The Bullshit Diary

In 2004, my New Year's resolution was to keep a bullshit diary. Having spent most of my young life mired in a staggering amount of bullshit, I decided I could amuse my friends by keeping a miniature notebook and documenting as much as I could. Although I now realize that bullshit is inherently unpredictable, I also maintained the naïve hope that I would eventually be able to detect a pattern to the bullshit, which might one day help me to avoid it.

Now, to be clear, I should distinguish between two types of bullshit. The first definition pertains to things you think aren't true; e.g., you might call bullshit on someone who tells you a peanut isn't a nut. This kind of bullshit bores me. When I say bullshit, I refer more generally to things that strike me as shocking or at least mildly unfair. Here are a few examples, culled from the diary:

January 4: My waitress told me the restaurant is now serving Sierra Mist instead of Sprite.
January 6: I'm trying to apply for a passport, and my own mother doesn't know where my birth certificate is.
January 17: No one gives "The Hudsucker Proxy" the respect it deserves.

The best part about keeping the diary was the opportunity to lord it over others. If someone had to cancel plans we had made, she would be forced to watch as I pursed my lips, reached into my breast pocket, and documented her lame excuse. My friends loved to watch as I'd whip it out in front of strangers and refuse to tell them what I was doing.

But alas, it wasn't long before the bullshit emerged victorious: I lost the diary. My longest-ever New Year's resolution was over after three months.

I found it a year or so later, but I didn't have much desire to start it back up. Glancing at the most recent entries, I found the diary had become little more than a string of sloppy rants about crowded bars and losing poker sessions. It appears the bullshit diary was just the next in a series of mildly creative ideas that I had neither the drive nor the wit to follow through on. Maybe I lost it on purpose.

I've considered blogging about the bullshit that still runs rampant over my life, but I'm afraid it would again degenerate into something embarrassing and trite. Still, some of the entries make me think I was really onto something:

February 12: I can't find malt vinegar at the grocery store.

Bullshit.