Creeps and Voyeurs

Pool Guy lives on the sixth floor. Nice of Musie to tell us. Although it would have been nicer if she'd told us before we installed all that surveillance equipment on the floor below.

I'm kidding of course. We're not that creepy. But I'd like to explore a bit how how creepy we really are. And also to explore a bit about the unwritten blogging codes we've broken here at the metablog.

A good place to start is with someone we haven't heard from for a while. When 6A came back from the Vatican, he decided to see what Evolver had been up to.

Evolver did not react well to our existence:

...on to what creeped me out. What really spooked me was to discover one of my read blogs is basically... well, I'd consider it that anyway - stalked

...I've always imagined that what I write is read by no more than three or four people in a circle of folks who all read each other's blogs. And I've further imagined that what I comment isn't in fact read by anyone (including frequently the blogger themselves.)...

He was particularly affected by our reaction to his comments, in particular that we found him to be "creepy".

...'creepy' is the worst reaction of all...

I suppose I've always feared that ...

And I've always been terrified by that specific variety of bullying that plays to this vulnerability...

I imagine I'm not the only one on the metablog who feels uncomfortable being cast in the position of a "bully" and therefore probably not the only one who was glad to see him feeling better enough to get some shots off at us a couple of days later :

I'm a little past my wounded "inner child" (so to speak) today. Getting called creepy by people involved in an enterprise as spine-chillingly disturbing as that metablog is really not something to take that seriously. I mean these folks photoshop fake magazine covers regarding the blog they until recently secretly lurked in. One post refered (perhaps facetiously) to an 'ethics committee' that their metablog has. Its pretty chilling to think that this is their reined-in behaviour...

I was the first to comment here on Evolver. It was in a comment following one of Coyote's more focussed postings, but not related to it:

...this Evilver guy. He's more obsessed with 5M than we are. Posting vaguely inappropriate comments within minutes of her posting. Focussed on her sexuality when isn't he supposed to be some kind of born again Christian?

[I nicknamed him for the same reason we nicknamed everyone when we were operating in stealth-mode. We didn't want the metablog turning up on vanity Google searches. (Who knew it would take months for Google to notice we exist?) The "evil" part? It was just too easy. ]

Going back through the 5M archives, I don't think my comment on the sexuality focus was fair. My take now on Evolver's comments is they were vague but encouraging remarks. His blog has a big focus on his Christianity. That's something that creeps me out. I have a kneejerk oppositional defiance reaction to evangelism. That E'ver is an active member of Father Joe's congregation doesn't help.

The thing is that any of us who follow Musie's blog are under suspicion for being voyeurs. Yes, we read her to connect with the human condition and all that, but we also want the sex and the gossip, to see just what intimate details she'll reveal. If it's about someone we know, all the better.

And she talks enough about wanting more and better sex and more and better love that any man who reads her blog and makes contact is automatically suspected of being a creepy predator. (Except Bob who comes off like a puppy who wants to play. He's got a deft touch, that lad.)

Evolver left a comment asking about Westfest when 5M said she'd be going to it. He may well have been only interested in learning about this community event and somehow not realized he'd get a faster response typing westfest ottawa into Google. To us, it was a clumsy attempt to make contact with Musie.

When we blog readers are finding each other creepy, a good part of our perception comes from our projection of our own thoughts and feelings onto each other. "If I only wanted to learn about Westfest, I'd just Google it, I'd not try to invite a dialogue with Musie and see if she'd suggest we meet up there."

As long as we follow an intimate details blog of a woman who lives in our city, goes places we go, and knows people we know, we are going to be perceived as creepy voyeurs.

On top of that, with our metablog, we are breaking unwritten Blog-o-sphere rules. Here are the ones I'm aware of:

1. Don't ruin it for the rest of us readers by making the blogger self-conscious and aware of their lack of privacy so that they stop being so frank. (Oddly, we seem to have accomplished the opposite.)
2. Don't spy on the blogger. (In our defence, there's not a lot we can do when she chooses the best downtown cafe as her perpetual hangout. At least she's safe drinking at the F&F. )
3. Don't criticize the bloggers or the commenters. (We've been treating 5M as though we're literary critics or members of a book club and she's a writer or a character in a novel; not like we're fellow members of a big support group.)

I don't think any of us feel guilty about breaking these rules. When you create a public site on the web, it's open to any of us to read it and react to it as we choose. That doesn't give us permission to break any laws or presume there is a relationship between us that doesn't exist, but if bloggers don't want to feel like celebrities under a spotlight, they shouldn't step onto the stage.

