Matthew Wayne Selznick

30.952380952380952% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?

Recently, someone asked me why people use LiveJournal. “Is it a diary? Who sees it?”

In trying to describe LiveJournal, I realized I had some ideas about it that I’d never directly considered. I’m putting them down here to hopefully solicit some discussion.

I don’t consider this medium to be a diary. To me, a diary is something intended for one reader — the writer. Most of the LiveJournals I read are definitely intended to be read by others.

On the other hand, I’ve seen some deeply personal, intimate writing here — stuff that moved me with its candor. What would inspire people to bare their hearts to strangers and casual acquaintances?

The first step in examining the question is, of course, to examine my own motivations. Why do I write in this open forum?

Recently, I posted my personal governing values, and the flaws I perceive in myself these values are designed to help correct. What on earth inspired me to put such stuff where anyone in the world could read it?

The answer is in the question. By putting such things in a very public record, there’s a much better chance that I’ll not ignore it all in a few weeks.

In other words: If I examine my soul and find it wanting, devise a plan to change it, and record all of this in some journal or diary that only I will ever see, what encourages me to follow up? What’s to stop me from safely forgetting it? After all, the ego hates challenges and change, and the ego, damn it, will take charge when left alone.

Posting in LiveJournal keeps a bright light on the corners of your mind, and keeps the cobwebs off of your intentions and convictions. At any time, some LiveJournal reader hitting the “random” link could be reading my thoughts. In fact, the quantum nature of the universe insists that, at any given moment, there’s a fifty-fifty chance that someone, in fact, is doing just that!

There. Right now.

Happened again, just now.

And now, someone’s read yours.

Sure, many of us use LiveJournal simply to be heard — the ego again, telling us that what we write is worthy of the world’s attention. Others use the service to keep in touch with distant friends, or meet new ones.

Still, I think LiveJournal can, should, and does serve as a notary public for contracts with the universe. Our words are trees falling in the empty forest if we keep them to ourselves. Post it in LiveJournal, and the woods are crowded with listeners… listeners not just unafraid, but encouraged to comment!

Pretty great.

That’s the end of my spiel. What say you?

According to this link, the year of the Monkey will be like so for this little ram:

“A time to recover from rain and storm that requires extra efforts and perseverance. Hard works will always be awarded with fortune.”

First sentence sounds about right. Second sentence better be right!

It’s
Michael W. Dean’s $30 Music School.

Five hundred + pages of everything the DIY creative person needs to know, from starting a band to writing your own contracts… it’s chock-a-block (and how often does one get to use that old saw???) with tips and useful anecdotes that only someone who’s a peer with Ian MacKaye and Henry Rollins could know.

Seriously… some of the stuff you’ll know, some of the stuff you forgot, and some of the stuff you didn’t know you needed to know. It’s all in here.

I don’t plug often… listen!

That’s all.

There are
So many fucking Christians
In this desert town
When strangers meet
They exchange churches
Like kids comparing baseball cards

Cell phones
Are the boom boxes
Of the new millennium

The desert encourages
Forty year old women
With fifty-year wrinkles
Brown
And
Crevassed
To wear tight sweaters
Short denim skirts
And fuck-me boots

In a group of ten teenage boys
Eight are skinheads
Seven are puffy gym-class bodybuilders
Four (or five) are white supremists
In hip-hop baggies
Two
Are missing
Home, hovering over their laptops
Plotting their catastrophic statements
And cowering in fear of their peers.

NASCAR should have a church here.
Seriously.

New blue jeans
Pressed
Equal dress slacks

I wonder how the
Punks
Hippies
Pagans
Queers
Democrats
Skeptics
Last ’round these here parts?

And where do they hide?

And where do I find them?

– written from a Starbucks in Victorville, CA, USA