Everybody's A Critic

This morning, I got this message, sent at 1 a.m.:

You are...An opinionated bitch who thinks the world revolves around her. You are also one of the homliest women I've ever had the displeasure of laying eyes on. Not to mention ignorant of anything other than things having to do with yourself and whatever interests your white bread values. So go fuck yourself since obviously no-one else wants to.

Who wants to read about YOUR life? As if it is something impressive. All of that time spent on your useless schooling and you'll still be working for my daddy's company 20 years from now.

I honestly hope that you do not plan to pollute the Earth with any of your mutant spawn . . . I can't imagine any more of you running around attempting to behave as if they are something worthwhile or special. Sort of like a clutch of maggots in hot ashes.

And then this one, sent at 6 a.m.:

your life sucks because your suck. which is probably the way in which you got to where you are; giving blow jobs to higher-up pencil dicks. or, is it the all brains-no beauty thing again. you are the universe's parasite in which you suck like a leech to bleed, but you do not give. your kind are what pollute the veins of western society. do not breed.

I tried to reply to both of these authors (who, by coincidence or not, are both on concentric.net), but mail to them bounced back as "User Unknown."

I post these messages (in full, without any editing on my part) because I'd like to say something about the nature of criticism. The header of this entry, "Everybody's A Critic," is not meant facetiously. Everyone is a critic. You have to be, or else you have no discrimination. If everything is equal, then nothing is worthwhile. (Part of the fallacy of communism. But this isn't a political diatribe.)

However, these mail messages are not effective criticism. Why? For one thing, I don't know these writers, so I don't know anything about their backgrounds or the perspectives they have on life. I don't know what precisely has teed these writers off. Both messages had a header line that referred to yesterday's entry. Did part of yesterday's entry incite you to write? If so, then which part? Why did what I say affect you? Why do you think I'm wrong? (Or right...I did get some nice mail today, including a pointer from Mike Berry to his journal, It's So Damn Hard Being Me!, a witty celebration of angst.)

Lists of insults won't get me to change my mind or reconsider what I said. If either of these writers would care to take a minute or two and tell me, politely, what bothered them, I'd be happy to know what it is.

That said: spent the morning filming Kathleen's project. I mostly got food and watched belongings as they shot. (Ah, the glamour of Hollywood.) The baseball card shop owner allowed us much more time than he said we could have, although by the end he wanted us out of there.

Even though I was sitting around, I think I came up with an idea for my next outline. Whee ha.