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Oh Boy...

You have just got to see this: http://www.facebook.com/Anonymous?sk=wall

For those of you who don't trust to blindly click through on a posted link in a blog, this goes to the FaceBook page created for the movie, Anonymous. In brief, it's the true story of who author's Shakespeare's plays, directed by Roland Emmerich. For those of you who's brains DIDN'T derail at that sentence, I'll break it down for you.

1. "Who wrote Shakespeare's plays" is a debate that is maybe not-quite-as-old as Coke vs. Pepsi, but close, and among academics, just as fiercely debated. At least this fight deals with facts and literary interpretation as opposed to, say, nothing tangible.

2. The idea a "true story" around Shakespeare and his plays is laughable, since there's not really any concensus about any of the above, and especially nothing pertaining to Elizabeth I, and moreover, we're dealing with a movie, one of the most shortcut-taking mediums in storytelling. They can't manage to get details right about a made-up story taken from a book, much less history and literary theory. So, we know going in that this will have as much historical credibility as a John Wayne World War II movie.

3. Directed by Roland Emmerich. The guy who gave us Stargate (and an ad campaign that kept asking, "Is Stargate this generation's Star Wars?" and the answer to that was, of course, NO), Independence Day (and an ad campaign that kept asking, "Is Independence Day this generation's Star Wars?" and the answer to that was, of course, NO), and finally a Godzilla movie so horrible, terrible, no good, and very bad that he hid his name in shame for several years before he made the passable film, The Patriot. In fact, there's probably as much historical accuracy in The Patriot as there is in Anonymous. Okay, so he's no Francis Ford Coppola. It's only in his last couple of films that he started giving himself a director's credit in the previews again. But I remember Godzilla, pal. We will never forget...

So, based on all of the above, you're either really excited about seeing Anonymous, which opens at the end of October, or you're going to smirk and give it a pass (and either wait for the DVD or just rewatch Shakespeare in Love). Either way, what you're probably not going to do is start a balls-to-the-wall FaceBook debate on the movie's page.

Seriously.

You've got to read the Internet Nerd-Rage that these Oxford and Cambridge alumni are throwing on one another. They aren't mad at the movie. They are royally pissed off at each other. And it's a debate that is raging all over the page, teleporting from wall post to wall post like Nightcrawler assaulting the White House in X-Men II.

It's frankly awesome. The righteous indignation, the ad hominim attacks, and the palpable disdain for anyone who isn't them...it reminds me of, oh, I don't know, just about every single one of my friends.

Oh yeah. Where's the Robert E. Howard people in the house? Or, as we're occasionally called, the Howard Purists. Where's the Star Trekkers (don't call 'em Trekkies!)? Where's my Old Star Wars Fans? You know, the "Han Shot First" crowd? Holler if you recognize! Marvel Zombies? Firefly fans? Battlestar Galactica ballers?

If you've ever had one of these heated debates, go read the Anonymous FaceBook page. That's what we look like when we fight with one another. If you have ever been in one of these debates, it's very hard not to get worked up. After all, there's suddenly, without warning, someone being wrong on the Internet! And what's worse, they are making themselves heard through FaceBook! Why, their wrong-headed and overly-simplifed conclusions could potentially infect...everyone who uses a computer! It's got to be stopped!

I know, it's crazy. And if you're chuckling silently to yourself, thinking "Oh, boy, what geeks! I'd never get that worked up about anything so ridiculous..."

Oh, reeeeeeally?

Then allow me to ask you how you feel about Medicare and Social Security. Or the flat tax rate. Or corporate bailouts. Or anything having to to with politics, religion, and society. Did your brain explode? Or did you just shut down completely.

You know, I get it, I really do. Sometimes it's easier to debate about the trivial stuff (relatively speaking; I know that Han shooting first is more akin to scripture) rather than try to wrestle with the big, complicated issues. What's wrong with just saying, "You know what? This is big and complicated and I don't understand it all." But if we get frothing mad about a Roland Emmerich movie, what won't we fight about? Sometimes being scrappy because it's part of our "American character," whatever that means, can become really tedious.

