Yes, but what is this blog about?

Back in the day, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and you had to enter your own html as a blogger in order to do things like paragraph breaks or italics, blogging seemed to be done primarily by lonely stay at home mothers with radical political opinions who were certain the world wanted to know about every amusing mispronounced word their toddler uttered. I started blogging around the time of the collapse of a mommy message board when the diaspora created several new online coffee klatches and launched a thousand grudges. Many of the more notorious board members created blogs where they were free to say exactly how they felt about other people.

It was delicious.

I, being above the fray, started a blog to comment on the fray. I became adored for it, then roundly hated. And through it all, my traffic grew. When the dust settled, I had a blog that was occasionally funny, occasionally insightful and seemed, in essence, to just be a vomiting up of whatever was on my mind.

Strangely, it worked.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

But I neglected it when I started having less to say. You know how early in a romance, you talk about everything under the sun? You stay up late, telling all of your stories—funny, quirky, personally tragic tales—as a way of showing your tender underbelly and developing more intimacy. Yet, as time goes by, you start to realize that you've heard most of the other person's stories and they, yours. You go to dinner and actually eat your food without talking, just like those old people you both swore you'd never be like who can't even work up one interesting thing to say to one another.

The blog became like that. I was reduced to posting vaguely amusing photos and email forwards.

Like this fine fellow.

I'm a believer in, when you don't have anything left to say, for God's sake, stop talking.

I'm a believer in that, but not always a great follower of that sage advice. Had the host of my blog not asked me if I intended to pay for another year of my eponymous domain, I might still be posting photos of fornicating dogs.

No, probably not.

So, now what?

In the meantime, I never did stop writing. In fact, I'm a professional writer for a magazine company, a job I actually love 78.6 per cent of the time. You would think that would be enough writing for anyone and maybe all of my words would be used up. But there's something about writing that just brings more words to the surface. Perhaps that's what happened the last time around—I ran out of words because I wasn't drawing on the well enough. I was letting them evaporate into the air around me rather than filling my cup and drinking them down like sweet, intoxicating water. So here I am, cup in hand and a powerful thirst.

Yes, but what is this blog about?

Dunno. Why does it have to be about anything? Back in the day, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and bored housewives took thinly veiled swipes at each other on blogger, blogs didn't have to be about anything. They just were. They eventually took some sort of form on their own: politics, crafts, photo journals, geek interfaces, semi-private journals, etc. Now, they're streamlined, marketed, connected home-based businesses that make me feel like a rocking chair-bound curmudgeon telling stories of how back in the day, blogs were just a way of telling stories.

At the end of the day, I suppose that's what I am. A storyteller. I observe. I reflect. I write. I look for the connecting thread, and hopefully others pick it up from time to time and weave their own narrative.

I'll weave it at that.

Once upon a time

A long time ago, in an Internet far, far away, there was a blog called Madame Fabulous Speaks Out. It had a not unsubstantial following based on several things.

• The writer had a knack for attracting witty gay men with strong blog followings of their own (and having the nickname of Madame Fabulous certainly helped).
• The writer got involved in a few Internet dust-ups from time to time.
• Some of the stuff was actually pretty good.

However, the writer (that would be me) started pandering. I became more attached to statistics than just saying what I was thinking. That was bad. Pandering makes for poor politics and personal pontification (but occasionally adequate assonance). And I started writing for a living and got worried that what I was thinking shouldn't interfere with what I was doing, if that makes sense. Which is does. To me.

Anyway, I'm a believer in listening to the Universe. The Universe and I are close personal friends, and the Universe said to me in the last number of days, "MadFab," it said, "Maybe you should get back to writing for you again."

And so I am.

I'll probably get addicted to statistics again. I'm like that. But in the meantime, here I am. Let's talk.