Where Have I Been?
My apologies for my lack of production. Unfortunately, it’s going to be just as sporadic from here on out.
When I started The Phoenix Inquirer, I intended it to be a haven for rather unconventional thought, where people who think unusual, sometimes unspeakable things about politics, business, religion, culture, and other things can see they’re not the only ones thinking it and that their personal stances can actually be rational. My unfortunate mistake was that I also decided to turn it into a place where I could just post something every day, which is something I’ve failed badly at doing. Half my posts are links with very short comments or personal things I’ve written on other sites.
Worse is that I think I’m starting to come off as a right wing haven. I do tend to sympathize with the right a lot these days, but that’s more because the left runs the country than anything. If I would have started this blog during the days of George W. Bush, it would have been even worse. I’m kind of a reactionary – I react to whatever the government does, mostly to complain.
Really, I’ve been taking political ideas to extremes that are in many ways completely illogical. I do have a deeply rooted and irreversable hatred of statism which comes from the fact that I was once a communist myself. I’m very certain that statism doesn’t present a real threat, seeing as how most statists these days appear to live in conspiracy delusions and mostly can’t even agree on the right way to be statists. But again, I’m knee jerking because most of the statists I’ve known are delusional, painfully stupid, arrogant, thoughtless, and shortsighted to extremes which even my libertarianism could never dream of reaching. And even then, I can get along with most of these people pretty well. I promise, I’m not this hateful in person.
The Phoenix Inquirer also started to trail off in way too many directions for me to be comfortable. Granted, my original topic was pretty broad to begin with, but the posts, as they went on, just began to appear so, well, random.
The contrast between what The Phoenix Inquirer began as and where it ended up was recently highlighted to me through one of my other blogs, Lit Bases. I began that one after accidentally becoming an expert in baseball literature, which I read after more difficult literary conquests mainly to remind myself that mental masturbation time is over. I only write in it a few times a month, and I went through a period of months earlier this year when I didn’t write in it at all. Then I started writing in it again, and while The Phoenix Inquirer has more readers, it’s Lit Bases that’s proving to have the potential – it’s the blog that ends up on blog rolls, and with the comments. I recently reviewed Cait Murphy’s book Crazy ’08. A few days later, she stumbled into Lit Bases and was kind enough to leave a comment, thanking me. Earlier in the existence of Lit Bases, I found a comment from Matthew Rosetti, who co-authored a book called The Worst of Sports which I used as a reference point once.
Although The Phoenix Inquirer did find the attention of Becky Garrison, the religious satirist for The Wittenburg Door, the blog just kind of fell into the black hole of irrelevant rambling interspersed with the occasional thoughtful post. I’m not going to write in it unless I have something real to say now. In the meantime, I’m going to begin purging all the more pointless crap, and my posts won’t be nearly as regular as they were at first.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a rebirth flame to light.
