Although I’ve been “blogging” in some form since 1995 or so, well before the word ‘blog’ was coined in 1997, in the form of various crappy personal “home pages” and a relatively popular unofficial fan-page for the band The Badlees at the height of their commerical success, the project which you find yourself currently reading has been on-going, more or less continuously, since 2002.

Since January 14, 2002, according to the pre-wordpress archives. That means, dear reader, that I’ve been doing these relatively unfiltered brain-dumps to the web for exactly ten years.

I suppose I should honor that anniversary somehow. When John Scalzi hit that milestone, he released a successful, Hugo-winning book collecting a selection of entries from the first ten years. However, he’s a bestselling novelist, and, you know, has a market. I get as many hits in a year as he gets in a couple of hours. I can’t imagine I’d sell any except the copy I printed for myself.

Plus, you know, putting together a book requires stuff like preparation and copy editing. I haven’t done any of that. Doesn’t mean I won’t try someday; print-on-demand, self-published books are a totally doable thing now. Even without the need for up-front inventory costs, it would still probably a losing proposition, if I’m to be honest with myself .

Lacking a ready-to-sell product coinciding with the anniversary (I hated taking those business classes, can you tell?), I shall have to fall back on my usual means of acknowledging things – by going on about it in a text editor. I am nothing if not consistent, in practice if not in content.

Looking back at the first couple of pages in the archives, I can say for certain that I have been anything *but* consistent in terms of content – there’s a definite evolution. I’ve gone into examining this phenomenon before, recently in fact. In that post, I broke my output down into discrete eras, which I admit, is rather self-indulgent (at least I didn’t name them). But then, what personal blog isn’t self-indulgent? That’s kind of the point.

In thinking about this milestone, I read the first couple of pages of the archives over again, something I haven’t done in a while. What I noticed more than anything else was the fact that the writing pretty much sucked. Almost all of it is exceedingly enthusiastic and superficial, with way too many exclamation points. Sure, during those first months of this project, I had a lot on my plate: dealing with the impending birth of my son, the drama inherent in that birth (which still occasionally raises nightmares – funny, I never really talked about how scared I was in the blog), the immediate aftermath of said birth, and the subsequent stress and excitement of almost immediately starting a new job (it was a full three months or so), so I can understand why the writng wasn’t up to par (doesn’t excuse some of the middle years, though). I suspect, early on, I was trying to convince *myself* that I was that enthusiastic about everything in my life as much as I was trying to convince everyone else.

That’s one thing I’ve noticed in reviewing the decade; eventually, the mask I tried to project slips a bit, revealing the face underneath – which, honestly, is another mask (everything we present to the outside world is really a mask – no one knows the real “us” except us, and often, we’re pretty good about fooling ourselves), but probably one closer to the real individual behind it.

Of course, I’m not the same person I was ten years ago, either, but that’s to be expected. In any case, I think I’m more comfortable with the person I am now, and having ten years’ worth of journals to track my personal evolution has helped me to see how I arrived at that comfort.

So, one day I may do that book – I don’t care if no one reads it but me; having such a record of personal evolution in a tangible, seemingly permanent (if flammable) record would be an interesting thing.

Heading out to the convention for a couple of days. Don’t wait up.

MarsCon Ho!*

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* – for the record, my body is not for sale at the convention…unless your offer is really good.

Presented forthwith are several short notices of a personal nature. Feel free to enjoy:

– Thanks to the kind reminders from my amazing convention friends via the various social networking services, my head’s kind of been in con space all week. As it stands, there are only 36 hours or so until I arrive at Marscon. I suspect there’ll be more to say on this later.

– If you have the means or lack the scruples, I highly suggest getting your eyeballs on a screening of last weekend’s episode of the BBC’s Sherlock, “The Hounds of Baskerville”. In my humble opinion, the best episode of the programme thus far (which is always good, thanks to the great work from the lead actors), pushed over the top by the spot-on “X-Files” vibe throughout.

– One of these days, the middle child will figure out how to apply attention to detail when attempting to conceal crimes and transgressions from his parents. Until then, we’ll just have to marvel at the audacity of his failed schemes. However, once that point arrives, I hope he chooses to use his powers of intellect for good rather than evil.

– I will get through A Game of Thrones before the first HBO series gets released to disc. This I vow. It’s a vow I believe I shall be able to keep – I have less than a hundred pages to go and until the beginning of March to manage it.

