Schmolitics.
It’s not like I meant to take a couple months off or anything. —Oh, hush. Y’all already got more posts outta me in Q1 of 2011 than Calvin Coolidge, put together! (And two whole chapters yonder, which the Inner Marketer made me promise I’d mention somewhere in here.)
Christ, I’ve been complaining about it almost as long as I’ve been blogging: the instant gratification of a ranty political post; the lengthy time thereafter one has to regret what one has said. And it’s not that there’s anything specific I posted in haste that I especially came to repent at leisure (recently) (well, not so much; not as such); it’s just that once I made a conscious effort to post more frequently, well, there they came: outrage pellets, guaranteed to please the crowd: it may not serve to increase US, but by god it sure as hell kicked THEM in the rhetoric!
Not that THEY ever actually noticed, but hey.
I never wanted the pier to be a political blog; I hate arguing! (Cue the Spouse’s knowing smirk.) —No, it’s true: I like forcefully stating my opinions, I can enjoy staking out the silliest possible position for or against some inconsequential thing and defending my claim with bulwarks of trivia, but the moment some actual conflict rears its head, over something that matters, I’m circling the wagons to close off the episteme: I must physically restrain myself from finding a pair of lapels I can grab. My God, how can you deny this is true? For fuck’s sake why are you repeating that lie? Who could possibly intend that consequence, can’t you see it? How on earth did you get to be so stupid?
It’s why the koan’s so important to me. I don’t know that I ever will manage a sunny heart. —Anyway. Less frequency; less pelletage. Or something. That’s my pledge to you. This week, anyway.
The irony I suppose being that whenever I’m recognized offline for my online contributions it’s inevitably the rants that get mentioned? “Man, you really knew how to fire ’em up,” said the genial older gentleman at the science fiction convention, who shall remain nameless through the simple expediency of never having caught his name. —“Well, I did start blogging again,” I said. “I’m just trying to stay away from the ranting, you know?” —“Oh, that’s too bad,” he said.
As I was saying. Evergreen perennial, this. Ah, well.
Fantasy, unlike science fiction, relies on a moral universe: it is less an argument with the universe than a sermon on the way things should be, a belief that the universe should yield to moral precepts.