Your Highly Refined Cola Palette

We're getting a new Taco Bell in Vernon. This is pretty exciting for a town of 11,000 people, the kind of happening that doesn't occur very often. Now, I like Taco Bell just fine, but let's call it what it is: it's Lego Food. There's never any new ground broken at Taco Bell. We'll never get fish tacos from them. That's not what they do. What they DO do is combine their seven or eight pre-existing ingredients into a new form or shape and call it something peppy, like the new Beefy Crunchita. It's all the same stuff. Mathematically, they're bound to run out eventually.

It was during one of the frequent recent conversations about Taco Bell that someone told me they don't like Taco Bell. When asked why, the replied, "Because they serve Pepsi products."

"Well, yeah," I said, thinking we were about to shift into a 'corporations are evil' talk, one I'm always ready to have. "Pepsico owns Taco Bell."

"I just can't stand Pepsi," this person continued. "I drink Coke, or nothing at all."

"I don't support them if I can help it," I said. "They're a little too pervasive for my tastes."

"I don't know about all that," he said. "I just hate the way Pepsi tastes."

Ooookay, I've had this talk with people before. You may be one of the people I'm about to start complaining about. If that's the case, I'm really sorry, but we need to have this discussion. Next time, I'll pick on the Amish, or something, fair enough?

In the depth and breadth of human achievement, we've got an incalculable number of cheeses to savor and sample. There are such foods as truffles, with complex flavors that can be experienced different ways every time you eat them. Wines distilled from grapes which produce distinct bouquets in the nose and mouth. Other spirits that evoke complicated notes across the tongue. A multitude of comestibles and potables from around the world--and you've chosen to cultivate a highly developed Cola Palette?

I'm amazed at the sheer number of people in my life who tell me that Brand X Cola tastes like bum urine and Brand Y Cola is ambrosia, and refusing to recognize that they both taste, in fact, like cola. They won't and cannot accept it. And believe me, I've tried. In fact, it's just the opposite: they look at you with a mixture of horror and sympathy, as if you had your nose shot off by a Sengalese sniper and now you can't smell for that gaping hole in your face. "What do you mean, you can't tell the difference? They're night and day!"

Let me say this as gently as possible: no, they are not. The formula for the taste of cola--the flavors that make up the cola taste--are the same. You can vary two things in the formula to change an aspect of it. You can add or subtract sugar (or corn syrup, blech)...or you can add or subtract carbonation. That's it, really. I promise. Cola is cola. Just like root beer is root beer. And Dr. Pepper is Mr. Pibb. No, it really is.

I'm not saying there aren't differences in the drinks. There are. Barq's has that weird metallic aftertaste because they inexplicably add caffeine to their root beer mix. I guess that's the "sparks" in the slogan. For the record, I think Pepsi tastes sweeter, and I think Coke has a little more carbonation in it. But they still taste like COLA. Like RC. Like Shasta. Like Faygo. It's not rocket science. It's not even rocket fuel. It's just soft drinks. And no, I can't tell the difference between Sprite and 7-Up, either, and please don't tell me that you can.

And even as some of you are howling with disdain, others may be asking, "Why do you care? It's just Coke vs. Pepsi." My answer to that is, I don't, not really. But when I see how people get worked up over it, to the point that they will berate another person for their apparent lack of taste and breeding, it reminds me of the old Ford vs. Chevy controversy, and so on and so on. And it's a reminder that most Americans will find anything they can to care about, provided that it's not something complicated, like contemporary politics. In fact, I think most of the political fights of the last fifteen years have been of the Coke vs. Pepsi variety, and the passion with which they are argued tells me that the political strategists took a page or two out of the cola wars playbook. Even the cans are red and blue. Funny, really, when you think about it. People will boycott a Taco Bell because they serve Pepsi instead of Coke, but they won't boycott a Chik-Fil-A because they support Right to Life organizations with their corporate dollars.

But hey, it's all about freedom of choice, right? Right.

Reclaiming Retard

I have come to hate political correctness for a number of reasons, most of them reactionary and contrarian in nature. The very idea of someone telling me that I just can't say something because I shouldn't really bothers me and makes me want to just scream it in their face instead. I also firmly believe that by outlawing certain words, you create the opposite in thought. That is, people still think horrible things in their heads all of the time, even as they are mouthing the "correct" words.  It seems to me the idea should be to change that way of thinking by explaining or showing how X can be damaging to Y and so on and so forth. I understand why some things have become culturally insensitive, and on the basis of not wanting to offend friends and family, I have cheerfully gone along with with whatever the enlightened thinking of the day is.

