*Short* Essay "My Spruce Goose"

Hello I am Slick J. This is how I prefer tell my story, through anonymity. MySpruceGooseStory begins with the incredibly harsh feelings of loneliness. I hate being alone.

After my divorce, I signed up for three dating pages, none of which could point me in the right direction. So I began to seek out more dating sites. I found an extreme number sites available. Almost all were free, until you receive an e-mail. Now, I am not made of money (divorce=no$) so choosing the right one was very difficult for me to do.

This proved to be very time consuming, and fruitless (Many BAD dates and a really Bad GF). I ain't ugly, and I am a nice guy. I knew I was not the problem, but my ability to choose the right site was frustrating. There were so many that I finally gave up. I decided to wait patiently until the right girl came along. This was incredibly BORING.

Since I had a lot of time on hands, I decided to build my own dating website. However, after researching the costs involved, it was not going to happen the way I envisioned (divorce= no$). But I had a brainstorm. I could provide links to other websites that were already there. But the links would not be to the general "We'll let anyone create a profile" dating sites. I was going to steer people to the perfect website for THEM. Specialty dating was the idea. I also wanted to provide some good information and even some entertainment. It would be an all around perfect site for people to visit once for practical reasons, and come back for more entertainment. I needed a name for this site.

I thought a name may come from within me. So, I began to search deep inside to detail the perfect girl for me. I thought about the SNL skit about MeHarmony.com, which depicted oneself as the opposite sex to be your perfect match, I smiled. I can’t believe what I did next. I looked in the mirror and pictured myself without my totally kick-ass goatee. I then gave a couple of winks and pressed my breasts together ala Marilyn Monroe. I WAS FLIRTING WITH MYSELF. Damn. I forced myself to stop right there. I did not want to end up wearing high heels. There was plenty of that disease circulating already and I did not want to be apart of that. BAM!! EUREKA!! ALACAZAM!! I did not want to be apart of that disease, but someone does, or it would not exist!!!! Ladies & Gentlemen.... DiseasedDating.com had been born!

This was going to be perfect. The tag line for the site wrote itself, "Because everyone needs some Lovin." I would have three categories to start: Societal Disease, Psychological Disease, and Medical Disease and have more categories later. I would provide links to real dating sites and groups to find like minded people of the opposite (or same) sex. Well I did it. I thought it came out AWESOME. It was thought provoking, informative, AND entertaining. It was going to be HUGE. I even provided a link to a news article that stated Herpes cases were down 19% below 1982 levels. The button was titled "Thank you DiseasedDating.com". Ok, so I took a little liberty with that, but hey.....

Anyway, I launched it and used some very clever advertising. In one example, I was given an incorrect link for a listing of Transvestites under the Societal Disease category. Erroneously, a provider gave me a link code that led users to women aged 60 to 90 years old. So my announcement was that "The company misunderstood my request. Instead of fulfilling my request for a link to "trannies", I guess they thought I said "grannies", so if there is a link to pictures of your grandmother posing in a provocative manner on my website, I apologize." Well, after three very long months, and the very clever advertising, there was a dismal amount of visitors and absolutely zero participation on the blog. No one has E-mailed me to tell me whether they like it or not, or whether they found any of the links useful.

Everyone uses averages to set an advertising price for banner ads, my average for three months was zero. That does not translate to a huge amount of profit. So I have decided to pronounce DiseasedDating.com as my very own Spruce Goose.

On a relative scale, I suppose I have lost as much money as Howard Hughes did on his failure. The amount of lost pride and respect has been the same. But, I do not want to end up a recluse with 12 inch finger nails and peeing in mason jars while locked in a room somewhere, so I started this blog to get these feeling out and reveal to the world that I have failed. I accept that and I hope I will be able to recover.

Thank you for reading
-Slick J.

I meant to send a reply to this much sooner than I now am but I did want to think about it for awhile and I'm glad I did.

This is a site for writing of course and though technically I should be critiquing the writing, I'm instead going to reflect and respond.

Here it goes:

It would be most unusual for a divorce to ever go smoothly. There are always attachments, you know? So it's natural to go through some depression for awhile.

What I see is that you found a way, instead of grieving in it, to make it like a sattire. It sounds like you were making fun of the idea of relationships in general, reflecting what you were going through in a totally new direction.

Your idea was creative and original. It served to take up a lot of your time (and money, as you say) but it was productive.

The site, as you say, might be a failure at this time, but that doesn't change you. You've created something and, whether you are aware of it or not, used it to channel some obvious aggresion and angst.

So, as an observer from the outside, I'd say that your website wasn't a failure. Maybe there aren't very many visitors and maybe there is no blog activity. But it is entertaining and it has served a significant purpose in your own life, no?

Then again, you can hardly take me seriously. I'm eighteen years old, never been married, and never made a website of any kind. This is only a reflection of my own mind, no strings or relevance attached.

As always,

Stefani