– I finally broke down and purchased a digital download copy of Miracles of Modern Science‘s Dog Year this week, which I’ve been listening to in the car for the last couple of days. As I suspected since I heard that NPR piece a couple of weeks back, it’s pretty damned amazing and eminently listenable. I’d been unable to track down a physical CD of the disc in any of the usual venues (and a few of the unusual ones), though the miracles of modern technology (hah!) have allowed me to create one. Sadly, though, I lack liner notes, which in this case would be rather important to me, as they would save me some time in figuring out the exact instrumentation used on this rather exceptional record. It turns out you don’t need guitars to rock pretty damned hard.

– I kind of love the process of writing adventure plots for role-playing games. It’s a shame that the current D&D scenario I’m writing is probably going to be just a one-shot, as I’ve ended up planting a bunch of hooks that could totally be the start of a really enjoyable long-term campaign.

– I think I slightly pulled something important during my weight training yesterday afternoon; the right elbow’s a little sore this morning. I suspect it probably had something to do with that sharp, sudden “test” of the building PA system that surprised me and caused me to momentarily lose my grip on the lat pull-down bar. Whatever the cause: Ow.

Thank you for your attention.

Here’s another thing that exists, the new single from Van Halen (featuring David Lee Roth), “Tattoo”:

My reaction? Meh.

Yeah, Dave’s back, and that’s kinda cool, though I was always kind of agnostic regarding the one true front man – all three brought something interesting to the table, even Gary Cherone, who I’ve always felt the need to defend, as I thought 3 was kind of invigorating, or could have been, had the rest of the band not been so damned dysfunctional.

However, this track, to me, proves that the secret to Van Halen success isn’t who’s out front, it’s the ratio of Van Halens – go above fifty percent, and something’s just off. Really, though, what’s missing is Michael Anthony – his backing vocals were more of a foundation for the band’s sound than his ability to play human metronome on the A string. No slight to Wolfgang, who I’m sure is a perfectly nice kid, but take Mikey’s voice out of the equation, and the magic is just gone.

The rest of it just kinda, well, meh. Alex clangs on cymbals really nice, Eddie noodles some more of the same impressive, but kinda samey noodling he’s been doing for decades, and Dave does his raspy Diamond Dave thing with what’s left of his voice, croaking out pedestrian lyrics trading on a current “It” movie and book trend.

It’s there, but I kind of wish it was better, you know?

Sound and vibration are powerful things. The voice of soprano can, under certain conditions, shatter glass. Earthquakes can wreak havoc on the landscape. A talented musical performance can move you emotionally. A quiet whisper in your ear can cause you to totally melt (or you know, the opposite of melt) depending on the source and circumstances. Then there’s the legend of the so-called “Brown Note”, which I won’t get into futher, in order to maintain some sense of decorum.

We as matter, and as people, seem to be designed to respond to particular sounds and vibrations; it’s no wonder that many cultures incorporate certain sounds and frequencies into spirital practices.

I recently had the opportunity to see musician Phil Jones perform and talk a little about sound therapy and vibration. His psuedo-Hindu by way of Australian Aboriginal philosophy is approaching the “out there” limit for me personally (he’s a former 60s psychadelic blues/rock band frontman who does “vibration sound therapy” workshops featuring the digeridoo around the world, so his way of thinking makes sense given the scene he comes out of), but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t find some of the things he talked about sort of relevant*, and it got me thinking a little bit.

Now, I’m not personally very mystical in terms of spirituality, though there’s no denying that some of the most profoundly “religious” or “spiritual” experiences I’ve had involved sound in some way: the way the sound of a well-played trumpet hits me just right at the base of the skull; the way I can “feel” the wind off the Tidal Pool when I’m standing alone inside the Jefferson Memorial at dusk, the serene sense of quiet (that isn’t really quiet) when I’m standing on top of a mountain looking out across the miles laid out before me, the feeling of communal emotion when in the crowd at certain musical performances, be it the communal euphoria of a rock and roll show, or the communal peace at a sacred choral performance. I expect you, the reader, could fill in another half-dozen examples, because, odds are, you’re human as well, and that’s kind of the way we work.

Whether you buy into the mystical or supernatural properties of those feelings, there’s no denying that those sorts of things happen, and we feel them, and the common element to all of them is the idea of sound and vibration. Certain kinds of frequencies just do things to us, and science has managed to measure some of those effects.