But there's one word that's become capitalized and hyphenated lately that I really have a problem with. Retarded, or retard, has become the "R-word." Oh, boy. This one I'm going to fight for.

I should tell you first that I have people in my life who have family members with some form of intellectual disability. That's the new term for it. It's a good one, I think; it encapsulates neatly what the problem is with a kind of clinical precision. My wife used to work with kids with a variety of LD, ED, and RD issues. Some of them had problems that registered somewhere on the spectrum of Autism, or Asperger's syndrome. And while I don't know anyone personally dealing with anyone with Down's syndrome, I recognize all of the above for their unique gifts, their personal challenges, and their daily triumphs. This is not what this is about.

This is about the right to call a friend of mine who is chronically unable to deal with women slow.

See, 'retarded' used to be the correct term for people with intellectual disabilities. It was a step up from moron or imbecile. But it really wasn't correct enough, mostly because the language was imprecise. We all know that the word "retarded" refers to "retardation" but the root of the word, to retard, is to "delay the development or progress of (an action, process, etc.)" Most dictionaries consider it desparaging slang and then show what I believe to be its NEW correct usage; you have to modify the word retard or retarded with an adverb, such as socially, emotionally, intellectually, and ideally, the phrase should speak to a person's specific actions.

This is NOT making fun of intellectually disabled people. Big difference. What I'm proposing gives a word to your boneheaded friend who keeps dating the same terrible people and never learning from the experience.  Retard=slow is a perfectly good word. It just needs to be repurposed, now that it no longer refers to a specific group of people. More to the point, I need that word back, thank you very much. I won't, and I don't, use it to refer to that group of people that I don't know. But it's very accurate when it comes to talking about people I do know, and know very well.

Many of my friends are socially retarded in one or more area of development. Some of them are so far behind the rest of us that they should just stop shaving and start picking food up off the ground. I know a few women who were at one point (and a couple who still are) emotionally retarded. They just don't get it when it comes to men. They have these ridiculous ideas and expectations that they should have grown out of by the time they turned seventeen. Instead, they are thirty or forty years old and wondering why they can't find someone to date them for more than three months at a time. And if you want a good example of someone who is intellectually retarded may I humbly suggest six or seven of the Republican party presidential nominees?

I'm sorry, but the word is just fine. Repurposed to cleave more closely to its original meaning, it's no less disparaging, but also not really insulting to a larger group of people because I'm not confusing the two. I'm not really expecting a fight on this, but hey, you never know. I had no problem with Rosa's Law.  I have no problem with the Special Olympics. And I'm all for anyone who is intellectually challenged getting a job or doing whatever the want to and can to contribute to society. I think it's awesome, frankly. The more, the merrier.

But I need something precise to use when I'm dealing with some of my peer group who are high functioning in most other areas of their life, except one. Retard is just a word. Used correctly, and with no malice intended, there's no reason why it can't stay in the zeitgeist.

Mmmm...Good Cracker!

There are many advantages to being a guy that are overlooked.  The reason for this is because they are not earth-shattering, argument-starting things, like the Glass Ceiling, or being able to go to the bathroom, anywhere, anytime. There are a lot of simple pleasures that most men themselves take for granted. Things like the slapstick comedy gene that allows us to laugh riotously at
someone getting hit in the head with a wooden plank, no matter how many times we see it.  Or being able to get ready for work in ten minutes, from shower to clothes, and still have time to eat a pop-tart.  And the thing that is perhaps the most important advantage to men (I know it’s saved my life more than once), the concept of Man-Food.

Now, I have been explaining the joy that is Man-Food to many of you for years now, only to have you all stare at me blankly.  This is because I have not really given you the official definition of Man-Food.  So, for those of you out there who have lost some of your manliness (or never had any of it to begin with), or perhaps to refresh some of you out there who have forsaken Man-Food for the finer comforts, I will break it all down for you.

Man-Food is the ability to make food out of nothingness.  This rudimentary knowledge is passed down from father to son through the Y chromosome (sorry, ladies) and activates itself during puberty, along with the voice change and the dropping of the stones. This is the truth.  All men can do this bit of culinary prestidigitation, instinctively.  Think about it, guys.  Who among us hasn’t at one time or another opened up two cans of something, dumped them into a saucepan, added ketchup and mustard, toasted some bread, and made dinner?  This is a skill that can transcend itself and become an art.  Learn this well enough and you can impress a date with your culinary MacGuyvers.  

