January: My reality-show recap assignment at TWoP is to write about the drunken pixellated-bare-ass antics of people I went to high school with. The nickname “Man Boobatos” catches on more than I’d anticipated.

February: Aforementioned high school classmates invite me to the show’s final episode party and apparently neglect to kick my ass. (As for the rest of that post: I never did get to see the piece about Pound that was supposedly in this Swedish magazine and any info is welcome.)

March is when my whole freaking life changes after I put up the Weight Watchers recipe cards. They get a lot of attention within just a few days, and it continues for a few more months. After about ten days I have to move my site to a new hosting company and after another week have to get a mirror site set up because of all the motherfucking traffic.

Also, there’s a war or something.

April: I launch Pound’s sister site Candyboots and put the Weight Watchers recipe cards there. I also drink a lot this month, if you must know.

May: I finally move to a bigger apartment and I get to be on the radio.

June: I don’t do much in June except write my first column for BUST and also meet Pinky. HI PINKY!!!!

July is when I patiently explain the difference between online diarists and bloggers to all you people, and then I drink lots of cheap beer in Andersonville and then August is kind of a blur, but that’s when that whole New York Times thing went down, right? Yeah, it’s a blur.

In September Michael comes to town for our friend Amy’s wedding and we have a fine time and take lots of naps, and then later that month I begin my long-overdue campaign of Jemima J. hate which continues into October.

And then in November I meet some bad-ass bitches and um, Clifford, and then I do some other stuff in December, but really you should just scroll down this page to see whatever the hell that was.

My God. I don’t know what to tell you about next year. I mean, I have lots of things to say about what could happen in 2004, but they haven’t happened yet, and I hope they happen, and if I’m posting less frequently here in the blog and then not at all in the journal it’s been because I’m working my ass off on this other stuff, and now I’m getting all vague and goofy and I’ll shut up. The plans for next year also include a collaborative blog to be launched sometime in the spring, and I hope to get the Disturbing Children’s Book gallery up on Candyboots before 2004 is over. And of course I plan to laugh, love, and walk on a beach somewhere in soft focus at sunset being OH GOSH JUST THE BEST THAT I CAN BE.

Happy New Year and thanks for reading, kids.

Last night a reader wrote me to let me know that this gender language analysis algorithm indicates that I am most likely male. He said my December 19th entry resulted in a “481 Male/191 Female” score. But when I tested the December 10th post I got a “female” verdict, and I wondered if maybe it’s a matter of me using girlier syntax when I talk about knitting than when I discuss obscure Star Wars crap and hootchie dancers–you think? Then again, it seems that even in this post where I am deeply moved by the meows of a kitten I have a set of linguistic testicles that I scratch with my pronominal usage.

Not that any of this gives me a complex or anything. I mean, I’ve never been mistaken for a boy. Nope. No way.

I’m usually all about doing the holiday blog posts and leaving nice cozy Christmas Eve messages as if I’m Joan Crawford in a velvet dressing gown addressing radio listeners from her home, but this year I was busy up to the last minute, I guess.

I went dancing with a couple of friends on Christmas Eve. That was fun, and I don’t know why more Christmas traditions don’t involve go-go dancers. The dancing lady at the nightclub last week was very tiny (elfin, even) and one of her costumes was this sort of drapey, dramatic caftan thing with a sheer veil. I guess it could be a Nativity costume, if you went to Dirty Church. Anyway, I’m glad I had something different to do this year.

I also got a real tree this year, for just the second time in my life. I’m not sure if I’m going to continue to get these real trees every year; I get kind of unnverved by them. I’m used to a fake tree that does absolutely nothing under normal circumstances, so to have a tree that lets ornaments fall and dramatically relieves itself of needles at random, passive-aggressive intervals is getting on my nerves a little bit. It’s like living with a performance artist. I’ll be sitting there at my desk and I can hear the tree clearing its throat, wanting me to look over and see it do something stupid.

It’s still kind of pretty, though.

Princess Leia sings the Life Day Song powered by audblog.

I saw the Star Wars Holiday Special last night for the second time in my life. The first time was in 1978, when I was seven years old. My brother and I were watching it on the black-and-white TV my parents kept in the spare bedroom, so I guess my parents were watching something else on the TV downstairs. Something that didn’t suck big bantha balls.

At the time my brother and I were profoundly into all things Star Wars. We had the 45 single to Disco Star Wars Theme and I would nearly pee myself during the part where they’d do the Space Creature Cantina interlude. But after about the first ten minutes of the TV special, I was fidgety and slightly freaked out, because I guess my kid intuition was telling me that Star Wars People (and that included Wookiees) weren’t supposed to be on TV with Bea Arthur. We stopped paying attention to the TV and played board games.

And then at one point I remember looking up and thinking: “Um, Princess Leia is singing.” And that really was not right.

So I did a guest entry for my friend Sour Bob today. Or rather, for my friend The Guy Who Writes Sour Bob, since the entry is about making those kinds of distinctions.

I usually don’t have to think about that stuff here; I never set out to make Wendy Online anything other than a fairly close approximation of Wendy Live, but of course you know I’m going to leave stuff out, right? There are things you don’t know about me. Like you don’t know which Sanrio character I am. I bet you think it’s Batz Maru, but really, the truth would be too much for this blog.

Also, I hope you all understand that I’ve chosen to keep the matter of which Harry Potter candy I am private. I don’t want to piss readers who might be Chocolate Frogs, and moreover I’d like to avoid the total shitstorm of criticism I got when I revealed that I was the Kevin Smith movie Clerks. And I totally appreciate your concern over whether I’m ketchup or mayonnaise, but, well, I guess I’d like to deal with these issues on my own. Thanks.

On Monday I finally got to meet Debbie, my editor at BUST, when she was in town to promote her knitting book. She was very cool and funny. And okay, she didn’t read from the book, because, well, that would be weird, but she showed off a bunch of projects. The kids these days, they can knit anything: cell phone cozies, panties, cute drug paraphernalia. It was amazing.

Okay, I am not a knitter. I mean, I have never knitted. At the bookstore on Monday I was the one furtively tucking her Target scarf down into her coat where nobody could see it. But then I wound up buying the book. I don’t think Debbie would have minded either way but… yeah, I think I might try this knitting stuff. I watched the other women sit there with their needles and fingers working away. I’m a fidgety person–or maybe I became one after I quit smoking–so I suppose the busy fingerwork appeals to me. I like to think it’ll be just like how I play with gift wrap bows and rubber bands and plastic fast food beverage lids, except then an adorable hat or scarf will magically appear. Right? That would rock. And then, sometimes I kind of like to chew on stuff, like pens and drinking straws, and I bet the flat ends of some of those knitting needles would be ideal, along with some nice tough yarn. I am so not kidding.

Seriously, though, I’m going to try it sometime. Hilarity may ensue. But then again, maybe not. If I get completely lost I might ask Cinnamon for advice.