Thursday, November 18, 2004

Recently I was bemoaning the fact via e-mail to Maxwell that I don't have bio page linked here. Not that anyone reading this page isn't already roughly familiar with my bio, but it would be a nice ego stroke to write even more about myself.

Say, said Maxwell, doesn't Blogger have a "profile" section.

And, by jiminy, it does.

So what is my personal profile?

The profile does ask those two all important questions:

About Me

and

Interests

But, what "about me"? I guess this is when I could wow folks with my amazing life story, or something astonishing which is all about me. But I have nothing.

I was born a middle-class kid and graduated from a public university. I married a wonderful girl. I now work for the state of Arizona, live in suburbs, and own a golden retriever.

Wow. Enthralling.

Interests? This is usually where profiles fall apart. People either put too much info or too little. And, invariably, this is where people try to prove how much more interesting they are than other people by listing every eclectic fancy they ever had. You'll find Henna art, interest in obscure artists nobody ever heard of, musicians whose names they found on PitchforkMedia and haven't really ever followed.

You will rarely see "I'm really into Monday Night Football and Everybody Loves Raymond. Oh, and I think NASCAR rocks. Occasionally I get so lazy I will allow myself to watch two episodes back to back of Dharma and Greg in syndication. I also have a Billy the Big Mouth Bass."

Instead, according to blogger profiles, every single blogger is a wildly free artistic soul with an amazingly exotic panoply of tastes and interests.

After that, I am defined by my media.

I note that my comments in the musical section were not published. This is what I said: I don't know anymore. I'm not foolish enough to think that because I own a lot of records in different categories that my tastes are, in any way, interesting to anyone else. Working for a mall based record shop sort of killed my belief that having a favorite music is a good idea. And who really has a favorite band after high school, anyway?

I think what I'm realizing is that I shouldn't have a bio up. And apparently Blogger doesn't think I should either, as they won't print the comments in the musical section. Maybe my disdain for bio by form and my general misnathropy is not very conducive to having a bio at all.

Anyway, I actually filled this out a while ago. I leave this for you guys to read.

Maybe I'll copy Maxwell and have folks write in and turn the whole thing into a contest.

What do you guys think?





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