Now, I know what the women must be shouting right now, and you are wrong.  I have no doubt that as some point, you have done, did, or even still do, the same thing I just described.  But trust me on this: you aren’t born with this gene.  This is a skill that can be learned, certainly, and you probably picked it up from watching your father or big brother or roommate or boyfriend.  But you must have seen it from somewhere first.   Men are never shown this skill. It dawns upon us, like an awakening.  We just...suddenly do it. I have been communing in the kitchen for days now, to try an isolate some of the fundamental points that we as men process automatically.  I think I have covered most of them.  If I left any out, please let me know.  

1.  Any three things between two pieces of bread is a sandwich.  Doesn’t matter what the meat is, or if there is vegetables or not, if you can slap bread around it, it’s Man-Food.

2. Any three things inside a tortilla is a burrito. Again, those three things can be Chili, Cheese, and French fries. If it can be rolled up, it’s legal Man-Food. These two rules explain the Zen of Man-Food: put as many of the four food groups together in one neat package that you can hold in one hand. 

3. Anything over rice is a legitimate meal.  Anything. Green beans, peanut butter, straight picante sauce. It's all good.

4. Ketchup is a base, a seasoning, and a thickening agent.  It can, and probably should, go with anything.

5. Man-Food should not take more than fifteen minutes to make. If the directions on a box call for twenty minutes, then turn up the heat and stir frequently. 

6. All Man-Food should ostensibly be made in a single cooking dish. A separate cooking sheet (for biscuits) is acceptable. The corollary to this one is: no more than two utensils can be dirtied in the process of cooking. The fork you stir with should be the fork you eat with. A dirty knife is okay if you have to cut something.

7. Meat is meat, and can be subbed out indiscriminately. Fish can be bologna, turkey can be tuna, and beef can be hotdogs.

8. Ready-made dips, salsas,  sauces, and soups should be used whenever possible. They all contain chopped up vegetables and seasonings that made your job as a cooking man so much easier. For example, why chop up potatoes, carrots, and celery, when you can buy one can of Chunky’s soup and get it ready to go? Heat up, pour over biscuits, and eat. Meat, vegetables, bread. Three out of four food groups, right there. Time to make: 5 minutes.

9. Microwavable food is God’s gift to man. These delicious, nutritious foods like microwavable burritos, corny dogs, and one of my personal favorites, bagel dogs, are the perfect starting point to Man-Food Masterpieces. Nuke two corn dogs, cut into disc shapes with those shears used to de-bone a chicken, dump into heated chili, serve with melted cheese on top and a squirt of ketchup and mustard. Time to make: 7 ½ minutes.

10. There is nothing that you cannot add to Ramen noodles that will not turn it into a substantive meal. Anything is fair game: rice, egg, torn-up pieces of bagel, spaghetti sauce, crackers, you name it. I once lived for two weeks on Ramen, toast, cheese, a package of bologna, some ketchup, and a jar of dill relish.

If you all out there think I have omitted a rule or two, send it my way. Also, send me your best Man-Food recipes, as I am compiling a small cookbook. All contributors will get a copy of the book. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go make dinner. Let’s see, I’ve got two eggs, some pastrami, a smigeon of cheese, ketchup, leftover french fries, and barbecue sauce…hell, that sounds like an omelet…

The Book of Guy: How to be a 20h Century Man in the Metrosexual 21st Century

That the working title of this book I've had in my head (and scattered throughout various notebooks) for a while, now. The idea is to create a primer for how to actually act like a man, even though you're a member of Generation Y or Generation Next, or even Generation 9/11. Whatever your generational buzzword tag is, let me assure you that as a member of Generation X, we were the last generation to even get a glimpse of what it meant to be a man. And even then, we kinda blew it. Our big war was the first Gulf War--you know, the one that lasted 19 days? But that didn't keep us from going, and more than a few of my generation made the trip with visions of John Wayne and Steve McQueen in their heads. If the generation right under me went to war, do you know who would be playing in their heads--if anyone? Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer. Yeah, from Top Gun. The Volleyball scene. The one loaded with ironic subtext. You can't work up a war face thinking about Tom Cruise on a motorcyle, while Berlin is playing on the soundtrack. Come on! It's ridiculous to even consider.

