Wednesday, March 14, 2007
(12:32 PM) | Claire:
A Tiny Vessel Adrift In the Blogosphere
I'll first admit that I worry about all of you will receive this post. Given that most of you have never and will never achieve the level of fame that I reached this weekend, you may feel lost as you read my account of my ascent to stardom.On Saturday, March 10, 2007, at approximately 2:30pm, a well-known blogger--a large mammal in the TTLB ecosystem to be exact--linked to me. I'm assuming you all are familiar with Bitch PhD . . . Within seconds, my fledgling blog received traffic from all around the world. People, desperate for online cognitive therapy, inundated my comment threads with their negative, depressing thoughts. I felt at once all-powerful and painfully inadequate. Instead of taking the time to reframe each and every negative thought, I instead chose to ride the wave of my newfound star power into the turbulent waters of the high-powered blogosphere. Below is my account of my fifteen minutes of fame and my rather cliche decline.
I can't believe Bitch PhD linked to me! I feel like the prom queen or at least a high-ranking member of the homecoming court. . . It's weird being a star-- it seems that all of the dreary, ordinary aspects of my life are suddenly very interesting. Yesterday I was featured in Us Magazine's "Stars: They're Just Like Us" section. There's a shot of me blogging in my underwear and one of me rolling my eyes while answering a stupid phone call at work. I have always found the little details of my life to be exceedingly interesting and I'm glad the public has finally caught on. After repeatedly seeing my image in print and film, I began to think about the fleeting nature of youth and beauty. I realized that a only have a few more years until I officially 'peak' and that I really need to take advantage of my physical assets while I still have them. Following this realization, I got L.A.T.O.B.C. (Life and Times of Big Calabaza- the name of my blog) tattooed in Gothic letters on my stomach. After joining the bad-ass ranks of the tattooed and pierced, I posted some of my photos on Burning Angel and received several thousand comments from admirers of all genders and species.
Having become an international sex symbol, I could count on the fact that at any given moment, there was at least one fourteen-year-old boy, girl or sea otter masturbating to my avatar. As a prominent public figure, I concluded that the time had come for me to hire a manager. I asked Kotsko- but he politely declined, citing a heavy academic load. I then asked Brad, who happily agreed to represent me.
As I clawed my way to the top of the blog heap, I became less and less concerned about the world around me. After all, what does the war in Iraq or global warming have to do with my image? When friends tried to engage me in political discussions, I found myself saying things like, "Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes."
My memories for the dates of March 9th through March 11th follow no chronological sequence. In this short time period, I experienced something akin to an extended blackout; I have had to rely on eyewitness testimony to piece together the events of these two days. I wrote the following description of the flashbacks of this time period that are slowly trickling into my consciousness.
New York City: With a group of ten or so fellow bloggers, I check into a seedy motel. After we crowd into the dingy room, Apostropher breaks out the Tina he scored earlier that day. John Holbo and I take the first bumps. I wake up the next day with club music pounding in my ears, and with the nagging feeling that I have taken my relationship with several well-known bloggers "to the next level."
Palo Alto, California: After an all-night drinking binge, I stumble into Ben's apartment. I vomit on his vinyl collection and destroy several of his rare musical instruments. Ben accuses me of being drunk, so I proceed to beat him with assorted articles of cat furniture. He flees to a motel and files a police report. I later convince him not to press charges.
New York State Throughway, Mohawk Travel Plaza: In a congenial men's urinal, I snort lines off Ogged's bare ass. I think, "I've finally arrived."
When I regained consciousness on March 12th, I was startled to find that my nostrils had fused and I had lost 30 lbs. My teeth were the consistency of the inside of a ripe cantaloupe and there were small animals nesting in my hair. I quickly found a computer and saw that daily traffic to my blog had dropped from 800 to 50 visits per day. My page rank came up as a zero. I tried to collect call Bitch Phd, then Matt Yglesias then Ben but no one would accept the charges. I hobbled into a public library, defeated and desperate, and wrote what became this post.
