I’ve been a Pajiba reader off and on, and enjoy the unusually smart and fair-handed “Jesus, etc.” column editor Dan Carlson provides, on and off. Oh, and it’s also often hilariously on the mark. A few weeks ago, I added my name to a little group of same-church-traditioned bloggers, and, checking some of the other links, lo and behold, there’s Carlson. Shor’n’begorrah.
In grad school, I knew a musician who played the coffee shop where I worked, and if you asked him for an original, he’d say there’s no need – plenty of better songs already out there. I feel that way about a lot of coffee shop music, too, but my point is that I realize there are plenty of actually good blogs out in the great wide world web, so why clutter the downtime of three obliged family members and friends with another bookmark?
Well, mostly spite, but I do realize that I’m just one more brick in the http://www.all. So, I’m grateful to folks like the aforementioned Hermits and Carlson and Greg Kendall-Ball (apparently a sort of Stone-Campbell blogfather) who can come at all these types of critical issues with time and energy that it would take a thousand of me, on a thousand typewriters for a thousand years, to equal.
Meanwhile, I can use my precious and depleting time and energy to read their blogs. My sure success is at hand. My best life now, at the (600 mindlessly repeated) clicks of a button. This is why I have to get out of range to work. Lead me out, Cowboy Small.
To be honest, I’m no blog aficionado. I like to keep up with some folks I know, and a few I like, but I’m generally more interested in rabbit trails than those folks thoroughly encompassing all-things-thisorthat. It’s not really where I want to figure out the meaning of life. Or included in any of my assigned reading. I’d rather get my stimulation in ink, but I can’t resist a little one-sided clever conversation from someone whose facial expressions I can imaginatively supply.
Kendall-Ball’s name is familiar, and we seem to have enough mutual friends that I’m bound to be superficially acquainted. But the thing that really makes him feel like family is his Tienanmen header. I used to have that image taped to the front of my printer. Until my hot-neighbor-unbeknownst-to-us-future-mate asked why. And it became painfully clear to me that all that thing ever spat out were late term papers.
That kid in front of the tank still gives me itchy fingerpads, though. I loved Sarah Vowell’s observation, in her take on the absurd overinvocation of Rosa Parks in our culture, that this kid might be the only person since Rosa herself that did anything worthy of the designation.
“Well, mostly spite, but I do realize that I’m just one more brick in the http://www.all.” I love it. Two good jokes and a classic rock reference in one sentence. What more could the fans ask for?
Kendall-Ball’s name is familiar? Have we crossed paths before?
Hey, Kendall-Ball. I don’t know – I’ve been trying to figure it out. I’ve got West Texas roots and an ACU diploma, but it could just be your blogroll ubiquity. Sometimes I think to myself, “hmmm, Postsecret – I think I know that guy.” Thanks for the good work.
Oh, and thanks, Gabe. I actually thought of you when I finished that sentence.