A while ago, I got an e-mail out of the blue from a reporter for the Seattle Times. Seems she was surfing the Web trying to find candidates for story she was writing about how people use the Web to try and find a job. Perhaps she had no taste, but she greatly admired the ol' homestead here at squishedfrog.com, and wrote me a note saying so. Which was very nice. But she wished I lived in Seattle so she could include me in her story. Turns out, must be not many people are looking for work in Seattle, because she used me in her story anyway, which I just found online. You can read the entire story, but the pertinent part about me is below. I think it sums up my life online nicely:

Eric Griffith, a 33-year-old Web editor in Ithaca, N.Y., has created an unusual hybrid: part blog, part work portfolio, part marketing campaign for brand Eric.

Recruiters visiting his squishedfrog.com will discover that he puts his socks on before his pants, he used to work for Family PCmagazine, and this: "I feel it should be known that I harbor no fear of sticking a knife into a toaster."

He's got a quirky online store that sells, among other things, a squishedfrog.com thong. There's a link to his writing samples and, even though he's employed, a résumé.

"I've been laid off too many times to think I can afford to not be on the market, just in case the worst happens," he says.

Yeah, whatever.

I'm busy. I've got video games to play and work to do and I'm saving up to buy a tile floor. Oh, yeah, and my chronic battle with winter-depression. But hey, at least I've got... uh... two layers of pants on to keep warm. Yeah, that helps. I guess.

I hate faxes.

I've always hated faxes.

I can't remember my first time encountering this Hades-sent paper nightmare visited upon the masses. Probably when I was working for the film development office, Spring Creek Productions, in NYC just out of college. They had the typical-for-its-time rolled paper fax. This one might have been fancy enough to cut the pages in the appropriate places, tho as I recall, that being 1992, that was a hit or miss proposition at best. Many a time I had to take these waxy rolled up bits of parchment and run them through the photocopier to get them into a semblance of readable material for the principals there (who seemed to never read anything anyway, they were always schmoozing on the phone).

Faxes have done nothing but clutter my life ever since. I'm cursed with being a pack-rat AND someone who occasionally wishes he could find some stray piece of paper -- I've got papers tucked away in my basement dating back to the early 70s that are in relatively mint condition, mind you -- so as an editor, getting faxed press releases, I felt I had to hang on to them all. Because you never know when someone would want to know the specs on a Dell 486 PC or the new features of MCI Mail.

Even with 85+ spam messages a day I'd take email as my preferred method of communcation any day. I'm at a point now where I don't even give out a fax number, and the only one I do give out is one that send faxes directly to my email as an attachment (www.callwave.com does this for free, fyi).

So why the diatribe? I just got off the phone, twice, trying to call the customer service at Time Warner Cable. The DVR (re: TiVo for dummies) they gave me was wonky -- it tried to tape "There's Something About Mary" nine times last weekend, and I didn't even want it once -- so I took it down to trade in for a new one today. The new one says "This Setup is NOT AUTHORIZED for use" on screen. So I call for help (after all, "24 American Idol" is on tonight!) and get switched to their answering service. And they tell me this:

"I don't know if they're there to call you back sir. But I can take down your name and number and fax it over to them."

What did she just say to me? Fax??

"You're going to fax my information over to them? You don't have e-mail? Or some kind of direct computer link? You're seriously going to fax it?" I asked.

"We're on a computer, we write it up and send it off by fax immediately."

"Fax," I say, and realize that I will never, ever get a call back. "Well, that's some fancy technology you've got there," I told her, and gave her my name and number.

And here I sit with a useless DVR, while my name and number spits out of a fax machine in an empty office in downtown Ithaca.

In reference to this... one of my other writers is apparently afraid of pronouns. Especially "it."

I always thought "splendiferous" was a made up word. Not that I necessarily made it up. Maybe Bugs Bunny or someone of that ilk. Imagine my surprise when not only does MS Word correct me on spelling it, but it also has an entry in the dictionary. What's next, "Nin-cow-poop"? "Maroon" as an insult?

RING

Me: Eric speaking.

Telemarketer: Hello, is this Eric?

Me: That's what I just said, isn't it?

Telemarketer: Hello sir, I'm calling on behalf of fund raising for the Police Benevolent Society --

Me: I'm in no shape to make any donations to anyone right now. I just got laid off from my job. [[fyi, this is a lie, folks.]]

Telemarketer: Well, sir, it would take some time for our envelope to reach you by mail at which time you could send --

Me: Did you even hear what I said??

Pause

Me: How could I make any donations to you when I don't even have an income?

Telemarketer: Thank you for your time.

CLICK

[Very disappointing. I had an entire crying jag planned if he'd kept going.]

