Eleven... or Pissing in the Wind

It all started because the esteemed Gulfboot Johnson got tired of my writing him long emails about the early years, when El Kono was just a kid from Cleveland stuck in the Wyoming hills playing basketball and the hi-jinks that ensued, he claimed that it was entertaining and it was a waste that he was the only one to see it, he said that on this thing called the internet there was this wacky new trend called blogs, i thought that sounded like a medium for fucking wankers and besides i didn't know how to go about getting something like that up and running, i was a technological Luddite, even more so then than i am today, and so the truth is Gulfboot set this experiment up, set up the site and if my memory serves helped come up with the name for it, a combination of one of my favorite words at the time and one of my favorite places, and thus was birthed the Asshat Lounge...

When it started there were no expectations and eleven years later there are still no expectations... I had no idea what i was doing or what would happen and luckily nothing happened and i still don't know what i'm doing, through a distinct lack of talent and ambition i've achieved exactly what i set out to do which is nothing, the Wu Wei with a bit more typing thrown in...

Since doors opened here at the lounge a whole cottage industry has sprung up around the business of blogs, awards banquets and conventions and such, money has changed hands and the lumpen prole, as usual, are sold a dream of success and riches beyond their wildest dreams, yet what the fuck is success? i have no idea, i guess some would say a moron in front of a typer putting somewhat incoherent run-on sentences together for eleven years could be success; it could also be said that someone with no readers and few views might be a sad and lonely sort, maybe he's a bit off mentally, like Sisyphus and his boulder or Charlie Brown and his football, then again i don't really know what those things are or mean, i thought metrics was how they measured shit in Canada...

And so here i sit doing what i always do, what i've done off and on for the last eleven years, telling stories to myself in hopes of amusement and to stave off the mindless glow of the telly, the hopes and dreams of the young Kono have long since faded, in fact the old Kono barely recognizes the young Kono but actually that would be a lie, the old Kono just doesn't give a fuck about the things his younger self did, is more comfortable with himself than the young one was, a fact that most of the people who knew they young one would be puzzled by seeing as that young Kono was full of bravado and cockiness as those young sorts are apt to be full of, now i'll to revert back from third person to first, i just do, it's the act that i enjoy, i all i ever wanted to do was sit down and type things out, be it metaphysical musings or stories, to leave my history so that my drug and booze abused brain could go back and see what a fool i've made of myself, like that Memento film without all the tattoos...

There is a fluidity here that sustains me like the air and water i need so much, there is a past and a future which merge into this now and leave the words written like chalk on the sidewalk as the first drops of rain begin to fall, the words are there and then gone, washed clean and reborn, they are remembered and forgotten, they ebb and flow like the waves meeting the sand and they are mine and they are not mine, everyone's and no one's, it may go on for another eleven years or it may stop tomorrow, what i didn't know eleven years ago but have learned in the process is that it's the act of creating that holds the meaning, the rest of it is so much window dressing, a distraction from what truly matters... and if that is the only thing i've learned than it has been well worth the time and energy invested...