One of my less savoury habits (which are legion, by the way) is perusing random weblogs. Crass voyeurism aside, this is bad because I take a perverse delight in those that are manifestly the work of fools, because it makes me feel better about myself - I can indulge my desire of omniscience . Although, come to think about it, I suppose that's just another flavour of voyeuristic thought - it seems that one of the major attractions in that creeping cancer of popular thought that is "reality" TV is the "my God, this man/woman/indeterminate is so stupid". Anyway, I digress. I should point out that I delight in those that are the work of talented people as well, but because admiration is invariably tempered by envy it somehow lacks the compulsion of looking at those of lesser mortals, the sort of thing where ludicrously offensive yet massively touchy teenage goths hold forth about why they can't understand people stare at them all the time. Livejournal is a particularly rich seam of this sort of stuff, should you be a conisseur - just click on the Random button on their homepage.

That said, quite often even the most appalling tripe will have some genuine, hearfelt emotion or tragedy behind it, which makes the whole thing if not tolerable, then explicable, and I feel guilty about having intruded on their sadness despite the fact that by throwing it up on the bloody Internet they're inviting censure, derision, and ton after ton of mass-mailed spam. However, every so often I come across something that is so ghoulishly dreadful that I can't help but return to it, like the site of some particularly horrific accident (not that I carry out repeat visits, but that's ooh-look-slow-down-there's-some-blood response is something I've yet to see any human overcome).

Thus it was that I happened upon the blog of someone who, apparently, wants to be a journalist. Or a screenwriter. Nothing wrong with that, certainly, particularly given that I have partially-realised leanings towards both these activities and I'm painfully aware that I'm not, in fact, that good at them. Nor was it particularly misspelt or grammatically inaccurate, thus lending itself the sort of sledgahammer irony meted out to three-year-old "Proffesional Web Design Site!!" by such folk as Something Awful and Portal Of Evil. Dictionary wise it's A-OK. No, the problem I have is that the guy in question is just frighteningly talentless, and he combines this with such a bright-eyed and thoroughly distressing policy of total disclosure it's almost painful to read. I mean, he can string a sentence together very well, but the subject matter is horrific and there's just no knowledge underlying the exercise at all. It's appalling. But compelling. And what's worse, he's amazingly keen and very dedicated, so its almost a certainty he will be writing for money at some point. There is no justice on this earth.

(PS: Should you, dear reader, if you exist at all outside of my fond perceptions, wonder why there's no link, it's because I'm just not unpleasant enough to tie the person to the drubbing I've just given them. Alright, I'm a coward. You'd better send people over here to read this and go "My God, what a dick, etc.)