MY POINT OF DEPARTURE

I thought I’d frame my inaugural post with a little homage to Bill Lawrence’s superb sitcom Scrubs.  If you haven’t seen the show, for which your life is surely impoverished, the greater plot is focused through a reflective first-person narrative that has the title of almost every episode featuring some variation on the word “my” as prefix.

I think it lends rather nicely toward my purpose here, aside from being a curious pattern that may in fact contain much literary wisdom — but let’s leave all that at wordplay.

MY FASHIONABLE EXCUSES

I’ve had this site up, running, and maintained for well over a year now.  Evidently, living in our present digital paradigm was the correct one in which to assume corporeal form, because starting one’s own digital soapbox (something I’ve wished to do for a while) is impressively easy.  Kudos to Al Gore for inventing the Internet.

The short answer as to why I haven’t been filling this hole with content on a regular basis, or at all for that matter, is that I’ve recently finished a rather involved final year of undergraduate studies in two majors.  The long answer, of which an abbreviated version appears here, is that after finishing such an involved final year of said studies the last thing one finds one’s self either willing or able to do is write.

What one is able, or at least partially willing to do, is a little light reading otherwise part of a greater campaign of mental hibernation and extreme inactivity.  There’s a fun quote from Voltaire about keeping one’s self from writing in excess so as not to contribute to the sheer deluge of poor work out there.  While there is reason to suspect he may have exempt himself from this maxim, there is something to be said for a decent break or absence from any enterprise.

MY PLOTLESS FICTION

This is not a blog.  Okay, so it is a blog but it’s not part of the “sphere” — whatever that is.  To be precise, this is actually more of a soapbox.  What’s the difference?  Well, you tell me.  Just keep in mind the shy nuance between music and noise while you do.

A great first step toward inaction is to start with some sort of mission statement.  You know, something that attempts to quantify a set of values and project a certain ideology, either as a warning call to those who don’t happen to dig your flavour of Kool-Aid, or as a rallying point for those who do.  I’m sure you’ve seen them; they’re quite popular.

The catch, of course, is that in cementing your virtues you cast yourself as a paragon and have therefore already fulfilled your purpose.  CNN for example, presently boasts the “best political team on television” and yet, even the most cursory viewer could only conclude that CNN has a political team on television, nevermind the best.  Saying it makes it true, you see.

I don’t have a mission statement; but it’s not for lack of purpose.  No, I’m not too cool for the Kool-Aid, even if I do find water hard to improve on.  What I do have are mostly opportunistic observations, paired with brutally honest (if not sarcastic) comments and criticism.  I am also pleased to offer a wealth of contradictions, on a wide variety of subjects, with no specific audience in mind, in all due complexity. 

Oh and I do a little bit of writing, too.

MY BAD INFLUENCES

I should probably take a moment to mention some of the people whose work I take as indirect encouragement, or what I otherwise feel entitles me to carry on in this manner.  I do not know any of these people personally, but I have read or followed their work for some time and have no doubt suffered from a very direct, indelible exposure.

I seek neither tribute nor allegiance, even if I do have designs on casting myself in with a specific synapse of the collective unconscious.  And I have to say, I do quite revel in idea of inverting the cozy concept of “good” influences and the liberty from all implied responsibility that follows.

Every week I click my way over to the CBC’s website to read the latest article by the “semi-obscure” (that’s an inside joke, kids) columnist Heather Mallick.  While she takes an undue amount of criticism (if not abuse) for her views, I am unconvinced Canada is home to a finer nor more eloquent columnist — certainly not one from whom I keep learning, anyhow.

Just how Thomas Frank pulls of both journalism and scholarship I hope to absorb through osmosis.  You should read The Conquest of Cool if you’re to function at all in our evolving consumer culture, let alone get up in the morning and attempt to carry on with your life.  I suspect that I will remain, it not forever then surely for some while yet, merely an opinionated kid trying to start his own Baffler.

There is perhaps no one in the last few years that I have come to respect more than Matthew Good.  He is not only a fine humanist but one of the more remarkable musicians my generation has come to know and identify with.  If you have not yet listened to Hospital Music, do so now, lest our writer / reader relationship sour this early.  Getting to run with a WordPress template (co-)designed by and formerly employed on his own soapbox (one of the best out there) is as much fun as it is a complete honour.

Richard Russo has somehow perfected the art of reducing a character down to their faults without also stripping them of their humanity.  His fiction remains an enduring excuse to be sarcastic and mean it — by which I mean that he writes as though humour and complexity are indeed parallel structures, if not wholly intertwined.  I’m not certain I possess the willingness (now or ever) to accept a universe that operates to the contrary.

MY REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAM

The beginning of a two-year degree is probably not the best time to embark on an ambitions writing project.  On the other hand, sometimes a good distraction can help one focus.  Besides, all the cool kids are doing it, right?

While day-to-day content is likely to be just that, this site will most likely feature randomly provoked content.  You know, when yelling at my television and or computer will not simply suffice and I require an audience.  I think I will stick to producing something in the way of an old fashioned formal Sunday Op-Ed each week — and hell, maybe not even on Sundays.

Additionally, I intend to explore a few feature series, such as “What You Should Have Said” when the political powers that be stray too far into the absurd, as they do.  All this and other essays, quite assured.

MY BRAVE NEW SWAG

Just before plugging this site in and turning it on, I briefly, and somewhat exhaustingly, examined every last WordPress template known to the Internet.  Yes; every last one.  The weird thing is that I didn’t really care for any of them.  Some of them were excellent, but selecting them would require rather involved modifications or enhancements.  Even after trying to suss out what was needed for a major overhaul, it still felt like settling for something incomplete.

The one design I had my eye on for both its unabashedly absent sidebar and overall simplicity was the one developed for and used by matthewgood.org.  I was pleasantly surprised when BraveNewCode released a variant for personal use; I have to say it’s not only the template that keeps on giving but it sure saved me a pile of work.  Plus, it looks way classier than many of the sites people clearly dropped a lot of cash on.

I also happened to be running their iPhone / iPod Touch plug-in, WPtouch.  So, if you’re visiting from either of those devices, do enjoy the digital sorcery, I had nothing to do with it!

Thanks for the swag gentlemen, it’s duly appreciated.

MY AWKWARD SEGUE

Now, to only keep filling the hole.