and i really dont want to get into it much, but when this country wants to put its resources behind something, it is always a success.

so do i get it about the Internet?

not sure. i get it that people can make money on it if theyre selling smut. i think i get it about blogging. i totally get it about fantasy sports, buying tickets online, downloading music, and using online auctions.

but are people buying computers and signing up for broadband so that they can get their news online? no. but if it’s there and it’s good, will people go to it on the regular?

who knows.

i know that a lot of you come here on the regular, and for that im so appreciative you dont even know.

the sultry Reverse Cowgirl has some updates on the Blogger Panel dealio going on, including ways for you, yes, you, to see this thing on a Webcast.

thats right, if you are not lucky enough to be in Los Angeles this weekend, but you would like to see the all-star panel talk about the future of life as we know it, you need go no further than your very own computer.

Click here to find out the details!

In other news, i dont have a valentine.

🙁

and the only girls who seem to have any interest in me are either total jailbait or barely legal.

the question is, is that bad news?

alecia