Impressed yet?

I have a cell phone.

Okay. For many of you---or the twenty-four of you (we're growing kids!)---who read this blog, you're probably thinking this is nothing exceptional. But you need to realize that I've denounced cell phones, like I once derided my beloved Facebook, as spoiled amenities. In my new book, there's a poem titled "The Ameoba Man" railing against these iniquitous forces, and how, stubbornly, I clung to my virtues. No, dammit, I will never, ever be one of those assholes who clings to their cell phones like nursing child on the tap (there are many levels of crudeness clinging to that simile, too). And I said I would never depend on Facebook as my main...okay, singular means of social interaction, or purchase a cell phone. In fact, I went so far as to say I'd use smoke signals to communicate before I'd buy a cell phone. I was a man of virtues.

Then virtues went out of style.

At this moment, I am sitting in a gallery in Buffalo, where tonight I will kick off my book tour with my first reading. In fact, there was a little write up about in a Buffalo news site this morning. Yesterday, The UNH school newspaper did a piece on me. Are you impressed with me?

I want you to think about this before you answer because, in actuality, this cuts to the core of my neuroses and personality flaws. The cell phone, Facebook, book tours, readings, email, blogs, websites, bombastic anti-Yankee rants are all manifestations of a deeper insecurity: the irrepressible fact that I really, really, REALLY want people to be impressed by me and really, REALLY want the Yankees to suck ass in the playoffs. While the aforementioned this is the case for most people---and those who say they don't want others to be impressed by them are either liars, narcissists who are literally in love with their selves and scream their own name while masturbating to the thought of their selves performing naked yoga, or liars---for me, it's become something bordering on pathological. For example, right now I can't wait until I finish this blog post, so I can post my blog on Facebook. Does anyone else see the problem here? I need help.

Right now, my cell phone is beside my laptop, and I am waiting like a wolf for it to buzz, to receive my first text message. Thus it begins again: a new compulsion and insanity.

For the next couple of weeks, I will posting frequently with pictures of my readings, stories from the road, reactions to the Red Sox (by the way, while I'm parenthetical mode, last night I went out with Dave, my publisher, for wings at Duff's in Buffalo, and noticed a bunch of Yankee hats. Immediately I thought to myself, Look at all these trouble-makers, wearing their Yankee hats out. Then I realized I was in New York, and I was the troublemaker in my Sox cap. Fuck 'em. The wings were great.) and other general ephemera. But let my objectives be clear: I want you to be impressed. I have a compulsive need to impress others.

So join my blog, write to me, text me, chat me up on Facebook, or email me, if you're not up with technology like certain bloggers. I don't mind. Use me. I have to run now. My cell phone just rang.