A lot of the world’s spiritual practices have understood this for centuries – certain sounds heighten experience, or all allow the worshipper/celebrant to be open to feeling something greater than themselves. Those sounds are all reasonably similar – The Gregorian Chant, Mantras for meditation (“Om”), the music of Native American dances, the drone of the Digeridoo in Autralian Aboriginal tradition – I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they all incorporate the same general sort of low-droning sound that a person can “feel” as much as hear. And, for whatever reason, mystical or otherwise, it works – the sounds enhance the experience, and serve to “center” us in some way. Whether you call it “coming into harmony with the universal vibration” or simply finding a point of sympathetic resonance for the matter that constitutes your body, there is effect, and at least some of it is objectively measurable.

Even if you’re not looking for any sort of “religious experience”, an understanding of these sorts of principles could potentially be useful, just in terms of getting oneself in the right frame of mind.

Or, you know, to sell records: Take a listen to Mumford and Sons’ “Sigh No More“; these guys, whether consciously or not, totally understand the principle. The the instrumentation isn’t just “present” to serve the song; it surges over the listener like an ocean wave of sound. Sure, the song’s tempo tracks in there at probably just over 120 beats per minute, but all through the song’s running time, there are lots of long, droning low tones and resonating open strings that you can feel vibrating through your core (even through crappy headphones). The vocal layering is even sort of reminiscent of vocal chant, with lots of repeated melodic phrases and close harmony.

The whole album is like that, and it’s amazing. Is it any wonder it’s sold so well and gotten on all those best of lists? It’s been scientifically designed and engineered to hit people where they live.

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*I really struggled to avoid saying that “…some of the things he talked about resonated with me”. I figured I’d spare you all the pun.

I don’t really know the Black Keys, other than what I heard a couple of months back in a piece on NPR (for the record, they didn’t sound bad), so I’m not entirely sure of the authority from which BK drummer Patrick Carney speaks in this interview as presented.

But damn, if I don’t pretty much agree with him:

…Rock ‘n’ roll is dying because people became OK with Nickelback being the biggest band in the world.
…They became OK with the idea that the biggest rock band in the world is always going to be s**t

Yep, Nickelback is probably the lowest common denomimator sort of quasi-rock band in existence; all the songs sound pretty much the same, though to be fair, they all sound *like Nickelback*. Too bad it’s all mushmouthed delivery of trite platitudes about small town nostalgia and beer-swilling pop philosophy over de-tuned guitars.

But the Nickelback ascendance isn’t the only thing that points to the fact that “rock” doesn’t really exist as a mainstream genre any longer. Perhaps more shocking is this piece from last year indicating that Train’s “Hey Soul Sister” was the highest charting US “rock” song of 2010.

Train.

Train, the band that’s essentially what big-haired 80s party girls dropped Slaughter for once they got a “mom cut” and traded the VW Cabrio for the Explorer with the little line drawing family decals on the back. Train, the band for people who think that post-“Keep the Faith” Bon Jovi is too heavy. This is the demographic measure for “rock” these days?

Mainstream music has apparently passed me by.

The worst bit is that this, for once, isn’t one of those “kids today” nostalgia posts where I pine for “the good old days” – I *know* there’s good and interesting modern stuff out there, it’s just wedged into disused corners of the internet (but not in my local indie record store, who totally didn’t have any copies of the Miracles of Modern Science record I’ve been trying to track down for weeks), it’s just not on terrestrial radio.

But don’t you really wish it was?

Though don’t you wish it was?

Last year I did one hundred mini-record reviews from my collection, and I had quite bit of fun doing it. I’m going to continue poking through this year as I get the time (when I’m not listening to NPR or audiobooks in the car, mostly), as long as it stays fun. I like talking about music, and revisiting the music of my youth, as well as new stuff I discover combing the cut-out racks of music stores and the shelves and tables of thrift shops.

<>Here’s the first batch of the second decade – a bit of the old and a bit of the new:

♦Evan McHugh – From The Second Chair: My wife picked this one up at the Indigo Girls show a couple of years ago I didn’t get to go to; this fine folky fellow was the opening act that got whined about by snooty Richmond concertgoers who wanted to just hear “Closer to Fine” and then go home. I don’t know much about the guy, but the record is kind of mellow; almost too mellow for me. A good description might be Jeff Buckley by way of Coldplay, interesting folk polished into a poppy package, but never quite going full pander the way a band like Train does. It’s folk in soccer-mom pandering clothing. Lots of lyrics about coffee shops and umbrellas and whatnot – the title track is pretty good, and “Catching Fire” has a pretty neat little keyboard/organ thing going on that I quite like. Then there’s “To The King” which is catchy, but kind of smacks you over the head with the CCM vibe, which kind of ruins the mood of the rest of the record.

