Boys Against Girls

Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 14:02:00 (PST)
From: Matthew <matthew@defectiveyeti.com>
To: Heather <dooce@dooce.com>
Subject: A Proposal

Dear Heather,

Hey there. This is Matthew Baldwin of defective yeti. Like you, I am on the verge of becoming a first-time parent (The Queen is due in three weeks but all signs are pointing to earlier). I have written about the pregnancy somewhat, but not as extensively as you.

I was kind of toying with the idea of starting a spinoff site, some place to post exclusively about The Squirrelly so as to not overwhelm defective yeti with baby-blather. That way people who want to read about the ridiculous conversations I overhear on the bus can do that without having to wade through a bunch of meconium (so to speak), and vice versa. Also, I'm afraid that I won't write as much about the Squirrelly as I should and will later regret it, so having a site dedicated to the subject would serve as incentive.

Then I thought it might be interesting if you and I wrote to a shared site: you writing as a new mother and me writing as a new father. By my reckoning, we could do it one of three ways:

(1) We simply duplicate entries from our respective blogs onto this shared site, thereby putting them all in one spot. No extra work! (except some cutting and pasting).

(2) We post exclusively to the shared site, but all posts are "addressed" to the readers, with little correlation between your posts and my posts.

(3) We maintain the log as an ongoing email thread between the two of us, alternating posting a few times a week, each "addressed" directly to the other writer, similar to what Slate used to do with "The Breakfast Table"

Anyway, this is an idea I've been mulling over for about -- oh, I dunno .. what time is it now? -- 43 minutes or so, which is why I am only now proposing it, despite the fact that this project really would have benefited from some advanced (i.e., "any") planning. But there you go.

If you're interested, lemmie know and we can discuss it further. If you're not, I understand. (For one things, we seem to have incompatible writing styles: my posts generally consist of smartalecky observational humor mixed with liberal usage of the word "dumbass," while you appear to how to, like, write 'n shit).

Either way, love reading Dooce, and I wish you the best on your impending adventures.