In this age of information overload, an age defined by ubiquitous
twaddle about all kinds of inane and even dangerous nonsense, why
another blog? Why add another shrill voice to the screaming horde:
"Pick me! Read my book! (Never mind that it isn't really a book, just a
bunch of words following each other helter-skelter in a foaming stew
that somehow manages to resemble meaningful order.) Go to my church!
(Don't forget to pay generous tithes.) Join my political party! (The
opposition is Satan, seriously. God might not exist, but Satan lives on
the other side of the political spectrum, and people actually vote for
him.) Bomb the world! With democracy and i-Pads, I meant to say! (Not
chemical weapons. How could anybody think I meant that?) Look at this
stupid cat being stupid, I mean so cute! LOL! RFLMAO! (WTF? STFU! URSFSIWTDRN!)"
Any
number of glib excuses come to mind, but the truth is that blogs write
themselves nowadays. I can no more restrain the impulse to blog than
you can hold back the urge to pin that image of yourself using the
bathroom. (What does one do in the bathroom, anyways? How did earlier
generations manage to live without Youtube videos instructing them on
the niceties of breathing properly, or moving, let alone picking things
up and putting them back down again? I am so glad we don't live in the
Dark Ages any more, those bleak times when people had to rely on
barbaric deities like Good Judgement. Did this god ever really exist?
Can we resurrect him?)
In brief, since I must needs
live in a world saturated in information, let me at least make myself
more than just a passive consumer. I see your Facebook profile
featuring an homage to the Jersey Shore (where is Jersey, again?) and I
raise you this blog, which exists to give me an excuse to forget that we
were ever friends (though the Internet will always remember). I see
your hamster masturbating (or is it putting a little tiny ballot into a
miniature ballot-box?), and look away quickly to regard something
else--anything that will purge that image from my mind momentarily, even
this sorry excuse for a blog.
I make no promises to
deliver useful information. I will not teach you how to breathe, or
move, or pick things up. I will not write a great and profitable book
(at least not on purpose: may the gods of the Internet have mercy on us
all if I ever manage to become too interesting). I will not save the
world from itself. I will not fight against (let alone defeat) the
Great Satan (who or whatever that is). But I will resist the slings and
arrows of your outrageous fortune where it intrudes upon mine, whether
roughly or seductively: Timeo prophetas et evangelia ferentes. I
will create my own idols of thought rather than bow down abjectly
before yours, even if this vocation takes me back into the Dark Ages
(inducing me to read printed books by the guttering light of infernal
demons like Horse Sense). Non serviam, ne cum tuis verbis
figurisque flagrantibus ad animam excruciar. Tum scribebo hic, ut tu
quoque excruciaris, miser, si hoc legere sapias.
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