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Roughly nine years ago, the first online journals crawled out of the sea. These were shocking things, these chronicles of lives, these barings of innermost thoughts and feelings right there on the Internet. Putting your private life online? Absurd!

That was a long time ago. Now opinions are changing. It seems nowadays that a homepage without a journal is unheard of. The explosive popularity of weblogs, or "blogs," has brought escribitionism to the masses. But with thousands of new online journals and diaries coming online every month, it's increasingly harder to wade through the cacophony of life stories to find the gems.

Since 1998, Launch has served as one small way to spotlight these special personal sites, the new or relatively unknown. Oftentimes, a quality journal gets overlooked in the tangle of the more established. Here, the "underdog" has a venue. Each week, two to three journals will be presented and given the opportunity to gain new readers into their lives.


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Friday, December 28, 2001

You just know you're going to enjoy a site named after the most misunderstood of plastic utensils. Kahra, a 25-year-old graphic designer and painter from New Orleans, came into journaling via the most venerated of paths — after becoming addicted to reading web diaries, and falling madly in love with one, she had no choice. She hopes her journaling will help her other artistic endeavors. "The muse hitched a ride to Boca the week before Thanksgiving 1999, but she's been leaving coy messages on my answering machine these days," she explains. "Let's hope the next time she calls I'm at home." She likes terriers, she's left handed, and she can swear in Japanese. She calls her web writing "stream-of-consciousness" and "self-indulgent." Others might say witty and funny. I say, "More, please."

Rebecca, a 25-year-old California girl in Washington, D.C., is an aspiring writer (dreaming of getting an MFA in fiction), a sometimes comedian, and an articulate and thoughtful lesbian (with a tendency to get crushes on cute boys). "Girls make my life all topsy turvy," she writes. "Correction, I let my life get all topsy turvy because of girls." In her journal — which she attempted, but failed, to quit — she deals with depression, sorts through love and loves lost, and dreams about the future. Entries range from random thoughts of the day to artful studies of the little mysteries of life. "This is written for the ambigous you, the royal you, that comes out in my writing — timeless, spanning circumstance and space," Rebecca writes, then later, "Ugh. sometimes I write like a pompous ass."

There may be no time like the present, but Canadian diarist Allie has found quite a bit of juicy goodness to share from her "sorted" past. She went live in the middle of November with the tale of how she lost her virginity, and the stories of love and sex have been flowing since. While only ten entries in, this "Married Man Magnet" has unabashedly and thoroughly documented nearly as many colorful (albeit not successful) relationships. Of her first one-night stand, she recalls: "The sex lasted all of oh, a minute or so tops! I was not even close to getting off! Yeah, I'm so glad it was great for you jerk! That really was a waste of a night and my time." Yet, she's clear on the fact that she isn't the woman she once was. "My life is a lot different now from that time as a bar slut a few years back," Allie writes. "I definitely made a lot of mistakes back then but I was able to walk away pretty well unharmed."

This elegant journal contains the often eloquent musings and random thoughts of a 20-year-old New York native now living in St. Louis with her boyfriend Merlin. She smokes, drives a Porsche, and paints and writes. The past year — much of which is recounted, even in only one month's worth of archives) — has been a whirlwind of change and drama, but she journals on — about her relationship with her mother (and the lack of one with her father, who walked out of their lives in February), henna tattoos, and money troubles and their affect on her life... and wardrobe. "I will be a success," she writes. "Because when I am fifty, I want to go out and buy a bra without worrying."

Christine works in the mall selling slutty shirts and ugly ass raver jeans, and to say she's a disgruntled retail slave might be an understatement — Her borrowed design sports a cute yet scary kitten, and somehow that fits her perfectly. Tortured by rude customers and her coworkers' dreadful taste in music (she favors Funker Vogt and VNV Nation), she's never lacking material. "I love when they gay guys come in," Christine writes. "They put together outfits so fast and always look better then the hoochy sluts." Her boss said she still needs to work on her people skills, but when it comes to writing and writing, she's got it down.

Bev is a self-described "22-year-old second-year law student, feminist, femmy fag hag dyke" living in San Francisco. While her borrowed design of grey on yellow is almost too light, her sharp, well-written entries are often anything but. Thinking she's perhaps "The Last Single Lesbian," Bev writes often about the adventures of singlehood and the antics observed in the city's meeting spots. She has a lot to say, whether it's about job hunting all over the West Coast or the latest episode of "Oprah." Most recently under her microscope, the couples on the TLC network's "Wedding Story." Says Bev, "This woman is so obviously a Lesbian she might as well be a gym teacher."

Dark is clearly the mood of this journal, written by a 26-year-old in Kansas City, Missouri. "Think gray," she says, even if it is on black. Jenny makes no apologies for the "severe bi-polarity" of her writing — "seriously up and down... sometimes funny, mostly just sad." Between making mix tapes and trading notes with Livejournal friends (and, inevitably, taking online personality quizzes), she recounts her adventures working with assorted characters in the medical field, and laments the many failings of humanity. "The best thing about christmas is this: it is bloody over!" She's certainly a prolific poster, if not an overly polished writer, and you're guaranteed at least one "broken" thought every day.

This 19-year-old journaler is not subtle about his love for musical theatre, or the Rocky Horror Picture Show. "Rocky comprises the whole of my social life," he writes. "Yes, I'm aware that I'm a nerd." Though only writing in his current diary for two months — he had recently grown out of Open Diary — he has clearly found his voice, and he's already collected several dozen entries ranging from the mundane (personality tests) to the artistic (fan fiction and poetry) to the personal (the challenges of acting, or dealing with his parents' divorce). He's also launched a Rocky Horror fan site — replete with an original personality test.