The first bit of news is that at Wendy’s a friend’s suggestion, Laura wrote to Brigham’s to tell them about her brant last week. Specifically, she emailed Darryln Leikauskas, V.P. of Marketing for Brigham’s (there was a partial corporate listing on the Brigham’s website) that she’d branted about Just Jimmies and how many people sent back comments either about the flavor in particular or Brigham’s in general. Laura mentioned this amazing “brand loyalty” (she just learned this phrase in Branding for Dummies — not to be confused with Branting for Dummies which she plans on writing but which of course she hasn’t even started isn’t finished yet) and she also mentioned the collective state of panic that many Massachusetts-ites seemed to be in given the uncertain future of Just Jimmies. Laura begged suggested that they make it a permanent flavor and also suggested they check out her brant to see all the pro-Brigham’s comments.

Unbelievably, later that night (this was Sunday) the Brigham’s executive emailed Laura back, which, for one thing, was an incredible example of excellent Public Relations and for another thing was great news since this is what the email said:

Dear Laura,

Just Jimmies is soon to be a regular flavor. Look for it with a bright blue lid in the coming weeks/month. I’m glad you like it and I will definitely check out the webite tomorrow.

Thank you!

Darryln

Laura wants to thank Darryln from Brigham’s for such a quick response and for the good news!

p.s. In case anyone noticed Laura’s lack of usage of personal pronouns in relation to Darryln Leikauskas’ name, it’s because Laura isn’t sure if Darryln is a man’s name or a woman’s name. Laura sort of assumes it’s a woman’s name but isn’t at all certain so if anyone knows for sure — or if anyone has any strong opinion about this question — Laura would love to hear from you.

Oh. My. God.
Laura just realized that she unwittingly switched from third person into first person while writing her last brant entry, “Branter’s Elbow.” Laura was completely unconscious about doing this — in fact, she didn’t know she had switched perspectives until she started writing her next brant entry and realized she’d accidentally written “I” instead of “Laura.”
But because Laura believes that branting should remain as spontaneous and honest as possible, she’s not going to go back and correct her last brant, replacing all the “I”s with “Laura”s. That, she feels, would be false. Better her rabid fans witness Laura’s mistakes than believe that she is perfection incarnate.

However, Laura is deeply confused and, if truth be told, shaken by the experience. She’d based a lot of her Web Identity on the third person persona of Laura the Branter — which is a completely different persona than Laura the Person — and now she’s not sure which is which and what is the more authentic persona for her brant. This is hard to explain — both to herself and to her fans — but Laura’s going to follow this journey wherever it takes her. In other words, she’s going to relinquish control. Meaning, she will not revise this sort of “mistake.” That is, when she writes in the third person, she will assume that that is the correct perspective to use at that particular moment in time. Likewise, when she accidentally lapses into first person she will assume that that, too, is the correct perspective to use at that particular moment in time.

Of course, this being the Age of Interaction, Laura welcomes your comments and thoughts about the first-person versus third-person perspective dilemma either right here on the brant or on her Discussion page.

Laura just posted a message on her Discussion page because it’s the Official Publication Date (OPD) of “Piece of Work” (POW) and she doesn’t know what to do with herself. An OPD doesn’t really mean anything anyway: it’s just an arbitrary date a publisher picks within the month of a book’s publication. The problem is, everyone thinks the OPD is like a birthday, which means they think something special is supposed to happen, which means you start to think something special is supposed to happen even though nothing special ever really happens on OPD (at least, not to Laura). And so, because of all of this expectation (from others, and from herself), she’s kind of at a loss for what to do today. Which is why she posted a message on her Discussion page asking people to help her figure out what to do today and how to distract herself from the oppressive weight of expectation (OWE) — or, the Weight of Oppressive Expectation (WOE) — of OPD.

Which brings her to the issue of “confusion” — Laura actually wasn’t sure whether she should post that message on her Discussion page or on her Brant. Laura really isn’t clear on any of this website stuff, and this is a perfect example. Since it seemed to her to be more of a “discussion” type of issue — it was, in fact, was a direct solicitation — a plea, even — for a dialogue, Laura naturally thought instantly of posting it on her Discussion page. But what about the Brant? Doesn’t the Brant have a discussion-like feature — the “comment” — to make it conversational and dialogue-ian as well? Since she thinks the Brant, too, can be used as a forum to discuss her personal and professional issues, she decided to post the same message — a paraphrased version, anyway — here as well.

And so, for anyone who didn’t visit her Discussion page, please try to think of a topic of conversation or something Laura could do today. Thank you.