When I started this blog, I needed a title for it, and my first choice, tofu4breakfast, was taken. After that I was completely blank. I spent a day or two in titular despair, trying to come up with something, and feeling like a dork about it. The few ideas I had were taken, until seemingly out of the ether this thing popped into my head that an ex-boyfriend used to say about the joke and mystique. I never knew what he was talking about, but went along with it because I wanted him to think I was cool. Lo, these many years later it still sounded kind of neat, and better yet, wasn’t taken. I considered that there might be some mojo issues with naming a blog after something that wasn’t my own, and that, of course, it’s public so the possibility existed, however small, that he or someone he knew in college might stumble across it. But more importantly, it was time to get writing again, so I chose it, and moved on.
Right around the time when this blog got just big enough that it would have been a huge pain in the ass to recreate it under another name, I figured out what I should have called it. Two possible titles actually, that involve words I invented, so there is no way they would be taken.
So, for a year now I’ve been writing under this title out of expediency, and the unthinkable has happened: I recently heard from the originator of the phrase “the joke and mystique” through facebook, and there are links hither and thither to this page. Ok, it’s not the unthinkable. It’s the totally thinkable.
I am reminded of the occasions when my ex-husband, during our second round of dating, would remind me of something hilarious that I said the first time we dated, seven years earlier. It was usually something that I didn’t remember at all (apparently I once claimed that men like Tostitos because they contain the word “tit”), but after many years he still remembered it. At the time, I was unsure of whether this was awesome -after all, I AM hilarious- or creepy. Being remembered, no matter how fondly or poorly or innocuously sets this weird ego process in motion in which I simultaneously revel in my extreme fabulousness, and wonder what the fuck is wrong with people that they actually remember something I did.
It’s the ego dichotomy that lies at the base of the old saw that mean people are just insecure. Ego stroking is really only a problem if you don’t believe what people say. I suppose that if one does fully believe others’ best ideas about them, then everyone is in agreement and the show goes on, the momentum builds, and life is dandy. Yesterday I got a nice reminder about attracting what we put out into the world: it was late in the day, and I still had an interminable list of things to do, including returning a call to the administrative assistant at an AME church. Her voicemail greeting was so wonderful – Thank you for calling! 2008 is going to be the most wonderful year! You can make a great difference in the world! – that I couldn’t leave anything but an equally lovely message. By the time I got off the phone, I was ready to stand up and be a witness.
Wait, what I was talking about? Who cares? Earlier this week I got the best email promo I have ever, ever seen. It was from an underwear store having a sale, and the subject line was “Get Your Panties in a Bunch.” As some one who has written countless promos, I am compelled to write to them and congratulate them on this masterful work. I’ll be brief. Badumbum.
