The Origin of the Fleeces

Why am I having such a hard time with this blog? It seems that I cannot create a "first real post".
I guess the root of my problem is the term "blog". What is that term? "Blog?" People can't just say "Web Log", or even "Online Journal" or perchance you want to throw caution to the wind and say "Web Diary". What is this obsession for shortening and cute-sifying things, especially online. LoL, BrB.

We even shorten or change our names. Why do men, grown men, insist on being called Skip or Chucky.
If you're gonna go with a nickname or abbreviate something at least make it rugged or full of Chutzpah. Where are the nickname's for today's man's man. Where are the "Rockys" and "Phoenixes" for goodness sake, where are the "Vipers" or "Scorpios".

I don't know where this dislike for nicknames comes from. I don't know why I hate the adorable term "Blog". I guess it's just a remnant of my youthful disdain for things that were considered "cool". Growing up it was trendy to not be trendy. If it was popular, it was lame.

Of course there was an evolution of this "anti-trend". At first this bucking the trend of trendiness was all about clothes. It was always cool to not wear trendy clothes. In the beginning not wearing the trendy fashions, came from the simple fact that Mom bought all your clothes, and thought that button up the front, pink tucked in plaid was pretty neat. In middle school if kids were wearing Z-Cavaricci's for instance then you wore dockers, or jean shorts that were far too short for you to sit comfortably in math class across from that quaintly plain Chinese girl who you were sure was staring up your leg at your "tighty whities". I'll always remember you Grace Wang. You were the first...
It wasn't choice. It was all you got, and your tender heart didn't have the guts to tell your mother "no mom, I don't want to shop at Mervyns anymore." There was no way to be trendy even if you tried.

Then high school came along, and a minimum wage job at Cinna-bon meant YOU took control of the anti-trend. You were used to wearing alternative clothes (as geeky as they were) and not being trendy morphed into shopping at Goodwill, and paying for clothes by the pound. If it had "Fred's Steamers" on the chest or some other non-sequitor nonsense beamed down from a planet orbiting the seventies you were "in"...or "out" as the case may be (It was very confusing where you stood).
Then someone of course would argue that shopping at a thrift store was trendy, that even when you're trying to not be trendy, you were in essence still being trendy. And of course they were right.

I'm older now, and of course I'm trying to be true to myself, I have tried to maintain my anything but trendy status. Yet like a hippy turning his eyes from the earthy flames of beach bonfires and folk songs, who now sits at his cushy CPA job, gone from Berkeley to Boise crunching numbers instead of getting the munchies, I too have strayed from the path of the anti-trend.

Now, it's hard work to not be trendy. Did you ever think that large groups can sometimes be right. I watched "Lost" last night. They were right. I liked it. I have an IPOD. I don't think I could live without it. I've actually uttered the words (though it shames me nie unto death) "Did you tape 'American Idol'?". I've learned not to care as much about not being trendy, and therefore, I must surrender my "cool/hip" status. I must surrender to the power of the Blog.
Hey, even a black sheep still has to follow the flock. Baaaahhhh!