Somehow, I have to tell Lime Tea that I'm breaking up with it (see previous post). Modern Despair, even the stripped-down web-only version, will be way cooler. Plus, it doesn't make me sick with guilt to think about like LT does.

I'll be busting out more details about MD here while I work up the nerve to cross-post them at LT. It'll happen. If anyone wants to send me bracing emails along the lines of "Take heart, man!" or "Courage, old chap!" send 'em here.

I am totally not doing anything and have plenty of time to post to this cocksucker. This has been true for at least six months, but I only just noticed it now. I guess that's what separates me from the greats.

I would but I'm dead

Here's another problem: Lime Tea is so fucked that frankly, I'm afraid to even go in there. It's like when the cats are having a big fight in the bathroom and then it gets quiet-- too quiet.

I restarted Lime Tea (which is an online magazine-- not that you don't already know, since no one reads this except housemates and family members) and it's kind of turned out that my heart is not in it. Granted, my heart wasn't in it before, but the magazine had enough momentum to keep going. Now my heart isn't in it and neither is anyone else's. Bad combination.

What my heart really wants to do, besides stop beating for about 10 minutes just to see what happens, is start a different magazine site with a better name and a different focus. Can I do that? Will anyone read "Modern Despair?" Write for it? Pimp it on their blogs? Believe that it will be any more successful than the ignominious relaunch of Lime Tea?

Modern Despair is actually a real plan with details, believe it or not. It's a magazine by, for, and about depressed people. It was going (read: hoping) to be a print thing with a big launch, and it's what I gave up LT to do. (Okay, one of the things.)

Now, however, the goal is a lot more modest and manageable. It'll be an online magazine/community. If you want to be part of it, email me.

Fan mail

Well, this is exciting. Just had this from one of my discerning readers:

From: Dixieleela@aol.com
To: blog@martysmith.com
Subject: Bloggers
This is the first blog cite that I have ever looked at and I can tell you I will never look this one up again. Howarrd Stearn you ain't.

An actual work by Jeff Koons

This is, frankly, puzzling. Granted, I don't expect to be liked by AOL users, especially ones with "Dixie" in their usernames, but of all the crappy blogs in all the domains in the world, she has to navigate into mine? And it's the first blog she's ever seen, like, ever? How does that happen?

Moreover, putting aside the fact that I am not Howarrd Stearn (or even Howard Stern), what's her beef? Not being Howard Stern is hardly a crime-- after all, people who are not Howard Stern outnumber those who are by about 6.5 billion to 1. This makes "not being Howard Stern" the second most common moral failing on Earth, after masturbation, and should hardly make me the target of censure.

The only thing I can think of is that maybe she's offended because in my last post I intimated that Jeff Koons could suck my dick. Well, all right, Leela, just for that, Jeff Koons can't suck my dick. So there.

I hope you're happy. At this very moment, Jeff Koons is sitting in his TriBeCa loft, weeping as he crosses out dates on a tear-stained travel planner. Don't worry, Jeff; maybe you could use that time to fly to Alabama or wherever and make one of your horribly ugly ceramic sculptures of Dixie here, who I'm sure is dripping with authenticity, not to mention pork fat.

Attack of the short, self-promoting post

What do Ayn Rand, Jeff Koons, and Fabrizio Moretti have in common? Well, for one thing, they can all suck my dick. But more importantly, they're all mentioned in an excitingly short humor piece by yours truly which has just been published in Kittenpants' Daily Scoop.

If you want to read it, use the link above-- Darci hasn't updated her archive since April, so there's essentially no way to find it except from here after the day in question has passed. Which it has. (Bitch, moan, whine.)

Go join your gang yeah!

Ladies and gentlemen, I have caved. I am now officially like every other blogger: I am, as of this post, blogging from my cubicle on company time. This once-proud free spirit, who boasted so casually of never rising before 3pm, has joined the faceless ranks of downtrodden corporate serfdom.

After 20 years of continually worrying about the electric bill (it's the same bill, actually; it was due on April 12, 1984 and I've been putting it off ever since), I have finally broken down and traded a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage.

More precisely, I've traded a walk-on part in the cultural zeitgeist for a lead role in a cube. It's no secret that I've long had a hankering for glory-- I publish articles from time to time, start magazines, bands, etc. But now it looks like I'm willing to trade all that for a living wage and a dry hole to curl up in at day's end.

Of course, I've only been at this for three weeks, so it may be possible that I can continue my laughable efforts at cultural relevance even while working. I'm just not used to having 11 hours (counting the commute) shaved off the top of my waking day. Add in my standard 4 to 5 hours of procrastinating, and by the time I get down to work I've already been asleep for two hours.

Is that a Milk-Bone in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?

Looks like Rick Santorum's worst fears have been confirmed. You've gotta love any news article that contains the following sentence:

Bow-chicka-bow-wow

"Jailing him, Judge Alistair McCallum told Hoyle, 'Never before in my time at the bar or on the bench have I ever had to deal with somebody who voluntarily allowed himself to be buggered by a dog on the public highway.'"

Well. Looks like somebody's led a pretty sheltered life. In my time at the bar, your Honor, we used to see this kind of thing six, seven times a night.

Seriously, I've heard of beer goggles, but, as the cliché goes, this is ridiculous.

By the way, if you're an acquaintance of mine and you happen to know of my ever having done anything like this, please, please, don't tell me.

Blonde redhead

Sometimes it seems like I've spent my entire life taking orders from women with long, strawberry-blond hair. My mother had a head of it. It's been cut short for a while now, but then again, it's been a while since I did anything she told me to do-- besides maybe smoking the carton of cigarettes she sent me for my birthday, which, frankly, I was probably going to do regardless.

Then there's my longtime editor, patron, and all-around Medici, whose good name I won’t sully here. Same deal. Granted, her blond hair doesn't have much red in it, but maybe that's why I've always run my deadlines a little too close to the wire.

Last year, I dated a woman who suffered from the same personality disorder as Courtney Love. She had long, reddish-blond hair, and she tormented me mercilessly with Fatal-Attraction-level craziness for two months. It occurs to me now that not long after I convinced her to cut her hair short, we broke up. And by "we broke up," I mean "I fled in mortal terror and spent six weeks worrying every day that my cat would be boiling on the stove when I got home." (If she's reading this, she should bear in mind that cyberstalking someone for over a year is a pretty bad sign.)

My current girlfriend also has long, strawberry-blond hair. Of course, everything she asks me to do is such a good idea that I'd do it anyway without being told (emoticon, emoticon, don't kill me).

Finally, the editor of Kittenpants magazine must be growing her hair out, because I finally submitted a piece to her that I've been putting off writing for, like, a year. I'm pretty sure she's blond, though we've never met, and given her latest online business, I'm starting to wonder if there's something in the blood of these flowing-haired Nordic types that tends toward the bossy-- for 77 cents, she'll give you something to do, which sounds suspiciously like "I like ordering people around."