---"The term "blog" is a contraction of 'Web log.' 'Blog' can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog."---

So, yes, according to the unfortunate word's definition, I am now a "blogger," mostly because I have caved to the peer pressure of several friends (you know of whom I speak) who have been suggesting I start one. You win. Also, it's a great way for me to continue my puppet dance of denial and procrastination, without which I would be incapable of functioning on a daily basis.

There is no real way to write a first blog entry. First entries are awkward and a bit like a blind date, and you find yourself rambling about weather and sick relatives and "hey--dogs are so different from cats!" rather than saying anything of merit. Not that there's ever much merit in any blog, anywhere. Except here, of course.

Those of you reading this probably already know me quite well, so I'll dispense with the formalities and try to entertain with a bit of commentary on this "blog" experience. Blogs are the equivalent of schoolgirls' diaries, mixed with a bit of in-class note passing and locker graffitti. They give us the same sense of something being a "public secret"--and they function much like gossip. I've always been addicted to the spike of anxiety that comes with hearing gossip, gossiping about someone else, or even being gossiped about! My inner masochist once compelled me to write something nasty about myself on my school desk, just to see if others would chime in to defend me. A word to the wise, don't try this. Instead, the gossipers pounced on the smell of teenage blood and trashed me into next week. And so I learned the lesson that every adolescent girl does sooner or later: with gossip comes risk. You can lose your friends, get your hair pulled, offend the general public, and even get beaten up on the playground because of it. Yes, gossip is a cruel mistress.

Perhaps even more dangerously, blogs lure us into the fiction that we are all delicate, individual snowflakes with unique personalities and sugarplum fairy dreams that NO ONE WILL EVER UNDERSTAND. This fiction is easily punctured, however, by how hard it is to get a blog name no one else has claimed. I was fucking certain that no one else in the whole wide world would have used the obscure reference I wished to employ, but, alas, I had to add dashes to it to publish this page! For those of you who do, indeed, know the reference (a select few), I am sorry to submit that we are not so snarky after all.

I will make no promises about the content here, or its regularity. All I can say is that you will have the pleasure of reading the English language minus glaring grammatical and mechanical errors, which should be reason enough for you to hang on my every word.

--Q