♦”Weird” Al Yankovic – Alpocalypse: I’ve had this for months, and it gets requested an awful lot by the kids, so it gets a lot of spins. It’s a pretty damned good Al Record, though suffers from a lot of the same problems everything since “Off the Deep End” does – there’s just not that much really good pop music to parody any more – the best of the parody bunch on this one is “Party in the CIA”, which unsurprisingly, takes Miley Cyrus and runs to a clever, darkly comic place. The GaGa parody is note-perfect (including the Madonna nod), though it suffers a bit due to being a meta-parody of the artist herself, rather than some other subject. The originals shine, as usual – I rather love “Skipper Dan”, a sad portrait of a failed actor cursed with doing the Jungle Cruise ride at Disney World. And “Craigslist” is a little too topical, but is also a dead-on “style parody” of the Doors, and has that bit about styrofoam peanuts, which never fails to make me laugh.

♦KISS – Alive III: If you’re only going to go buy one of the “Alive” records, make it II. That was KISS at their theatrical peak, all greasepaint and innuendo. That doesnt’ mean that Alive III, recorded during the final tour before the band re-hired Ace and Peter (briefly, then fired them again, then hired them, etc…) and put the make-up back on, isn’t worth a listen. It’s probably the best sounding of the “Alive” records, largely due to modern amplification and recording techniques. The classics like “Rock and Roll All Nite” and “Detroit Rock City” sound better than ever before, but it could be argued that it lacks the soul or energy of the earlier live experiments. That doesn’t mean that it’s not worthy – it’s got a kick-ass live version of non-makeup staple “Heaven’s on Fire” and there’s something exhilarating about *hearing* huge-ass pyrotechnics go off in an enclosed hockey arena. I think most of my affection for this record comes from the fact that this was the only KISS tour I ever saw live, and I had great seats, maybe five rows back on Gene’s side. When he did the fire-breathing thing, I felt the heat on my face. Even without the makeup, these guys put on a first-rate rock show, as long as you’re not expecting much in the way of lyrical depth or meaning.

♦The Bangles – Different Light: This was actually one of the first records I ever owned, and in using the word “record”, I’m speaking literally – I had this one on vinyl. A recent expedition to the thrift store turned up a copy on CD among the rest of the spoils, so I’ve been revisiting it a bit lately. This is the Bangles record with all the hits – “Manic Monday”, “Walk Like an Egyptian”, and “If She Knew What She Wants” among others, and still holds up twenty years later as a solid pop record. It’s also the record that proved to be the beginning of the (first) end, given the focus of the videos on Susanna Hoffs to the exclusion of the other members of the band. The Bangles sound, though, is really a fusion of all four women’s voices – For me, the archetypal Bangles songs feature a “wall of voices”, with the lead kind of disappearing into the whole. on this record, that’s the title track or “Angels Don’t Fall In Love” (though if you want the best sounding Bangles tune ever, you need their cover of “Hazy Shade of Winter” from the soundtrack to the film Less Than Zero). My favorites on this record are actually the two Michael Steele tracks, the cover of Big Star’s “September Gurls” and the haunting “Following”.

So, although I opened the year with something of a political personal reflection thing, I suspect at least some people are interested in the more mundane “what I did” sort of posts around here. Those are useful for me, because it helps me remember when I actually did things, and it lets me share some of the interesting adventures I’ve had.

This post may or may not contain interesting adventures.

Much of the interesting early bits of Christmas vacation have been chronicled previously; I could make mention of the trip to the Richmond Metro Zoo on Christmas Eve morning; it’s close, and decent enough, and makes for a nice couple of hours’ diversion. The lemurs and spider monkeys are fun to watch, and you get to feed giraffes.

Somewhere in there the eldest and I went to see Spielberg’s War Horse, because she could get extra credit in Social Studies class if she saw it over break and wrote a report/review essay. I found out Monday that she was the only one in her class that did. Oh well, it was good for her, and put some of the WWI history she’d been studying this year into context; and extra credit’s extra credit. As for my review, I’d call it a pretty good fusion of two different Spielbergs: the 80s “Boy and his -blank-” stories like E.T., combined with the modern historical war epics like Saving Private Ryan. ‘Twas a solid enjoyable film, and a nice diversion for a weekday afternoon.

