Present Imperfect

Sorry, wrong everything. | April 23, 2005

I'm not dead! Yay, me!

I have, however, been working non-stop for the last three weeks. This weekend is the first one I'm not spending in the office. So, okay, lame excuse. But at least I made the effort.

Moving on, I think my Google rating must be higher of late because there's been an uptick in the number of people contacting me to ask if I'm that Bronwyn Jones. The answer: Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Since I started wandering this fine Internet of ours, I've received lots of email from old friends and strangers alike. I get email asking me how the book is going. (Fine, if you're inquiring about the one I'm reading.) I get email asking if I went to camp in Maine. (Nope.) I get email asking me about people I don't know. I get email from other Bronwyns who feel a Google kinship with me. I get email from people I've lost touch with over many years of moving way too much. And in one High Fidelity-esque week, I got email from three ex-boyfriends.

As a whole, I enjoy it. I think for all its enormity, the Internet somehow makes the world seem smaller, and I find that strangely comforting. Unfortunately, if you happen to be looking for a Bronwyn Jones who isn't me, the Internet does not have your back of late.

While I certainly do not want to discourage people from writing just to check if I'm the Bronwyn Jones who wrote that insightful article about the paranoiac perils of gun ownership (Hear, hear!) or the fictional, lesbian anchorwoman Bronwyn Jones or the late Australian filmmaker Bronwyn Jones (who I now feel a strange, research-lover's kinship with, even though she was apparently "blonde, willowy," possessed of a kind of "contained stillness" and a married to a guy called Ian Jones, which is my brother's name, so that's just weird), I want to say up front that I am none of these Bronwyns.

If it's late and you feel impulsive, by all means, drop me a line. But you might want to save yourself a little trouble first and check out my About page first. If nothing there looks familiar and you still feel the need to email me, that's fine, too. I still embrace the non-Disney-contrived small worldness of it all and the worst I'll do is forget to write back.

Now, go forth and Google.

I blame Pope Gregory XIII. | April 02, 2005

God, I’m glad it’s April 2nd.

I have this thing. I sort of hate April Fool’s Day. Because when you’re a full-time fool, it would be nice to have just one day a year when people weren’t making you feel especially dumb. I’ve spent a good portion of my life trying to hide the fact that I am a bit of a moron. I don’t want the veil lifted, even for a mere 24 hours.

Remember when I asked my friend to move her car so that I could jumpstart it? Or the golden day when I stuck frozen (don’t ask) Hershey’s Kisses — foil and all — into the microwave to thaw them out? Ooh! And howabout that time I kindly picked a vicodin-impaired friend up from the hospital, took him to the 7-11 for some electrolyte-renewing Gatorade, then locked the keys in the car with the engine running? Good thing there was a police cruiser in the parking lot!

And if you’re thinking “Oh please, Bronwyn. Those are just run-of-the-mill stupid things,” may I just say that I have some pride and have only related the amusing “Dear me! Where is my head?!” anecdotes, rather than publicly admitting any of the many spectacularly stupid things I’ve done in my life. With my life. To my life. Pick a preposition.

So, yesterday rolled around, I remembered that it was April Fool’s Day and I panicked. I’m a sensitive soul. I’m also a Gulla Bull. And there’s just something sad about forcing yourself to be distrustful of everyone for an entire day. I want to trust people. I want to believe that people don’t lie to me, that people like me, that I’m a well-respected, intelligent person who would never, say, fall on her drunken ass in a karaoke bar. Last month.

Anyway, nothing happened.

But it made me reflect enough to blog, and to suggest that you happy few readers take this opportunity to share One Stupid Thing with me. I’m not asking you to go all daytime talk show on my ass. Just throw me a bone and tell me how you got caught shoplifting Pixie Stix or accidentally left off the parking brake. (The answer’s “no,” in case you were wondering. I’m just trying to get the ball rolling here.)