Revolutions are Always Verbose

The new issue of The Journal of Bloglandia is now available, and I'm pleased to say that it contains an ill-tempered piece by yours truly, as well as terrific essays by Chris Floyd, Lyn Jensen, and others.

I'm honored to be the runt in this litter, and I strongly endorse the J Bloglandia concept. You may think you've read these pieces before, but you'll find that reading them in analog is a different and much more rewarding experience. They have remarkable range and depth, with warmer midrange, punchier dynamics, more headroom, and none of the harsh digital highs, graininess, and mushy bass you tend to get online.

That being the case, I urge you to buy at least four copies: one for reading at home, one for reading at work, one for leaving in your dentist's office, and (of course) an archival copy to prove to your grandchildren that you were there when the blogosphere merged into a single whole the elemental destructive force of the masses and the conscious destructive force of the organization of revolutionaries.

Old and In the Way

It dawns on me that as of today, I've been making a sorry spectacle of myself on this blog for five goddamn years, for fuck's sake. That makes Bouphonia at least 80, in human years.

Where does the time go? It seems like only yesterday that I was indulging myself in impotent complaint before a small but compassionate audience of rubberneckers.

Today...well, let's just say that things are very different. I have a desk now, for one thing.

I suppose I shouldn't make light of what I've accomplished here. In its crooked old age, and mine, Buffoonia has become a Wunderkammer that preserves the stillborn montrosities of my thought in neatly labeled specimen jars. This is interesting, like all disasters, but it's also useful: If I ever fall prey to self-satisfaction, I know exactly where to find the antidote.

Thanks to everyone who reads my ill-tempered gibberish; special thanks to those who risk their good names by commenting on and linking to it. And particular thanks to Echidne, who has talked me off the ledge so many times that she's in danger of having to take sole responsibility for this superannuated blog's wheedling demands on your patience.

I don't need presents, unless you've got an extra bottle of Cadenhead's Caol Ila 1995 lying around. But please do drop in and say hello, especially if you’re a lurker, so I may rest assured that we live like doves together, without gall.

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

Not dead, I assure you. Just busy with a project that's requiring all my attention and several times more stamina than I actually have. I was supposed to be done before now, but as usual, work expands to fill the available time.

Maybe I'll get some breathing room after the weekend. Or if not, maybe I'll retire to Bedlam and devote my remaining days to consideration of "the Drone, who with the appearance of a Bee is neither a soldier nor an artist, neither a swordsman nor smith."

I hope you're all well, meanwhile, and I'm very, very sorry to have worried a few very kind people by not checking my blog-related e-mail for several weeks. I should know better at my age, honestly.

Onwards and...

Well, onwards, anyway.

A Serpent's Nest

I was initially posting links here to my weekend blitherings chez Echidne, but I was interrupted by a long hiatus, and then forgot about it entirely.

For whatever it's worth, here are a bunch of recent posts. Be patient — or not — as Echidne's pages always seem to take a long time to load.

Math Class is Tough! discusses exciting new research that explains how women "choose" to fail at life.

Cell Groups prepares us for the looming radical-right revolution (i.e., an uptick in mass shootings), and compares "liberals," gays, and women to the regulations that impede the spontaneous order of the Free Market.

School's Out Forever takes a dim view of a plan to expel teens from school as a punishment for pregnancy, in a country with one of the lowest rates of contraceptive use on earth.

Dogma and Zealotry is a standard-issue rant against the false principles of climate denial, based on a column by Jeff Jacoby. The main focus is the weird assumption that a lack of knowledge allows you to assume the best possible outcome. Freeman Dyson is mocked too, which never hurts.

Why kNOw? presents such axioms of modern sex education as "if a woman is wet, a baby she may get!"

Thoughtful Discourse dissects WaPo ombudsman Andrew Alexander's careful response to George Will's latest fusillade of denialist lies. If that sounds as boring to read as it was to write, you can proceed directly to the money quote: "When people get angry because you've allowed a smirking ideological hack with a history of lying about this very issue to turn your op-ed page into his personal sandbox, and you respond to the idea of issuing retractions as though you'd been asked to harness a goose and fly it to the moon, what else can this signify but that both sides have failed equally to be Reasonable?"

Mother Pelosi and Father Frank is a horripilating vision of the End Times.

OctoMom Nation is another horripilating vision of the End Times.

A Muslim Tradition points out for the millionth time that Georgie Ann Geyer is a racist dingbat.

The Biggest Crutch bewails the pussification of American culture, as exemplified by anti-discrimination laws and medical care for the destitute.

There you have it! If you're looking for wisdom instead of cheap outrage and laborious gags, you can head over there and read everyone's posts but mine.

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

I've been struggling lately to meet multiple deadlines, and haven't really had a chance to read the news, let alone write about it. Longtime readers have probably noticed that this happens to me every so often; that's how things go in my line of work, though my tendency to procrastinate doesn't help matters.

This time, the only way I could get my work done was not just to cut back on blogging, but to pretend I didn't even have a blog. It's very possible that I needed a vacation from it in any case...although a vacation that didn't involve 12-14 hours in front of the computer, in a room that looks like a bookstore after an earthquake, would've been preferable.

Anyway, I'm not quite out of the woods yet, but I do hope to be able to get back to blogging over the coming week. Thanks for the comments and e-mails, meanwhile...I appreciate it.

