just spent the last hour or so guestbook-hopping, looking at strangers' websites. a lot of them sucked. no, back up. personal webpages as a whole generally suck. particularly those belonging to females aged 17-20. including mine. the trend is always us trying to be different and unique and stand out from all those OTHER personal-webpages-which-suck but in the end the results are invariably predictable because such endeavors are intrinsically masturbatory attempts to make ourselves feel special and convince everyone in earshot of how intelligent / original / misunderstood / sensitive / empowered / artistic / whathaveyou we are, name-dropping arcane pop culture references whenever possible. (like that scene in Trainspotting where Diane sizes up Renton or in Suburbia where that dirty-guy tells the rich-girl her life story) this is not true for everyone of course, and i could immediately call to mind many good sites that i have been thoroughly impressed by, even if i dont know the person. that seems to be a pretty good objective test, because with things like this, one's assessment frequently hinges on "why should i care?" in real-life, i've found that people are without exception always more surprisingly unique once you get to know them the tiniest bit. you know the feeling, when you talk to or be with someone you've only recently met / delved into, and it occurs to you suddenly "wow this person is so cool" and you get all happy-excited-curious to find out even more about them. too bad we cant play up those revelatory facets in this electronic medium cause somehow we all end up marketing ourselves the same way (with those rare aforementioned exceptions of course). so if this feeling of needing-to-self-improve lasts long enough, maybe i'll get inspired and do something about it. because my measure of self-worth is entirely dependent on how well i can impress you, dear reader. i've tried being sincere, being sarcastic, being indie...for now i'm just gonna be plaid.