My First Post!

And with that, my e-dentity is launched.
I am beginning this blog on the day I should have been born, allegedly. But I didn't emerge until almost 2 weeks later, thus setting me on a path of chronic lateness. At least, that's as good an excuse as any.
Now, in my opionion, babies come out when they are cooked, and not before. I am convinced that a little extra womb-time served to make me as cool as I am, giving God a little more time to knit me--finish off, tidy up, maybe add a little fringe or some bobbles. Knitting in the womb. I love Biblical imagery. It all but BEGS for mockery.
But I digress.
This blog will be about me. Now, my best friend Jayne declared a revulsion for what she termed the "obsessive self-chronicling" of this generation, and I agree. To a point. The comment was spawned by a visit to Anthropologie (love Anthropologie. Don't forget, folks, my birthday IS coming up!) and viewing with disgust, several overpriced journals labeled "What I Wore", "What I Ate", "Where I Went", and so forth. I think these are stupid, yes. If you have to buy a special, silk-covered journal at Anthropologie for $15.99 where your checkbook or a small daybook from Target at $7.99 would suffice, you really aren’t in much control of your life. Or your spending. More to the point, if you can’t remember what you bought and where you ate, I don’t think you should be allowed out on your own.
But there is a difference between obsessive self-chronicling, which is, well, unhealthy, and real diary-keeping, which is cool. And I hope that this will turn out to be the latter. If we’re to have purpose-driven lives, as that guy with the bestseller thinks we should; or better yet, if we are to have “considered and consequential lives”, as the heads of my school exhorted us to, I think we ought to have a record of them. This blog is a spot (get it? spot? hee) for me to post musings and wonderings and news-like events about me, since I have too many people scattered over too far, and for some reason, mass-emailing feels invasive and exhausting. This way, you can tune in to the Evelyn Show whenever YOU feel like it, and not have some e-mail with an address header that's longer than the message itself squatting in your inbox like a top-heavy toad.
Ribbit.
So this is my postmodern diary. I’ve tried keeping written ones: daily, weekly, in French, in Japanese, in pretty books and worn old binders with random sheets of notebook paper stuffed in them; and like most of my other “projects”, I eventually give up. But I realized that if I start posting a blog, I’ll have a very good incentive to maintain and sustain interest in my endeavors: an audience. This is why I should be showing my artwork in order to stimulate producing it; why I should take my shows on the road instead of belting them out in my room, why I should NOT be a secretary but instead do something that simultaneously allows me to show off, interact with people and produce a tangible product or result. If I think that someone, anyone, will read my pseudo-intellectual ramblings about trees and academic poverty and summer light, then by God, I’ll do it! Mustn’t disappoint my fans!
Now, given the hope that my fans (and by “fans” I mean “friends”, people who are much cooler than I am but keep me around because I can make them laugh the way an alligator fighting with its own tail could) will actually read this, I will do my best to keep specific people and telltale events out of my writings (starting now; the above reference to the lovely Jayne does not count). No one wants his or her fifteen minutes of fame to be a rant about him or her in someone else’s blog. It would be unladylike of me to mention anyone by name except in the most innocuous context, say, “I went to X bar with Y, Z and 4, and it was awesome! We started off with a round of the house lager…**”. I love my friends, and I don’t want them to be upset by something I said on my blog. This can sometimes make for rather bland reading, but it doesn’t bother me too much, because it will allow me to write more about myself. A topic of endless enjoyment and interest. Well, to me, anyway.
This is also an attempt to keep everyone up to date about me (again, going on the assumption that you want to, and that you’re not doing your best to forget about me!) without the rather invasive and slightly insulting mass e-mail. Now you can get my news at your leisure, rather than mine, and not at the same time as everyone else (because you’re all special, just like everyone else) and if you think real hard, it’ll sound like I’m talking to you!
A word about the title: The Hazelnut Electrograph is my attempt to go down in Googlewhacking history*. The Hazelnut is me, a reference to the very old French meaning of my name. You may not call me that.
The Electrograph is the blog, as I am basically writing with electricity (yes, I know it's more complicated than that, but don't bother explaining, I don't care). The URL is a phrase I always liked, for some reason, and used in the hopes that my blog will be as startling, rich, and sweet as its title.




*Googlewhacking is a new internet-based sport/time waster, wherein one types two words into Google's search engine in hopes of getting one--and only one!--hit. For more info, click here.
**I’ll give a cookie to anyone who can tell me why I would never utter that sentence. And no, it’s not because I don’t have a friend named 4. 4 and I are buds.