Flip The Switch
Welcome! After a few years of harassing my family and friends with perpetual e-mails of links, pictures and rants, it’s time to give them a break from their morning deletions of said correspondence in favor a trip to blogsville. I’ve had a good time ferreting out the strange stories and compelling art that inhabits the less visited corners of the web and sending them off to my long suffering mail list. Also, I’ve tried to maintain a running commentary against the cacophonous news of the day by offering up important viewpoints from the alternative media under the maxim of “something closer to the truth is out there...you just have to work to find it.” I’ll continue to do these things because it’s fun, cathartic, and I hope you’ll join in and contribute your ideas as well as whatever you find floating out there.
A lot of people had told me that I’d have less time to dredge up the things that I do from the web when Asher was born. I kind of hoped that the bliss & work of an infant would shield me from the less than optimistic news of the outside world for a while. War, terrorism, Bush, Ashcroft, Bin Laden, Hussein, The Ketchup Song...enough was enough. While I did bliss out heavily on Asher (no trouble attaching to my kid here...I almost dove in front of the needle the other day when he had to get a shot), the opposite of what I expected would happen occurred( if you’ll excuse the cliché): It just seems more urgent these days. So, a blog seems like a good outlet (sparing Nili & Asher my “what is it with these people?!!!” post-work tirades is a priority) as well as a means to for me to learn something and even possibly help perpetuate viewpoints someone might not encounter at the newsstands. So far, the web still seems good for that. It’s also good for a bit of fun and we’ll go there to, terror-alert color permitting. Hey, I never considered myself very political ...mostly just not very serious about much (despite what you read here) combined with a healthy dose of political disbelief.
The desire to dive one’s cranium into the nearest sand trap over world events is highly understandable. Distractions are easy to find and it’s almost comforting to hyperfocus on the stuff that’s right in front of us each day. However, if this place is going to even maintain the resemblance of a democracy, we’ve got to do more than throw a switch every two years for the lesser of two evils. So the choice is that we can have quick onset evil or let it grow more slowly? Not much of a choice. Maybe quick is better because, like the proverbial frog in boiling water, we’d be more inclined to hop out of this mess. A blog is a starting place. Getting your voice and body out there might be the first step towards helping to point out that the emperor has no clothes despite the fancy kingly crap that Fox, ABC, CNN swear he’s always preening around in. I hope you’ll be inspired to join in with your voice ( no matter where you fall within the narrowing spectrum of American politics) the way that I was by reading so many of the excellent blogs and news sites that I have over the past few years.
From Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino:
“He said “It is all useless, if the last landing place can only be the infernal city, and it is there that, in ever-narrowing circles, the current is drawing us.”
And Polo said “ The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live everyday, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not the inferno, then make them endure, give them space.””
Thanks for dropping in. Let’s get down to blogging proper...
CCF
Welcome! After a few years of harassing my family and friends with perpetual e-mails of links, pictures and rants, it’s time to give them a break from their morning deletions of said correspondence in favor a trip to blogsville. I’ve had a good time ferreting out the strange stories and compelling art that inhabits the less visited corners of the web and sending them off to my long suffering mail list. Also, I’ve tried to maintain a running commentary against the cacophonous news of the day by offering up important viewpoints from the alternative media under the maxim of “something closer to the truth is out there...you just have to work to find it.” I’ll continue to do these things because it’s fun, cathartic, and I hope you’ll join in and contribute your ideas as well as whatever you find floating out there.
A lot of people had told me that I’d have less time to dredge up the things that I do from the web when Asher was born. I kind of hoped that the bliss & work of an infant would shield me from the less than optimistic news of the outside world for a while. War, terrorism, Bush, Ashcroft, Bin Laden, Hussein, The Ketchup Song...enough was enough. While I did bliss out heavily on Asher (no trouble attaching to my kid here...I almost dove in front of the needle the other day when he had to get a shot), the opposite of what I expected would happen occurred( if you’ll excuse the cliché): It just seems more urgent these days. So, a blog seems like a good outlet (sparing Nili & Asher my “what is it with these people?!!!” post-work tirades is a priority) as well as a means to for me to learn something and even possibly help perpetuate viewpoints someone might not encounter at the newsstands. So far, the web still seems good for that. It’s also good for a bit of fun and we’ll go there to, terror-alert color permitting. Hey, I never considered myself very political ...mostly just not very serious about much (despite what you read here) combined with a healthy dose of political disbelief.
The desire to dive one’s cranium into the nearest sand trap over world events is highly understandable. Distractions are easy to find and it’s almost comforting to hyperfocus on the stuff that’s right in front of us each day. However, if this place is going to even maintain the resemblance of a democracy, we’ve got to do more than throw a switch every two years for the lesser of two evils. So the choice is that we can have quick onset evil or let it grow more slowly? Not much of a choice. Maybe quick is better because, like the proverbial frog in boiling water, we’d be more inclined to hop out of this mess. A blog is a starting place. Getting your voice and body out there might be the first step towards helping to point out that the emperor has no clothes despite the fancy kingly crap that Fox, ABC, CNN swear he’s always preening around in. I hope you’ll be inspired to join in with your voice ( no matter where you fall within the narrowing spectrum of American politics) the way that I was by reading so many of the excellent blogs and news sites that I have over the past few years.
From Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino:
“He said “It is all useless, if the last landing place can only be the infernal city, and it is there that, in ever-narrowing circles, the current is drawing us.”
And Polo said “ The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live everyday, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not the inferno, then make them endure, give them space.””
Thanks for dropping in. Let’s get down to blogging proper...
CCF
posted by Captain Caseous at 10:26 p.m.
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