Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

Let me tell you a little bit about Liz. She was my boss (one of them, anyway), during my time in brain injury research. As this was my first full-time job out of college, I owe a debt of gratitude to everyone in our small research group for tolerating my naïvety and immaturity, while giving me ample opportunities to grow both professionally and personally. More than anyone else, Liz is the person who took me—a rough, stupid lump of coal—and crushed me, mercilessly, into the diamond that you see before you. I sparkle because of that woman.

Liz is what you might accurately call a Militant Democrat. She was (and to a certain extent, still is) active in local Boston politics. She listens to NPR. She supports a local community farm. She drives a Prius, the significance of which will become clear in a moment. Needless to say, Liz was extremely invested in the recent Presidential election. As November 4th drew closer, she felt she needed some kind of platform. I said, “Start a blog.”

And so, ladies and gentlemen, she duly registered Priustude.com, and installed Wordpress on or around October 26, 2008. I know this because her blog remains untouched. It is fresh out of the box. It still has that new blog smell. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a travesty.

Thousands of blogs are started every day, and around 80% of them are abandoned within a month. This is no great loss, because the unspoken truth that underlies this statistic is that most people are boring and talentless. Liz, however, is neither of these things. She is a woman with a rare and enviable social gift. If she meets you, she remembers you, and she remembers things about you. “Hi, I’m Liz. Nice to meet you,” is all it takes. It’s magic.

At the hospital, everyone was, if not a friend, then an acquaintance of hers, from the night janitors up to the president. I remember the time that the other research assistant in our office needed to be certified in CPR. The need for certification was nonsensical, and it caught her off guard. She told Liz. Calls were made. Favors were asked. Forces were set in motion, and bureaucracies were leveled. The research assistant was enrolled in a class that she technically shouldn’t have been able to enroll in, and was certified within a week. Liz is the sort of person you call when you need to get things done.

I have seen Liz perform the Jedi Mind Trick. You may be wondering why I would bother to provide the link to Wikipedia, knowing my audience (hello, the five of you, all hail the Hypnotoad). The reason is that I know Liz is going to read this entry, and, ladies and gentlemen, she has never seen Star Wars.

Take a moment.

A woman who can actually perform the Jedi Mind Trick has no idea what I’m talking about when I say that. What kind of prurient, morally deficient monster arrives at adulthood never having seen the assault on the Death Star? Or Han Solo frozen in carbonite? Or lightsabers. Answer: THIS LADY, the same waste of oxygen who registers a domain name in the heat of passion, all good intentions and yes we cans, and then NEVER USES IT. Woman, YOU NEED TO SEE STAR WARS. But I digress.

The real tragedy here is that when Liz speaks, people listen. Me? When I talk, people tune me out, especially people who know me, because everyone knows that ninety percent of what I say is white noise. Pointless, worthless gibberish from a person who talks simply because I don’t know any other way to live. Liz, on the other hand, is a woman of intelligence. She chooses her words thoughtfully, and always has something interesting to say with them. She has also experienced one hell of an amazing year, one defined by the most radical physical and spiritual transformation imaginable. I do not feel it is my place to go into the details, but suffice to say that I have read best-selling memoirs with less interesting material.

Again and again, I explained to Liz that writing about these experiences would help her understand them. I explained that writing forces the author to bring order to a topic, to string thoughts together in a comprehensible manner, which is exactly what she needs right now. Again and again, I told her that the first writings would invariably suck, and that she shouldn’t worry about perfection. Again and again, I told her that there are people out there who would be utterly compelled by her story, and even those who might benefit from hearing it. Again and again, I was greeted by the “Hello World!” post on Priustude.com

I said, “Well, why don’t you start by explaining what ‘priustude’ is?” I thought this would make for a nice introductory post, but still, the word goes unexplained. So I’m going to define it for her.

Priustude is an attitude held by the owners of the Toyota Prius. It is a unique combination of arrogance, comical liberalism, and delusion. People with priustude are willing to pay thousands of extra dollars for a car with unproven or, at best, insignificant environmental benefits, solely because it pads their self-righteous egos. They bring up their new cars in casual conversation, smugly implying that they are better than you. These are the people who monomaniacally keep their eyes on the live readout of their gas mileage, rather than the road. They are among us, their psuedo-futuristic vehicles adorned with all manner of liberal propaganda, oozing disdain for The Way Things Are. Priustude is, in short, a curse.

So help me, Liz, if you don’t explain priustude on your own website, I’m going to add my definition to the Urban Dictionary. Then it will become true, because Urban Dictionary is far more influential than my own little site.

To review, Liz needs to start blogging for the following reasons:

1. She’s wasting money on that vacant domain.
2. Her life is too damn interesting to keep it to herself.
3. Jedi Mind Trick.
4. The meaning of priustude.
5. Profit!

Get on it.