The week between Christmas and New Years Day was largely sedate, beyond a few little trips out shopping for bargain candy and taking middle child out to the movies (largely to make up for the fact that I took the eldest the week before), this time, to see The Adventures of Tin-Tin: The Secret of the Unicorn, also, conveniently, directed by Speilberg, and covering his other base – the rollicking action-adventure a la Indiana Jones; only this time, he was backed amiably by the Special Effects oomph of Peter Jackson, with a script by Steven Moffat (of Doctor Who and Sherlock, Edgar Wright (Sean of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) and Joe Cornish (who did last year’s favorite, Attack the Block). In this case, too many talented cooks don’t really spoil the meal – it was a fun, family-friendly adventure film which entertained us greatly. I can’t compare it to the comics source material, as I’ve never read it, but it was a lot of fun.

Otherwise, I played a bunch of Skyrim, did more than my share of laundry, watched some Doctor Who, and coasted until the weekend, when we got a houseguest for a couple of days, a friend of the eldest who moved out of state a few months back. Our houseguest was, as always, pleasant and polite (I could go into how the presence of these sort of guests brings out the worst in my own children’s behavior, but I won’t), and helped out when I spent New Year’s Eve morning picking up trash with my friend Jason for the adopt-a-highway program, seeing 2011 off with some pleasant service to the community. The most interesting bit of trash I found was a broken Louisville Slugger and a cache of trashed Christmas decorations.

We rung in the new year with our gaming friends, eating tasty food, rolling dice, and adventuring both through the end of our medieval campaign and starting a spaceship-based campaign inspired by Traveller and Firefly, late into the night. Fairiemom’s playing a cat-girl in this one, it should be interesting.

New Year’s Day involved sleeping in way late, then taking care of a few other things and putting our houseguest on a plane back home. We put the kids back in school Monday (i was off, the federal holiday shifted one day), and relaxed and tried to start falling back into the usual weekly pattern.

And thus, here I am. Back on the road, figuring out where the project got to while I was gone. Luckily, not too far, because everyone else was gone too. Our team is one short at the moment, given that one of us got a well-deserved promotion that doesn’t involve road duty, and we got a new team lead, who’s kind of been here all along, but not “officially”. We’re still trying to figure out how these changes are going to shake out, but it’ll be okay, as we all mostly know what we’re doing, or can at least fake it well enough to get by.

And, that’s about it for now. The new year has started, con season’s around the corner (Marscon is only two weeks away), and I’ve recently noticed that this blog, or some version of it, is fast coming up on it’s tenth anniversary, if you’re measuring from the ancient history section, which I have decided that I am. I may have to do something to acknowledge that.

I considered talking about goals for the year, bloggy and otherwise, but I came to the conclusion that I really do know better. I might do something general, eventually – the year’s new, and I reserve the right to change my mind – but don’t start getting all anticipatory.

The best thing about the Iowa Caucuses last night is that I didn’t stay up to watch the returns, because if I did, I’d be too tired to accomplish anything today, and I start work much too early anyway. However, the whole thing is laid out there for me, in chronological order on twitter, and from what I can see, it’s a whole lot of fuss over an election that doesn’t even bind delegates – the whole thing is really nothing but manufactured TV drama. This is played out by the apparent real victory of CNN for finding a couple of ladies in Iowa named Edith and Caroline who made for good TV, and yeah, apparently Romney beat Santorum(!) by less than ten votes (or maybe he didn’t – Google just had the froth rising to the top on a line graph – it’s essentially a wash).

There’s no denying it’s prime entertainment, but, really, it doesn’t change anything other than to stretch this business out a bit longer. I’m still holding by my position that Romney will be the eventual GOP nominee, though he’ll never quite be embraced by the conservative base of his party, who are now kind of settling on Santorum, this week, because he’s who is left – I guess an Opus Dei-style Catholic is more acceptable to conservative evangelicals than a Mormon, after all. They’ll all kind of fall in line eventually, but none of them will be that enthusiastic about it; echoes of John Kerry in 2004, only from the right.

This business will probably be good for my chosen candidate, though at this point, there really isn’t much of a choice for someone like me.

You see, I’m what US pollsters like to classify as “progressive/very liberal”, who’d probably be a perfectly content center-left type in the EU (where even the righties tend to think that things like national health care and the social safety net are a good and valuable idea). However, at this point in American history, where I’m sitting on the (admittedly imperfect) left-right spectrum falls outside of the mainstream. The Democratic party, despite all the annual accusations of this or that candidate being “the most liberal in history” is actually more accurately categorized as “center right” and occasionally feel like it’s drifting further rightward. There are a few modern outliers, (see Kucinich, Dennis and Sanders, Bernie), but most Democratic politicians active today, including, arguably, President Obama, fall pretty close to the center of the spectrum, not the leftmost edge.

