Thanksgiving Is Ruined |
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January 03, 2007
Year in Review: January 2006 Review of my backlog of electronic debris from the first month of '06 shows certain constants and similarities with most other months. First, I saved many, widely various internet links on various topics. Second, the passage of time revealed most of the saved links to be reassuringly, gloriously pointless. Third, in most instances, I had the good sense to restrain myself and not blog anything. Fourth, in a sad, small percentage of cases I displayed no good sense, as shown by the fact that, had I displayed such sense, the number of posts that month would have been zero. Finally, every month at least one sizeable electronic debris pile usually exists to demonstrate another important constant: That in the TiR universe, the value of anything, be it a cultural artifact, e-mail communication, news story or piece of writing, is measured -- solely, ultimately, unavoidably, and with excessive use of adverbs -- by the extent to which it can serve as a thinly veiled (usually even from myself) catalyst for freakish, elaborate, prolonged, autodidactic and obsessive research on the internet(s), to an extent that transgresses the boundaries of all that is good, human and normal, and results in the compilation of a pointless list. For TiR's past behavior demonstrates that it considers the "pointless list" to be the highest point and goal to which all of human evolution and history has striven, one which there can be no hope to surpass.(often because it involves a look at the long dead, forgotten or overlooked) In this case, the catalyst was Harold Norse's autobiography Memoirs of a Bastard Angel. I found an uncorrected proof copy for a couple bucks at a thift store. Norse's memoir was a delight to read. According to his account, he has traveled everywhere; met everyone; slept with everyone; invented everything from projective verse, to the cut-up technique, to the Beat lifestyle, to the word "Homintern"; and received bupkis in the way of credit or acknowlegement for all this from anyone. The most critical aspect of Norse's memoir for our present purposes is that it is very gossipy and name-droppy. Thus it resulted, in January 2006, in the following obsessive list: Who was Rupert Brooke? Why post such an exceedingly pointless list now? Or at all? I have no idea. Except perhaps to toy with the other recurring, half-assed notion here that the true worth of almost any blog, with a few exceptions, might exist in inverse proportion to the number of a) its actual readers in general,* or This here post's probably of interest to a max of two people. One of whom is a now 90 year old who once wrote an autobiography. *[1/4/07 update: corollary, via the always brilliant McLemee] |