This book will be divided up into sections, covering all areas and times of a modern man's life. Things like Becoming a Man, Being a man at work, Being a man in a Relationship, Being a man and a Father, and so on and so forth. There will also be a chapter that is aimed at the women who will need or want to train up their man, getting him in touch with his more basic self.

Let me tell you why I'm doing this: these kids today, with their Ibuds and blu-phones and their lightning texting skills, have plugged into their own self-generated world of video games, free internet porn, and clever Leet acronyms. In doing so, they have disengaged their eyes and ears in a blatent attempt at willful schitzophrenization. Well, the problem with that is simple: Men learn from other men, by watching and listening. It's the primary mode by which we accept information. By plugging into their virtual worlds, today's teens and twentysomethings have tuned out, and they are missing vital man-stuff.

I'll be blogging pieces and parts of this as I go. One thing you can expect to see is a real blast from the past: my thoughts on Man-Food. This will be expanded greatly, but longtime readers will remember the "Aw, Yeah" moment of having that which we all intuitively happened upon defined in such a way as to be able to explain it to our uncaring wives and girlfriends. That's the kind of knowledge I'm bringing.

Once the book is done, I'll shop it and hopefully sell it. After that, I'll set up a specific Tweet-feed to promote it. Then I'll get invited to the Colbert Report to hawk the book, and we'll become best friends.

This is my plan. Get on board now, people, so that you can say you knew me when.

TV Confessions

Look, I'm not proud of this, okay? But me and Cathy regularly watch Storage Wars.

I know, I know. You don't have to tell me. Yes, it IS a train wreak. OF COURSE it's contributing to the steady decline of our civilization. I get ALL of that. I do. And I am aware that as people who watch the show, we are contributing to the increasing level of Schadenfreude-ization in this country. You're right, absolutely, 100%

I have no defense for this. But I do have an explanation. We make it a drinking game. It's our Wednesday Blitzkrieg, if you will. I'm starting to believe that the only way to really watch and enjoy Reality TV (and what an ironic name for this stuff) is to make it a drinking game. Done correctly, you should wake up the next day, questioning all of your entertainment choices and debating whether or not you ever want to go through that again. It's the only way to get people off of the habit. Or create more alcoholics. Either way.

Again, let me stress this: it's not high art. I know that. There's something debasing and wrong about all of reality television. Even when it comes to the "philanthropy shows" like Extreme Home MakeOver, it's a good idea to remember that they are always selling something. Advertising, lies, American myths, dish washing soap. Nothing is for free. And this stuff is empty calories, mentally speaking. However, I think that a cheeseburger, now and again, is an okay thing. In moderation. And with no illusions about what you are consuming. Okay, enough with the disclaimers. Here's our list of conditions for the game:

Take one drink whenever:

1. Dave says Yeeeeeeeeah! This is usually the "lightning round"  portion of the show and will likely finish you off.

2. Darrell mentions "the wow factor." (expanded to include any variation of the phrase, "This is why we do this,  folks."

3. Barry makes a comment that implies he was a former mobster and is now in the witness protection program. An example: "Hey, an ice chest. This is probably where they keep the severed head."

4. Jarrod is an asshole to Brandi.

5. Brandi is right, thus making Jarrod the asshole.

Take two drinks whenever:

6. Dave lucks into some crazy find, like valuable old wooden golf clubs.

7. Darrell thinks he lucked into a crazy find, only to discover it's junk.

8. Barry "knows a guy" who ends up being famous or weirder than him.

9. Jarrod and Brandi actually end up agreeing on a locker.

10. Barry brings a "helper" with him, like a psychic or a little person.

11. Brandi bids on a locker.

12. Two of the characters actually have a civil moment with one another.

Take three drinks (or a shot) whenever:

13. Barry is the big winner.

14. Dave is the big loser.

15. Anyone goes into negative amounts.

NOTE: Finn's Wake management staff is not responsible for any/all cases of alcohol poisoning that will inevitably occur during the participation of this activity. I'm broke, so don't bother suing me.

A Break in the Monstrous Heat

Now that the temperature is down under a 100, I can say this without getting shot: If you or someone you know does not believe in climate change, then there's a real disconnect going on between the body of accumulated knowledge you have access to and your own personal experience.

Understand that when I say "climate change," I'm not front-loading that short phrase with anything other than its intended meaning: climate change. It's not a buzz word. It's not a code phrase. At least, it isn't for me. It just means that the weather is flipped out, and if you don't believe THAT, then you're living in a cave somewhere.