(Photo by Raymond™.)

Road Work Ahead

I'm traveling over the next couple of weeks, so posting may (or may not) be a bit more sporadic than usual. I hope to keep up with my Friday posting chores, if nothing else.

In the meantime, I'd been intending to link to my posts chez Echidne, but (typically) never quite got around to it. Here's seven at one blow, listed by subject rather than title, for any interested parties who missed 'em.

The political economy of child rape

Naturalizing auto dependency

Obama is a secret Hindoo!

Women "have not adapted" to meaningless sex

Dishonest narcissists have way more sex than the rest of us...just ask 'em!

Redefining fidelity

Slip it to the android

I'll bring you back something nice.

Taking Up a Serpent

In pursuit of her trade as a spawner of monsters, Echidne has invited me to post at her place on weekends. I've agreed, and have already lowered the tone considerably.

Lord only knows where it will all end.

Sunday Music Blogging

I'm going to be pretty busy over the next few weeks, at least, and it's unlikely that I'll be able to do much blogging. Which is probably just as well, given how scatterbrained the last batch of posts has been.

I may manage some reposts, film clips, links to other (better) sites, and the like. Anyone who wants to take over Friday Hope Blogging, or post some nudibranch pics, is more than welcome!

Best wishes to you all, meanwhile. And thanks.

XOXOXOXO,

P

Happy New Year

From all of me to all of you.

Now We Are Three

I just noticed that Buffoonia's third birthday has came and went. Traditionally, I celebrate by indulging in a bit of arch self-mockery about my method and madness, and offering a slightly less fanciful shout-out to my worthy constituents.

Not this time, though. Anyone who's stuck with me over the last year deserves something a bit less theatrical.

This has been a stressful year, personally and professionally and politically. It's been hard to think, and to write, and almost impossible to do both at the same time.

Part of the problem is my own personality, which, as I've pretended to overstate before, is hopelessly melancholic. Beyond that, though, it's become clear to me that what's happened in the last few years - during and after Hurricane Katrina, especially - has pretty much broken my heart. I've consciously indulged my tendency towards abstraction since then, partially out of escapism and cowardice, but also because I felt like I had an obligation to rethink...well, everything.

The positive side of all this is that I've had any number of longstanding preconceptions challenged by any number of absolutely brilliant people, whose exemplary goodheartedness assures me that whatever I become will be far better than what I was.

RMJ, for instance, has gently forced me many times to reconsider pet theories, and to forego premature allegiances (the proof is more in the absurdities I didn't write than in the ones I did).

I could say much the same of Thers and Rorschach and Echidne, but that's less important to me than my conviction that they're family.

There are plenty of people in my blogroll who are equally thought-provoking and inspiring; listing them here would be a waste of time given that I've listed them there. And I'm also very grateful to my commenters, who've reassured me many times that I'm not mad...or that if I am, I'm in exceptionally good company.

Drop in and say hello, if you feel like it.

Thanks, and may we all meet at last in better times.

My Head All Full of Stuffing, My Heart All Full of Pain

CKR and Eli have simultaneously bestowed a Thinking Blogger award on yours truly, which is as almost as kind as it is baffling. I’d feel more honest if I’d gotten a “Emotionally Disintegrating Blogger” award, but perhaps those are in short supply. There's a war on, after all.

Then again, it’s possible that I do deserve to be called a “thinking blogger,” to the extent that I find thinking more bearable than feeling, these days.

Anyway, the rules of the game oblige me to name five bloggers who make me think. Which is difficult, being as it covers everyone on my blogroll and then some. Accordingly, I’ll list five bloggers I think deserve to be more widely read, in alphabetical order.

Interrobang is on hiatus, but worth waiting for.

Juniper Pearl is a funny, engaging writer whose intense moral seriousness has a way of sneaking up on you when you least expect it.

Niches routinely informs me about things that don’t make me want to eat rat poison.

Olvlzl’s distaste for pseudorationality and self-defeating identity politics may almost outstrip mine.

Question Technology questions technology.

All of these people are more interesting than me, as is everyone else on my blogroll. Go thou and seek 'em out.

Beyond and Back

Back in one piece, more or less, despite the unsettled weather across the Midwest. But then, "for the man sound in body and serene of mind there is no such thing as bad weather."

I'm in the process of posting some representative photos over at Dime Geography, if anyone's interested.

Ad Cloaca Per Aspera

If you've been starving for those heart-gladdening epiphanies that Bouphonia, in happier times, produced as effortlessly as victims of Blackwater Fever produce dark, reeking urine, you may consider this your lucky day.

Having conducted plenty of assiduous firsthand research, I'm now prepared to assert that moving is a soul-crushing torment far beyond anything M.G. Lewis dreamed up. Especially when it's raining. You heard it here first!

I've had no time to go online in the last couple of weeks, let alone to write anything that meets this blog's famously low standards for coherence and readability.

This should change very soon, in theory. The trickiest step - I hope - will be to get a decent DSL connection in the new place. From there, it'll be a simple matter of convincing myself that I have something worthwhile to say, and finding enough time to say it.

How hard could that be?

Test Your RQ

I'm glutinous with self-approbation this morning, having gotten a negative score on the Republican Quotient test. Here are my results, for posterity's sake:

I am: -9% Republican.

"You're a damn Commie! Where's Tailgunner Joe when we need him?"

Are You A Republican?