1 Year Older

It has been almost a full year since I bothered with this. To be honest I've had other things to do. Beyond that, I'm finding it hard to convince myself that I care about blogs or webcams or the internet phenoms anymore. I've been doing this since 1996. It gets old.

Youtube? digg? Yahoo 360? MSN Spaces? This chriscam.com domain and the content on it predates that by at least a high school generation. I work in this industry. I think most of web 2.0 is a joke and phantom hype.

Whenever I have the opportunity to say anything of value... fuck that. Let's be honest. Whenever I have the opportunity to say something (anything) unfiltered, uncensored, ill-advised (i.e. 'of value'), it is usually when I'm drinking. I don't typically drink and have unfettered internet access in combination when I'm at home. There are children and family and a wife to take into account. A man can't be a total loose cannon in that context. When on a per diem and traveling on company dime, perhaps it is possible. But not at home.

Imagine your mother watching you masturbate and critiquing you. Yes. As disgusting as it may sound, as Freudian as that may be, it is akin to trying to express yourself on a blog, a webcam, an internet site of any sort, while in the full view of your friends and family, immediate and distant.

Chriscam.com started as a website named 'chrisworld' where I posted shit I wanted to say about bill clinton (lowercase deliberate in retrospect) and the effects of the gulf war (ca 1991) and Netscape and Dow 4,000 and these weird emerging coffee shops with sofas in them and what we called the information superhighway at the time. Pre text messaging. Pre dual band cell phones. In fact, we called them CAR PHONES. Forget blogging tools or mp3 players. Or mp3's for that matter. Do yall remember my podcast (in 1998, mind you. 5 years before the term podcast was coined)? Something in a RealAudio format. Ranting about the effects of global warming. See, I was rabidly Liberal back then. I was also poor and ignorant. Oh how times have changed. Now I'm rich and ignorant. And that makes me a Conservative. ;-)

Consider, for a moment, the changes in just 10 years. Possibly the greatest, broadest, most rapid change in man's history. Gutenberg would have been stunned at the pace. Da Vinci would have scoffed. Newton incredulous. Einstein optimistically skeptical. Hawking still reserves judgment.

So what. So you haven't put anything on this domain in a year. So you maintain pretense to some insightful ancient knowledge of this technological space. Big freaking deal. Who cares?

Probably no one. But then again, this isn't about you. This is about me. This is my mechanism for expressing myself when other outlets are insufficient, incapable or inescapable. There may or may not be at this moment other websites on the internet under my pen yet not under any name that anyone reading this would recognize. Why? Because this website and its contents have become ubiquitous within my world. I've had people I know (and who I thought knew me well) tell me that they 'learn' about me from this website. Clearly that hasn't helped them within a year or so.

I possibly post feelings and writings and thoughts and comments under other names. For lack of a better term, I may 'blog' under other names on other websites at other hypothetical urls. It may be my way of expressing, of saying, of telling, of warning. I can say what I really think and feel without consequence. What a society eh? A mechanism for saying what you will without incurring penalty. The ability to be nonconformist in this day and age, without being labeled strange (because you're anonymous, after all) is a wonderful, terrible thing. As Emerson said, for nonconformity the world whips you with it's displeasure. If only Winston Smith knew what would come 20 years on.

• WAR IS PEACE
• FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
• IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

If yall were listening to Evanescence Lacrymosa right now, and halfway into your second bottle of Lindemans Reserve Coonawarra Cabernet (2005) it would all make sense.

My mother is a fish.

This may just be all stream of consciousness. It mostly is. And I've added this sentence after all of the rest of this entry has been written.

You have all been in love before. I entertain that I've been in love many times. I'm lucky that I found someone who can tolerate that which I entertain.

So here I am. A year wiser? Probably not. 50 pounds lighter? Absolutely. Contemplating the same issues and possibilities that I contemplated a year ago? Yes. Three years ago? Probably. Five years ago? Absolutely. I think history haunts us all, actually. I studied history, so that is probably why I think that. But I think we are haunted, daily, constantly, by choices made and unmade. Haunted by issues resolved and yet unresolved. By choices that may predate own births by 1, 2 or 20 years. Choices made by other people that happen to cross our paths. What are those choices? Do you care? I've blogged about my own experiences with my choices for certain. Maybe on this website. Maybe somewhere on the internet, under various (possibly un-Roman) names. And it may not really matter. It probably doesn't. But it seemed to matter to me. Like it has mattered to countless bloggers (before the term existed) who have given up precious nuggets. Anyone remember when Lance came out on Glassdog? Anyone remember when Jenni first went nude on Jennicam? I was there (I mean, not literally). Those were moments of truth. Those were moments when people said things about themselves and the societies that they lived in. They said things that mattered. It mattered because these were things that had never been said before to a global audience. Let's be honest here. You're either someone who is in their 30's who followed this website when it was on television every other week 10 years ago. OR you are someone who was in elementary school 10 years ago.

The point is that I don't see value in chriscam.com. I see value in blogs, as outlets for emotion and thought and provocation. But I don't see that it serves me at all well at the ripe age of 21. Er. 31. Sweet Jesus I'm old.You know you're old when while it may be 95 degrees outside you still flip on the seat warmer because your back is sore. Don't laugh. If you're not there already, you'll be there soon. The sweetness of time is that youth gives way. You WILL grow old. And there's a decent chance that if you're male you'll go bald.

So there it is. I don't care about this channel anymore. I pay for it because I can't let go of something I've owned longer than anything in my life. This website predates my wife, my children, my loves gained, my loves lost, my loves gained and then lost, my airline miles, my jobs, my houses, my furniture, my cars, my credit lines, my sperm bank donations, my apartment rentals, several generations of dogs and cats, my Beacon scores, several southern interstate highways and many politicians. Hell. The only thing that was in my life that outlived this website was a 3 liter bottle of 1995 Stags Leap Cask 23. And sadly, on Labor Day weekend 2007, my father (who mistook that bottle for one of his own hooch creations), opened this bottle and marked it with a 'DAVES HOOCH'. Allow me to set the record straight. The wine was excellent.

The one thing that had existed before anything in my life was suddenly opened and consumable. Days later I started a new job, my wife and I sold our house, we began actively trying for a third child (score Chris!) and we moved in with my in-laws until our new house is finished. Life is in upheaval. Things are uncertain. I travel a lot. My children hate me. I feel insecure about my new job. I'm getting old.

I can already feel the onset of rain by the subtle throbbing of an ankle I sprained 13 years ago. What's next? Predicting the future by quatrain? As Lenin said, what is to be done?