Wayward fruit

Does anyone know how to respond to the 5M's latest? I'm suspecting there is a little bit of "What-does-this-woman-want?" going on. The fellow with the nice car offers to help her with her grocery bags, and she refuses. Then, she's offended when he doesn't help her pick up her peaches. Clearly, she likes male attention, but the "olive skin"/"scraggly hair" comment just doesn't quite work for her. Neither does the sitting next to her ogling other women thing. The men in the 5M's orbit are not quite getting it right.

This brings us back to recent stats and conversations on the former Chair's blog in which it was noted that "Knowing what you want" seems to rate high on the Lavalife "values" list. Dwarfie interprets it as follows: "I don't know what I want" can be code for "I don't know exactly what I want, but it's not a committed relationship with you." So, perhaps, those lavalifers who have been rejected in the past, opt for this "value", thinking that they just need someone who KNOWS WHAT SHE/HE WANTS--in other words, someone who won't reject them.

In the lavalife schema, the 5M would be considered one of those people who doesn't know what she wants. How about in the ESI schema?

Haircuts and heartbreaks

I commend the 5M for chopping off her hair in protest. F--- you, M! And F--- you, too, and your red hair, Y!!! The great thing about hair is that it grows back. It's not like lopping off an ear.

A haircut is a great way to mark a personal change. I remember shearing my tresses when I was a heartbroken young lass. Someone commented, "You've changed your hair." My response was, "No I've changed."

But these days I don't need a heartbreak to go for the transformational haircut. I give my hair stylist free reign over my locks. Recently, I've come out looking like Rod Stewart, but that's ok.

Music to hurt by

Agatha yesterday mentioned wallowing in Lucinda Williams and Haagen Daaz, and the Chair, elsewhere, has spoken of Billie Holiday and scotch. For me, it's about the music.

We all have them. Those discs, artfully camoflaged in our music collections, that we keep because we know we'll need music to hurt by at some point. When we feel like we're off our heads, it's a given that we don't select the tunes we'd choose when we're fully compos mentis. It's not the cool stuff, the good stuff, the great stuff by which we want our friends to judge our otherwise-excellent musical taste. Entirely the opposite, sometimes.

It could be the cheesiest, most egregious, most awful bubblegum slush, but it doesn't matter if it helps you make it through the night. Sometimes you find yourselves singing heartfelt choruses to the most banal lyrics imaginable, feeling as if they're near-poetry. Sometimes the music has no words at all. It may be about matching one's mood, or perhaps lifting it slightly, or just saying, "Fuck it" and greasing yourself straight down the tubes and doing a splashy cannonball into the slough of despond. Sometimes it's about finding a safe place to float temporarily between the emotional storms, not unaware that you're sad, but able to shelter yourself for a bit. And of course, some of it is actually good, and good for the soul.

I don't doubt that we all have top five and top ten lists of hurtin' music. I have twelve. Hey, it's arbitrary. We coyotes tend to avoid the country and western standards -- too many bad connotations to do with guys who want to shoot us from the backs of half tons. I realise this list dates me some, but everybody's music is tied to certain times in their lives, and considering I'm a millenia-old trickster, and could've chosen a proto-Sundance drum chant just as easily, I figure I ain't doing badly:

* Astral Weeks -- Van Morrison
* Late for The Sky -- Jackson Browne
* A Night to Remember -- Cyndi Lauper
* I'm Alive -- Jackson Browne
* River's Gonna Run -- Patrick O'Hearne
* Ashes Are Burning -- Renaissance
* Flight to Jordan -- Duke Jordan
* White Ladder -- David Gray
* Outskirts -- Blue Rodeo
* Touch -- Sarah McLachlan
* Partitas for Violin Solo -- J.S. Bach, played by Viktoria Mullova
* Way to Blue -- Nick Drake

Two Jackson Brownes, I know. I just like him 'cuz he howls a lot...

Poems and Obsessions

Yesterday's Poem: I know that by saying this I'm going to catch flack from those harridans on the Ethics Committee, but I liked yesterday's poem about the poets in Musie's life. I bumped into the Chair and he told me that he liked it too.

Today's Musings: You've got to admit that it's good to see her out with R. And it's good to see that we have helped her get over M.

Wait, perhaps I should run that last sentence of mine through the "De-sarcasticizer". Yup. Turns out that what I actually meant was:

It's too bad that Musie isn't over M and finds herself thinking about who he might be sleeping with. But on the bright side, it's given me an excuse for a bit of clever photoshopping.