Eight Hundred and Forty-Three

9 April 2001
George can't hear you.

It's nearly been a year now since we seven were briefed by the master clown - "Original writing for the net! Everything out there is just meta; I want new and shiny stuff". Fair do's. In that time we've covered nearly everything; clowns, flooding, fetishes, musicals, shopping, the next century, and CheetaraBritneyfucking. We've given up kilowords of glory, creative juice splurting out over the screen. We've lied through our teeth, getting emails from narked parties confused and just a little upset about our untruths about the towns that they live in. We are an "evil cartel of seven" who have brutally refused to give time and space to any other potential clowners. We have offended. Many of us are, or would like to be ginger.

All of the above is true. I am sick of the lies.

I suppose that I have weblog envy - the ability to air your feelings over the web at any time of day or night; to have a little "About Me" button with a cute description of yourself. To post photos of your family, friends, blogmeets. Until my financial status improves and I can buy up "www.littlescrubby.co.uk" such pleasures are denied to me. Instead my webspace consists of 1000 words of freeform writing every twenty-five days where I can be anything and anyone that I want to be. But my anonymity is wearing. I do get the occasional links and comments from my fellow clowns' blogs but only on a superficial level; it is known that I exist but anything else is at the discretion of the reader. In cyberspace I am faceless. Having now recognised this, I am devoting my clown to some truths about myself; not necessarily ego-massaging but enough to define my personality for those who care to know or imagine. This is all true.

I am 5'3". I hold dual nationality - British and Australian. I am one of the would-be gingers, and owe much of this to henna. As a consequence, the cream carpet in my dad's flat is now spotted with orange which will never come out. I, however, came out to my dad three and a half years ago, which all seemed to be OK. I was born in London, raised in the Midlands and have lived by the sea for the past six months. Seagulls are huge; I'd never realised how big and vicious the fuckers were until they started circling by my bedroom windows. I hate grey English weather as it makes me depressed. I am scared of daffodils - the trumpety bits of the flower look like some horrible mouth thing (made worse by the quivering stamen within) and it always seems like they were going to eat me. April is the cruellest month, entire fields full of the bastards all looking at me.

This is harder than I thought it would be. Not for me the luxury of brief comedy paragraphs about how awful work is or meeting up for drinks with other bloggers. No links to other sites; comedy pages about men who collect empty yoghurt-pots or extended essays on the nature of US environmental policy¹. Not even an amusing drunken rant written at 2 a.m. after a heavy night out (I rely solely on sugar especially Reeses' Pieces and caffeine to get me through my writing and haven't written a drunken Clown yet). No, I have to hold the attention span of the readers² for that full page of size-12 text with no space to hide. Some other clowns have the magic computer know-how to do exciting html links between their pieces and other pages, so that the reader can distract themselves for a few minutes with another site before returning to the Big Top. I have no knowledge of such trickery and must amuse, entertain and titillate with the sheer wonder and glory of my words alone.

I am writing this from my Midlands home town with a headfull of henna and some children's' books for distraction. I am recovering from a hangover. It is 8.10 pm. I've just spilt Caesar salad dressing on the computer keyboard which my parents will not thank me for. I am listening to my brother's CDs for inspiration. My brother is currently in Canada so he won't mind.

I'm going to wind this up now. I've nearly reached the requisite word count, plus the computer has crashed five times in the course of writing. I need to wash the henna off, eat, and watch Rory Bremner before I go to bed. I apologise for the tone of this clown; for those readers (not Readers) who were expecting a whimsical yet dark piece on child couture geniuses, wait until next time. For now I'm going to see about buying the Little Scrubby rights.

FOOTNOTES
 
1 [back]
Although www.explodingdog.com and "Playground Law" at www.disappointment.com are both excellent.
 
2 [back]
I was referred to as a Reader (with the implication of the capital in the pronunciation) by several webloggers. In the same context as "Breeder", "Muggle" and other outsider insults.