The Maturation of the QOTD (content)

The Maturation of the QOTD (content)

I just finished writing at length the history of the quote of the day’s form. Now onto its content. The first couple years, it was glorified potty humor. Actually, it wasn’t even glorified. It was straight-up potty humor. I appropriated comments such as “you can’t fit that whole thing in your mouth” and “wow, you have a tiny head” from conversations and let them do they’re work out of context. It was easy. It was working. And it sucked. Oh, it was funny to the 10 people who were there when it happened or just to those people that knew whoever said it, but it was crap. And it has completely ruined close to any sexual innuendo that can possibly be made now. I can’t judge anymore. Somebody will make what might be a decent joke based on sexual innuendo and I can’t even tell if it’s funny anymore because I’ve become such a snob about it. I feel numb to the genre after living in it for so long. And so there came a point, I forget exactly where, that I decided this stuff was not funny anymore at all to anyone and I refused to be a party to aiding its success. But this did not make the people happy. Now if we were out at dinner and such a phrase was uttered, everyone would turn to me and say “Uh-oh! You’re gonna be on Dustin’s quote of the day.” This was an accomplishment for some people. They were proud to be mentioned on my quote of the day. Chris Meawad tried for years. He’d say something clever and look at me and his ears would perk up and he’d give a funky grin. It was quite comical. But anyway, it was time to put the potty humor to bed.

I started to accrue a pretty extensive audience after a little while. I had lots of people on this list. College friends, fellow employees, ex-girlfriends, current girlfriends, my family, other people’s parents, other people’s girlfriends, friends I made on the internet… the list was pretty impressive. So now I started to need to worry about the content. Do I want to talk about how wasted I got to my mom? Or the chicks I try to score with to my ex-girlfriends? Or current girlfriends? (joke) I was having a problem. And so I made a rouge list called the “x-rated quote of the day.” I only sent out one of those. Really, what I needed were several different security clearances for the messages I would send out. OK for ex-girlfriends, NOT OK for current bosses and certain student employees. OK for sister, NOT OK for mom. I struggle with that still to this day. I kind of started to have an approach of “just pretend this isn’t necessarily me, but a guy a lot like me who works at some college Rec Center somewhere else in the country.” That sounds great, but doesn’t really work out in practice. I wrote a story about kissing a girl on the Subway last year on New Years Eve (my birthday) and a girl got so offended that she asked to be taken off my “frequent bullshit list” and called me an asshole. Sometimes people just weed themselves out of my life depending on how well they can take a joke. And I’m not talking about the kind of joke where I hide cocaine in her jacket when she goes to the airport or anything. I really think that I lost a chance I had with one girl because of a joke I made in my column. Sure, it put me in a bad light, but that was the intent. I poke fun at myself. I make myself look like an ass. I am exaggeratingly critical and/or angry and/or pathetic. It’s a lot funnier, trust me. I do my best work when I’m unhappy, so even when I’m not, I need to pretend to be to stay on my game and keep my voice alive. Unfortunately, a lot of the content is self-depreciating. I wish more people would have a better understanding of the concept of voice before they judge me. Do you really think Steven Colbert thinks all democrats are terrorists? I doubted. But it’s damn funny. Do you think some democrat senator is going to write him and tell him that he’s out of line? Gosh, I hope so. Because it would prove politicians have no sense of humor. Anyway, I’ve gotten myself in trouble and I feel like I need to be a lot more careful now, so I am glad for this medium now. I will still give my adoring public what they want to read, but I can write it in here first and edit for content in the off chance I still have a chance with anybody on this list.

And really, it’s all about trying to score with women anyway. But hey, it looks to be the best chance I got.

The History of the QOTD (form)

The History of the QOTD (form)

I want to take a little time here to address my writing style, as I think that it’s important I not only identify it, but actually dig in deeper to find out for myself what the hell I’m doing. I first started the “quote of the day” back in college and it was originally just meant to be a piece of nothing that would last from March until maybe the end of the semester. I sent out a message about something funny that my friend had said to 23 of the friends I had e-mail addresses for. It wasn’t really anything that impressive at all. It didn’t take me too long to begin to plug intramural games and tell short stories about stupid things my friends and I did. And that’s where it started. I don’t remember exactly how the transition came, probably on one particular subject that annoyed me (such as the art department at UMBC, my unimpressive dating habits or my plethora of injuries), but I started to rant about stuff that pissed me off. And it got popular. Too popular. People began to write back and reply to the whole group and e-mail was relatively new at the time, so some people got pissed off that they had this spam (though I don’t think it was called that yet) in their inbox from people they didn’t necessarily want to hear from. And so then I had to make rules. Like “Kady, don’t e-mail everybody just to say stuff like ‘that’s funny.’ It’s starting to piss people off.” And there were e-screaming matches back and forth on there about whether or not this was technically spam and who had the right to appropriate my e-mail list to voice their opinions and when it was proper and so on. I’ve lost friends over dumb things on this list. Like when ACDC Mike wrote back after I gave the new Star Wars a bad review. He apparently disagreed and shared that with all my friends. I went two days without checking my e-mail and finally checked it when a buddy of mine told me that I needed to see what was going on. Holy crap! There wasn’t just an argument that had ensued about the movie, but also a line of responses (once again) about “You don’t have the right to send this to everybody. We don’t want to hear your shit!” “These e-mail addresses are public and as such, I have as much of a right…” It got ugly. Basically, I almost had to make an example out of ACDC Mike and he didn’t appreciate it all that much. I don’t know how mean I was (I’ve become a lot more laid back about stuff since then), but it became awkward for me to see him again. And he’d still occasionally write back about how much of an ass I was to all those e-mail addresses he still had a list of. It was then that my computer nerd friends told me about this feature called the “blind carbon copy.” Well, the BCC: was my new best friend. Which was good timing, since ACDC Mike no longer was. Ebb and flow, ebb and flow. Anyway, I started to (as I already alluded to) make it more than just rants about stuff. Now I started to throw in movie reviews on every Friday and ratings of random things (breakfast cereal, ways to get money illegally and songs about women’s backsides) every Tuesday. Now it was turning into a legit “daily e-mail humor article” as I described it to people who I needed to describe it to. And like I said, it predates the blog. Well, once I entered the working world, it was a little difficult to find the time to write for 30-45 minutes a day. And I won’t pretend that I didn’t have 30 minutes a day to do it, but I began to get other priorities also. It became a weekly thing, but really just a “when I got around to it” thing. I’d take off 3-8 months at a time regularly and then jump back in where I left off. The first e-mail after I got back was always a funny one because I would get 5-35 messages back saying that certain friends didn’t exist anymore. That was always disturbing. Anyway, the entire time I would write all these, I’d include a quote at the bottom, which had started to become less and less what my writings were about. I would rant about a date I had but then I’d quote something that Tony said in a football game that we had. I was starting to be confined by the quote. I would have much more rant material than I had quotes to write. And I know that a lot of the people on my list don’t necessarily “have the time” to read the whole of whatever it is that I write. So they’ll scan down to the quote and just read that and really miss the good part. This is unfortunately where I still am now. I’m trying to find a way to divorce myself from the quote, though it’s tough because of the history I have behind it now. I have a website now that my friend got me for my birthday less than a month ago where I’m going to start publishing all these past and present QOTDs. I’m not making it public knowledge until I have something decent put together to show people. Anyway, this is the next step in the evolution of the “quote of the day.” And I’m somewhat confined to the title, which is misleading. I need to figure a way out of this. But mostly, I just need to keep writing.