So, the rumor is that Angelfire is going to put in a Blather Mall just three home pages over from this journal.
     I'm stunned.
     Even more stunned than I usually am when I wake up in the morning still alive and not incarcerated for a crime I didn't commit.
     There's no way my hand-crafted blather can compete with the cheap, imported blather these malls are known for.  I mean, have YOU ever met an aged almost-jester who can do half as good a half-assed job as nimble-minded child jesters willing to work 16-hour days in exchange for the merest shadow of a smile and new toe bells every other year?
     Nearly all of them live in countries far older and therefore more silly than my own, too.
     Thank you, NAFTA!
     And it's not just blather these malls excel at, either.  They also carry a wide selection of pre-fabricated twaddle, blabber, babble, jabber, prattle and piffle guaranteed to fit every neurosis, psychosis, and time-wasting preference.  I'll be lucky if I can continue to lure 0.6% of diehard masochistic readers to this site....

     But that's the talk of a defeatist.  Well, it's time to remember that I'm not a defeatist - I'm a perfectionist with a martyr complex and I better start acting like one by making this site the best I can so that when it's finally done in by my competition as Fate commands, I can bawl and whine and feel put-upon with a clear conscience and a light heart.

     First step:  The addition of a bridal registry.
     I was going to add this anyway, but the rumors of a new Blather Mall have prompted me to speed the deployment of this idea without testing it first in the eyes of lab animals out in the field.
     What does this mean as a practical matter?
     It means that someday soon - say by June 2, 2001 - every bride-to-be who reads this journal will be able to post the style and length of entry she'd like to see appear on the day she begins her married life. All her friends will be able to access the details of her request at their convenience and then make her dreams come true (provided they can cough up the required $50.15, plus postage and handling).

     Second step:  Enacting the changes recommended by JOURNAL SCAN.
    JOURNAL SCAN, of course, is that special trouble-shooting software every online journaller really ought to run at least once a week but which I've not bothered even acquiring until today.  According to this simple yet remarkably ego-munching program, my journal is a poorly conceived work full of unnecessary snideness, tangled tangents, unfortunate word choice, annoying commas, unattractive graphics, offensive implications, pointless changes of font, and - worst of all - overly-long sentences.  Bottom line: If I really want to save this mom-and-pop Theater of the Absurd of mine in an age of mega-malls and another Bush campaign, I need to delete it in its entirety and paste a single page of random typing exercises in its place.
     As good as this program is, however, it's clearly not perfect.  There's always room for human tweaking, especially in light of its assumption that I have the time or the talent to delete every little thing I've dumped here since May.  I don't, so instead I plan on deleting only every other word, then pasting random slang terms taken from the world of jazz to fill the holes created by their absence.

     If tomorrow's archived entries seem remarkably better than today's, you'll know why.