The most rewarding part about having my own site is definitely all the negative criticism I get in my guestbook. This is what I most enjoy about the World Wide Internet. In the real world, when you are wearing a t-shirt that people don’t like, nobody comes up to you and says, “Hey, asshole! That t-shirt is much uglier than the one you wore yesterday! What’s wrong with you?” Here, however, everybody is very excited about letting you know how much they dislike your website. For example, here is what somebody recently wrote in my guestbook: “This page used to be funny, but now it is truly lacking. What happened??” That is a very good question, and I appreciate that they took time out of their day to ask it. What happened was that people began to criticize the direction of eKarjala, and this sent me down a spiraling path into depression and sadness. Consequently, now I can no longer laugh, or know what it is to make others laugh. Also, now I can no longer truly love other people. And I’m not eating right anymore. Thanks for the question!

I really can’t figure out how a website like this can garner criticism. I mean, if you bother having an opinion about whether or not a personal site hosted by Tripod is getting less enjoyable, you really need to reexamine your priorities. For example, in the time it takes you to insult me on my guestbook, you could have fed a homeless man a sandwich, or bought me a sandwich, or took me and the homeless guy both out for sandwiches, which you would have treated us to because it’s the holidays and it’s the season of giving me sandwiches. I would have probably selected some sort of chicken sandwich, while the homeless gentleman would have likely preferred some sort of steak sandwich. Actually, I just lost my train of thought because I began thinking about sandwiches and now I’m really hungry. But I believe my point is simply like this: If you want to sign my guestbook, please feel free to take me out for sandwiches afterward.

The annual holiday known as Merry Christmastime is fast approaching, and I am in jolly spirits in anticipation of all the promised fig pudding. From what I know about Christmas, it is the celebration of the birth of Jesus, and it involves the myth of Santa Claus going from roof to roof to give presents to all of the good boys and girls (i.e., those who are not Jews). Santa Claus is probably Jesus’ fat, nutty uncles or something like that. I think somebody should give Santa Claus the following present: a fucking razor. To me, with his beard he looks like a hobo who found a big ass red suit in a dumpster and then stole a magical sled. Which may in fact be his actual origin; again, I really don’t know much about the history of Christmas.

I believe that there is a Christmas legend that has something to do with oranges, because my parents used to put an orange in me and my sibling’s stockings every year. My mom used to explain something or other about wise men or wandering in deserts or some shit, and how oranges related to that, but I never really paid attention. In retrospect, it’s likely that she made up the legend about oranges in order to gyp the kids out of extra stocking space. So to be honest, I’m not sure if oranges really have anything to do with Christmas. They probably don’t. This is probably another one of my parents’ lies. Just like that one about how you can accomplish anything if you put your mind to it.

When I was a very young lad, before I had fully caught onto my parents’ filthy lies about Santa Claus existing, there used to be many childhood theories amongst my peers regarding how Santa Claus managed to deliver all of those presents to all of the children. Some kids wondered how he got to every house in the world in one night, while others were more intrigued with how he managed to stuff his fat ass down a chimney. The answers to these questions usually came down to one of two possible scenarios: time-traveling or magic powder. Alternatively, some kids believed in the Multiple Santa Claus Theory (MSCT), which stated that there were thousands of independently operating Clauses working around the globe on Christmas eve, and that they were assisted by tiny, tiny people known as elves (or midgets, to be politically correct). Then we realized that our parents were really giving us the presents, and, sad and heartbroken, we learned never to trust anybody ever again. And that is the story of Christmas.

This site has recently surpassed the 10,000 hit mark, which can be attributed to its ability to attract the crucial “Random Person” demographic. These are people of an indeterminate age, gender and purpose who visit this site and often sign the guestbook with the most random messages humanely possible. Back in 2000, people used to sign the guestbook and simply say normal guestbook things, like “Hello Eric, I know you from school. Oh well, I don’t know what to say. Peace out.” It was a nice little guestbook system; they typed some shit, I read it, and we all went home at the end of the day and got on with our lives. Eventually, however, the guestbook turned into a strange and mysterious creature, and instead of tipping their hats to inside jokes that we shared, guestbook patrons began making up inside jokes that I didn’t really even understand. Oh, sure, I played along—I pretended to know who these people were and what they were talking about. But gradually the messages got more and more bizarre, until I began forgetting whose guestbook I was even reading. I would say, “Damn, whoever owns this guestbook must be one fucked up kid to be getting all of this nonsense. I’d hate to be this … ‘eKarjala’ guy.” Then about twenty minutes later I would realize that I was the owner of the guestbook, and I would be sent into a deadly spiral of confusion and betrayal. “National Socialism? Sunglasses at night? What the hell are these people talking about? What’s happening to me?”

These guestbook messages, however, make far more sense than the comments my English professors leave on my analytical papers. Apparently, there is a policy that all English professors must repeatedly bash their hands with a hammer before they grade students’ papers, so that all of their ensuing notes are impossible to read. Here is an actual excerpt (as best as I can decipher) from my professor’s critique of a recent analytical paper I turned in: “A ver sard papir! How9w, ib lafer some of tower oven pg. 4, where mystopl, etc. Soeal sape!” Thanks, teacher, that clears a lot up for me. I know that asking these professors to print perfectly legibly would be too much to ask, because after all I am only paying tens of thousands of dollars to put up with this bullshit, but could they at least pretend like they’re writing neatly? Or was I absent on the day the professor passed out the fucking decoder ring?