I'm only forty-plus years old. But I'm old enough to remember when children stayed out all day in the Summer, and the only time it was ever an issue about the outside temperature was that week in August (in Abilene, Texas) when the Mercury touched 100 or above. Usually 101. Or 102.

It never got to 112. And it never stayed that way for more than a week, never mind three months. Now, I'm no metereologist, but living in Texas, I do tend to pay more attention to the weather than, say, the average Californian. I know too many people who live on ranches, who own farms, and who depend on things like rainfall, both professionally and economically, to be more than a little concerned about the fact that it's been hotter, for longer, every year for the past ten years. This year was untenable. And it's clearly not over yet, thanks to the wildfires.

And then there's the hurricanes, and the tsunamis, and the floods. We used to see them every year, but they were remote and spaced out. When a hurricane or a tornado hit an American city in the 80s or the 90s, it was a big, big deal. Now it happens every year, and with such frequency that, like most good TV-watching Americans, we're numb to it. I wonder how much money it costs us as Americans to deal with those disasters? I don't know, but I'm betting it's a lot.

These are empiracal, inarguable facts. Something has changed. It's gotten worse in my lifetime. The polar ice caps are melting. That means something, too. It means something because they've been solid sheets of ice for as long as mankind has been exploring and encountering them. Now they are shrinking. It's bad for the wildlife, sure, but it seems to also be bad for us, too. Again, I'm no scientist, but that's my gut feeling.

I'm not going to frame a debate as to the cause of it all. I'm pretty sure, though, that there's not a single cause, but most likely a combination of things that has contributed to it all--including our involvement.That's really what "climate change" has come to mean for some folks, after all; we did it to ourselves. Period. We're solely responsible. That may be accurate--I really don't know. Some people believe that. Other people don't.

I think personally that what's gone on in the past hundred years (our explosive population growth and the rise of the machine age) has certainly played a contributing role. And while there may, in fact, be an inevitability to these kinds of meterological changes, and it's some sort of planetary accounting system to balance the books, and we  had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, I am nonetheless convinced that we could, if we really wanted to, take some serious steps to diminish our portion of the percentage of the problem. Say that the amount of human involvement is, I don't know, 33% of the overall problem. What if we shored up our shortcomings? Got rid of our contributing factors altogether? Would the Earth self-correct faster? Again, I don't know. I don't think anyone does, but I'm betting the brainiacs have some good guesses. Regardless, I think having one third less Hurricanes per season would be worth the effort, don't you? Maybe we could keep the storm naming in the designated range of the standard alphabet, without having to resort to Greek letters.

I don't have any answers. But I'm worried about what's coming next year. And the year after that. It seems as though, despite the appearance of a few wind turbines in Texas, that it's getting worse. And the public outcry gets caught up on whether or not the problem is fossil fuels, or a lack of recycling, and oh by the way, why do you, as a socialist, hate freedom. That's not helpful. It's the pipes on the U.S.S. Enterprise: G.N.D.N. Stands for "Goes nowhere, does nothing." That's what happens when people start debating climate change.

I just want it to rain again. Would some of you in the Military-Industrial Complex please start working on that? Maybe the Mayans had the right idea after all.

After all this time, it's still Vile Wizardry

I've been futzing with my blog controls for about an hour now, trying to get everything to line up. Nothing has, yet. Internet Explorer makes it look one way, and Thunderbird makes it look another way. Sheesh. They've managed to successfully hide all of the programming language so that everyhing is point and click, drag and drop. Unfortunately, it limits manipulation. And I'm an exacting taskmaster when it comes to stuff looking just so.

So, this blog is going to fluxuate greatly in the next few weeks regarding its look and feel. I'll monkey around with it until it makes me sick, or until someone volunteers to make it just like I like it.

Welcome to my machine

I will make no promises as to the frequency of posts. In fact, I will go on record as saying that if other projects get in the way, this will be the first thing I DON'T work on. Maybe I miss that weekly push. Maybe I just want to get my old rant-space back. But I'm pretty angry these days, and I need to work some stuff out. Maybe it'll be funny. Maybe it'll be thought-provoking. I don't know yet.

What I do know is this: I will need to swear on this blog from time to time as the occasion warrents. You've been warned.