So, given my general leftist/liberal tendencies, I have come to accept that the most liberal political candidate in any given election I might vote in will, unless things shift dramatically, always be somewhat to the left of me. I’m kind of okay with that; compromise isn’t a bad thing at all; assuming all parties are willing to offer up something in the spirit for finding a mutually acceptable solution (this is not an assuption I’m usually willing to make when it comes to American politics).

So, I haven’t much choice but to be a partisan, in the sense that there’s only one party on a given ticket for whom I can imagine voting.

Usually, this doesn’t bother me; on the whole, I think President Obama does an acceptable, if not spectacular job, given his vision of it. He’s taken he whole idea of “being the President of everybody” to heart, and tries to find solutions that could appeal broadly. That’s not a bad way to do it, if there weren’t other factors involved (tribalism and racism, primarily) that prevent the other side from being capable of governing in good faith. One of the things I like about the President is also kind of his biggest weakness – he’s eternally optimistic, and always tries to assume the best of people, which sometimes makes him look like Charlie Brown lining up to kick the football Lucy’s holding. Occasionally, though, he connects with the ball, and we get some good things.

This doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t love to live in a country where it felt like I had a choice between multiple candidates who I felt represented my values. That actually happens some places, but not that often in America for someone who leans left, and I can’t see abandoning my values and becoming a mythical “swing voter”, the 10-20 percent of Americans who are actually regularly up for grabs in a national election, because for the most part, those “swing voters” are actually “low information voters” who don’t really understand the system and respond solely to emotional appeals like the “who would you rather have a beer with” or “who has the nicest looking family” factors.

However, I don’t want to be partisan to the extent that I demonize everyone on the opposition – I know some very nice conservative people* – I think they’re misguided sometimes, but I like them. Some of the current crop of Republican presidential candidates seem like genuinely nice, interesting people**. Romney seems pleasant, if a little stodgy, and Gingrich, besides being kind of a know-it-all, would probably provide entertaining conversation. Doesn’t mean I’m ever going to support or vote for them.

So, Maybe that’s my unrealistic wish for the new year – to have more palatable candidates to vote for in elections I find myself voting in, or at least have them get elected in elections I can’t vote in. There’s some potential out there – Elizabeth Warren running for the Senate in Massachussets, for example, is someone I’d personally love to vote for – but I’d really like to see that become the norm rather than the exception.

we really need to yank that overton window back over to the left a bit; the structure is feeling a little unbalanced.

_________

* – Sorry about that; it looks kind of like I played the “I have gay/black/whatever friends” argument. Won’t happen again.

** – Santorum‘s a different animal, however. I can say from personal experience that that guy is categorically not pleasant. That guy, in person, just oozes*** smarm and sleaze (even more than your average politician, who, almost to the man, glisten like lubed up used car salesmen), all wrapped up in the most personally repellent packages, the “asshole jock frat boy who found God, but never lost the bullying nature and sense of superiority and privilege”. I had to wash my hands immediately after shaking his when I met the then-Senator as a recent college graduate, almost a decade before my so-called “political awakening”. <<shiver>>

*** – Ew. “oozing Santorum. <<shudder>>

For all the posting I did this year, I don’t think I hit as many personal “wow” writing notes this year. Most of what I ended up posting was “link and short response” and “oh look at this thing” blogging, which, while valid art forms, don’t really exercise the writing muscles much. However, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t some stuff worth looking at, and pointing to here at the end of the year, when it’s customary to do such things. Not as many think pieces, perhaps, but there’s still some good enough content that I think deserves a little light shined on it. Here are some of those pieces, in not entirely chronological order:

• the surprisingly long life of the incorrect lesson
• smart phone, one week in: novelty and paranoia
• go away, little one
• benefits with friends
• you realize you brought this on yourself
• balticon wrap-up, and a short elegy-ish thing for missed opportunities of youth
• an imperfect application of a Gordian Knot allusion
• getting to the bottom of the conversion narrative
• still not very good at this
• end of an era
• the value of the journey – when the road less travelled becomes the main throrofare
• a retroactive, meandering mission statement
• time…keeps marching on
• Calypso: 1997-2011
• for want of a Sharpie®…
• those two “f” words
• a grand day out, at peace with the universe
• the entirety of the “cut out racks” series of record reviews