blogging year in review

Started another semester this week. Which means I am back to the crazy schedule. It's not quite as bad this time as I am teaching on different days and no longer teaching so early in the morning. My health finally seems to be returning and my back and neck are pain-free for the first time in over a week. It has been a terribly slow night here at work so I went back and read through the archives of my Blog. Turns out that January tenth was the Blog's first birthday. Here was that first entry:

Blahg
Blast off...Welcome. To me I suppose. At this point anyway. Here I go entering the world of secluded, solipsistic, pseudo-celebrity for those tragically lacking an audience. Making the inner outer and perhaps discovering just what I do not in fact want anyone else to know. Hail to the inevitability of self-censorship. Who know's what's riding on it?

Well I'm not the only one reading it anyway. There are a small number of folks (I prefer to think of them as the select few) who keep up with me via this thing. And in reading back over it, I do think I managed to avoid being completely solipsistic--the downfall of the average blog. I actually managed to turn up some interesting shit in all my reading, much of which I'd forgotten about. Which in retrospect seems to me to be the primary value of the blog. A surrogate memory bank of sorts. With regards to inner/outer and public/private, I did indeed find that keeping the blog brought these questions to the forefront for me. I notice in reading back over the entries from 6-12 months ago that I seemed to be hung over quite a bit. I don't miss that. And there's much that occurred during that year that never saw the light of day in this forum and that's a good thing.

To quote an old song, these are a few of my favorite things---

"Only part of us is sane. Only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our 90's and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set life back to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations. Our bright natures fight in us with this yeasty darkness, and neither part is commonly quite victorious, for we are divided against ourselves"

I quoted that a year ago today and it still elicits some unnameable reaction in me.

here, again, are instructions for my funeral (they still apply--please don't let anyone embalm me):

ok...in a nutshell...it has always been my desire that I be cremated and some small portion of my ashes powdered and mixed into the batter of a very large cake. The cake should otherwise be a very appetizing and tasty cake. The cake should then be eaten by everyone at my funeral/life appreciation service...which really should be, for all intents and purposes, a party replete with beer and Irish Whiskey. Over the course of the evening all my friends and family will take a little bit of me home with them in most intimate fashion. So to summarize:
1) burn Christian's body
2) mix Christian's ashes in cake batter and bake cake
3) eat Christian cake

please do have a bite. I'd do it for you.

my favorite euphemism of all time: relic of old decency.

I admitted to liking Atlanta. Location makes a huge difference. I hate the part of town I live in now and it has soured me on the city. Oh well.

corndog prose:

I am tired. The corndogs were good and vegetarian corndogs(!) were available too. I saw an intoxicated, very attractive, young hipster woman take her underwear off without ever removing her jeans. Getting hundreds of people out of a bar at 3am is miserable business even when the crowd is mostly agreeable. Friends want special privileges. All people like to feel special. Meaningless markers of status and rank have amazing powers. It is possible to reason with some people. Others are unreasonable. The average band is depressingly average. Hearing a dozen bands in a few hours clearly demonstrates the musical bell curve. The hipster ecosystem evinces both continuity and change. Girls are pretty. The detritus of Corndogarama is banal and emits an unpleasant odor.

I am tired.

The medical uses, past and present, of maggots. American history, the 19th century in particular, was a recurring theme and I found some interesting stuff. And will no doubt find more should I get a summer break from teaching. Dreams made regular appearances and some of them were doozies. Others I had forgotten entirely and was pleased to be reminded of them. It's interesting to see how my focus changes when I am not so busy. Though busyness and the business of teaching were often sources of reflection and lament. My sole blogging regret is the loss of the comments from the first four months. There were some good ones in there, but perhaps it's a good thing that I can't remember all the details about Khan humping sexy retarded boys. That's enough for now. I suppose I shall commit to another year.

Happy belated birthday.