Yesterday was my lucky day. One of my news and blog alerts sent me a link that did, in fact, turn out to be an excellent example of citizen journalism in action, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. Really, to call it citizen journalism and stop there would be nothing short of ironic; it goes to the very heart of the communication ideal. I arrived at Citizen Rob's Blogspot site—only one of many related sites, as it turns out—via a link to a blurb he titled Cue sympathy in 3... 2... 1... about the absurd antics of a local news team, but fortunately I didn't stop there.
Fortunately, I began poking around and discovered not only the reason for the My Beloved Monster & Me blog title, but a most excellent collection of Rob's writings from the distant past to the present. Blogs link to blogs, and Web sites to Web sites; I lost track of all the levels between my original entry point and his more official, serious representations elsewhere on the Net. Man, can this guy write. He's one of those natural writers, I think, to whom written communication is second nature, if not first. I'm guessing his often self-deprecating sense of humor works the same way: it's the natural expression of a unique and priceless personality. This is from one of his bios—others are a bit more serious—that I happened to stumble upon during my travels through his many online points of presence.
Rob is the author of the following: a book-in-progress about his daughter called Schuyler's Monster (to be published by St. Martin's Press in 2008), several half-completed novels, the most recently being a serious gloomy ghost story, World War One sort of a thing; some stuff that he doesn't really want to talk about that got him in a great deal of trouble but nevertheless still cracks him up a little; an early and embarrassing collection of journal-like essays called Robservations (a title that perhaps might have benefited from another five or ten minutes worth of thought); an early journal effort called the Pages of Goo that got him into trouble almost from the first entry; a chronicle of his time in Kalamazoo called, originally enough, Kalamazoo Days; and of course The Book of Rob, unique in his output in that someone actually read it.
Like every other man, woman and child in America, Rob loves bacon.
Mmmmmm . . . bacon! Anyhow, there's so very little I can say that would do this thing justice in any meaningful way, so I'll leave you to explore his world on your own. Not that it's all lighthearted fun and madness; the story behind Schuyler, his beloved monster, his mute little cyborg, his pretty ninja, is both heartbreaking and profoundly encouraging. Together, they have many adventures.
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