And away we go!

I should really be working right now. There are emails to be sent and read. Reports to run. Issues to be planned. But, for reasons which will become blindingly obvious as this unfolds, I'm listening to Pearl Jam's "Inside Job" and scribbling this....what? Nonsense? The inaugural post of a blog that I will attend to haphazardly, if at all, from this point forward?

It would be wrong to say that I'm entirely enthused by this project and I strongly suspect that a more satisfying day job would put it to a quick end. Personal blogs have always a Dear Diary quality about them. Which is not always a bad thing, but there are only so many Samuel Pepys in the world. My tendency is to assume that I have nothing of consequence to say. I imagine this could be construed as some form of personality disorder, but there are so many people Speaking these days, some of them even smart enough to be worth a listen. I just don't tend to count myself as one of them. But I'll fight that instinct for a while and see what comes of it.

I'd love for this thing to have some sort of organizing principle or ethos or theme or something, but I know myself better than that. My interests cover a lot of territory. The word "dilettante" comes to mind. My curiosity is piqued by events of a national and global variety, music, my desire to be a reborn Walker Evans, the odd book, atheism, my sudden love of the Mayan Long Count calendar, the beauty of being child-free and my eternal desire to flee The Jerz.

There will be unwise attempts to imitate Hunter S. Thomson, random references to eschatology, the equally random dropping of songs lyrics, and the odd reference to the one true sport: hockey.

And there will be many lovely pictures.

Mostly I expect I'll just pop the top off of my head and let the foam rise.

I'll probably not be at this for very long if there's insufficient feedback. That's not so much a threat as a gross admission that I'm an attention whore. It's one of my many rather charming neuroses. But honestly, without some back-and-forth what's the point of this exercise?

Right, there's that. good enough for an opening post/statement of intent.

I'll close by noting that the name of this thing may--read as: will--change. Possibly--read as: probably--more than once. I wanted to get it started and didn't want to get hung up on titles so, for now, here it is. And here are a few of the names I passed on. If you like one better, make mention of it.

• Electric Sheep
• Natter
• STFU
• Blather
• Front Row at the Freak Show
• The Other Normal
• The Ugly (Neither The Good nor The Bad)
• Attempted Humor
• Sexual Chocolate
• Human Trafficking Quarterly
• Assault with a Deadly Brainpan
• Zero Hour
• Punching Babies

A final thought: my dog is the best dog. Get adjusted to that fact now.