God bless my wife... she gives me a hard time about eating to many carbs for breakfast, insisting that at least twice a week instead of my usual bagel or toast slathered with delicious creamery butter, I have a smoothy or some oatmeal. But not today... we were downtown this morning when she decided muffins were in order, which then also turned into donuts. When I dropped her at her office, I said to her jokingly, "Get me a soda!" and she did. So now I'm hopped up on chocolated donuts and diet Pepsi.

Neil Gaiman, probably the worlds greatest living fantasy writer (tho I don't really read much fantasy besides his, so I'm biased), said in his blog that comic books are "a medium that gets mistaken for a genre."

My god, that's so succinct it makes my teeth ache.

If you don't understand it, see me after class. I will keep my ridicule to a minimum.

When I was 17, I kept a journal. Not like this blog nonsense that I do to entertain a few hardy souls who stumble back regularly to see if I've actually bothered to say anything of interest. No, back then, it was a serious-as-death diary of my every single move and thought and feeling. I never went more than three days without writing in it.

It was so depressing.

I would frequently read back over what I wrote and simply want to cry. I was in love with a girl who didn't know it (okay, I thought it was love, but we all know that teenage boys are only capable of sick, twisted obsession), I treated my friends and family poorly, and I felt miserable all the time.

Even though, as I've mentioned many times before, life was pretty damn good.

It is thanks to those 18 months of faithful life-recording that I wish puberty upon absolutely no one. Ever. I think kids were better off when they went to work in textile factories at age 11 after dad died of black lung or croup or scarlet hay fever, or whatever killed men in their late 20s in the early industrial age, all so mom wouldn't have to start selling herself on the street and get called a 'strumpet.' Teens were much better people before the invention of the word "teenager."

Anyway, I thought you might all like to see what a typical day was like for me in 1986 or 7, so I hauled out my journals over the weekend and skipped through them to see if I could find anything remotely interesting to post 16 years later.

But there wasn't a damn thing.

Every single page seemed to be nothing but a lot of moaning and whining about how The Girl I Was Obsessed with wasn't in love with me back. How my brother or my friends weren't up to my standards so I insulted or ignored them. Christ, it was disgusting.

Of course, I ceased my journal keeping at about the same time I got a steady girl (AKA "some action") but I know I wasn't any happier during that time. Safe to say I didn't feel satisfied in my own skin until well after I'd settled into college, and that just brought a whole knew world of insecurities and issues. Like that whole "entering the real world" nonsense. I'm still nervous about that one, every morning.

Truly sick: late in my high school life, I gave my journals to The Girl I Was Obsessed with to read, so she could see just how deep my love ran. The fact that she didn't projectile vomit on me at our next meeting is a testament to her intestinal fortitude, or my complete lack of being able to inspire even a modicum of nausea from her.

Recently Bon and I were watching an episode of Scrubs (NBC, Thursdays, 8:30 Eastern). JD has been sleeping with Elliot (despite the name, she's a she) and slowly falling in love. Suddenly Elliot says they shouldn't do the "sex buddies" thing anymore, and instead of telling her how he feels, JD goes along with it. Bon yelled at the screen, "Tell her, you dumb ass!"

So I said, with deep feeling and just a whiff of sarcasm, "Oh, yes, please, tell the girl your inner most feelings! Be sure to lay it all out on the table and make sure she knows just how you feel. Spell it all out, you mumbling fool! It'll make the bone-crushing rejection so much easier to take when you're spurned like yesterday's fetid meat!" (Or words to that effect.)

That isn't exactly what happened when I gave The Girl I Was Obsessed with my journals to read -- that was a last ditch effort to be noticed as anything but "the friend" I was doomed to be -- but it felt that way. It's why, to this day, I'm a sucker for stories about unrequited love, especially when the feelings are unknown to the unrequiter, all because the fear of rejection is just too much to bear for the one with the obsession. Or the crush. Or the love, if it's real.

Yes, it's true... I do plan to let lapse my registration of the .name top-level domain name that I got last year (http://eric.griffith.name). As you can see, I've done so much with it. So, I figure, let the many other Eric Griffith's out there get their crack at it. They can pay for the privilege of using it, I'm done. SquishedFrog.com costs enough and still sounds cooler.

Resolutions? I have none. I understand my own psychology enough to know that I would not keep them. To quote the great H. Simpson: "Never Try."

Still, one thing I will be attempting to do is blog more. I'm not sure why, but I think it boils down to the fact that I really believe in the saying "Writers Write." And I should not be just writing crappy news articles about wireless networks. I should be telling more fart jokes.

Speaking of wireless LANs, I just realized something this morning about one of my writers. He's a pretty good writer, but very formal, and something about his style has been bugging me a lot lately and I only just realized what: He rarely uses contractions. A search though his work for an apostrophe rarely turns them up outside of possessives. Wacky.