AFK

I’ve got a number of (imo, interesting) posts floating around in my head, but sadly no time to develop them–yet.  I’m headed to California to visit my brother and will be back the first week of March.  Until then, I’m out. Depending on how bored I get while he works, I may poke my head in.

Childhood Threats and the Name of the Blog

One of the highlights of my early childhood was taking roadtrips around the American West with my family. On one particular trip, I think when I had just turned five, my dad and brother and I were driving to Winnemucca, Nevada (or as I always said, Winneschmucka. No offense to any Winnemuccans out there, naturally.) while on the way farther south. We had just stopped in at a C-store to get some child-pacifying devices, what normal people would call candy, and were back on our way through the southern Idaho dessert in our 12-year old blue Chevrolet Cavalier, which spit sand out of the air conditioner¹, which had an exposed spring poking out of the back left seat, which cut me once getting out of the car going to Chuck E. Cheese’s.

I had of course stuffed 4 pieces of gum into my mouth and was happily smacking away loudly. I had selected my all-time favorite gum, “the Zebra gum” (Fruit Stripe Gum) and my brother had picked out his all-time favorite, a package of Nik-L-Nip (incidentally, this was discontinued last month– I’m sure my brother is crushed). After the wad of gum I had been working over lost its flavor, which considering it was the Zebra gum, was about 3 minutes, I started to bug my older brother to give me one of his Nik-L-Nips. Naturally, this was met with the fiercest of resistance. There was simply no way my brother was going to give me anything, after all, 1 “bottle” was an entire 20% of his package. No way a little brother deserves that kind of royal treatment. “But I’ll give you some gum, Brian!” I exclaimed, trying not to sound whiny. What I didn’t realize at the time is that the Zebra gum is awful. Like, horrid awful. No one would trade anything for some of that. Thus, it was time for the big guns.

“Brian, give me one!” I threatened, “or…or I’ll turn you into pencil sticks!” There was no way you could say no to such a grave threat.

“Hah, I’d like to see you try, Eric.” my brother cockily replied.

“Oh yeah!? Well, I’ll…turn you into toast then!” was my reply, which at the time, sounded pretty damn ominous,”You’re toast, Brian!”

Becoming a part of the Blogosphere

There are a few people out there who don’t care for the term Blogosphere and I see why, but after a few failed-due-to-lack-of-interest attempts at blogging, the time has come for me to join the Blogosphere. Having decided last night to start a blog, I was quite delighted by the timing of this post “Utne on our magnificent, gloriously disordered feminist blogosphere” over at Hugo Schwyzer’s blog, mostly because 3 of the 4 blogs listed (Feministing, Feministe, and Pandagon, followed closely by Hugo Schwyzer, Bitch Ph.D., Garance Franka-Ruta) were the first blogs I ever actually followed with any regularity. Those listed on my blogroll* soon followed, as well as a passle of others not listed.

Overall my goal with this blog is a combination of vain personal blogging (are you sure you don’t want to see my vacation photos?! like, really, totally sure?! They’re totally exciting!) and a place to explore my philosophical, sociological, *ogical ideas. I hope to see them on paper someday, but we’ll see if that ever actually works out. For the moment, I’m content to blab on the internet.

*My blogroll is restricted to the “classics” as I call them, meaning the blogs that first got me started. The absence of a blog doesn’t say anything about its quality. For a highly excellent and comprehensive feminism-related blogroll, have a gander at the feministing.com blogroll. It is absolutely superb.

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Now playing: Thievery Corporation – Amerimacka (Feat. Notch)
via FoxyTunes

Webcomic Friday!

I hereby declare that Friday shall now officially be Webcomic Friday ’round these parts.

And we start with:

Original: http://xkcd.com/326/

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Now playing: Cursive – Driftwood: A Fairy Tale
via FoxyTunes