A couple of years ago I was in top form. Everything I wrote was going to get ignored by pretty much the whole internet and I still made it count. I look at myself recently and, dear reader, it is painfully apparent that I've lost the patience to craft outstanding prose and to keep a non-partisan balance. Yes, I've committed the cardinal sin of becoming political. I might've been the same a few years ago, but what is important is that I was doing it with grace, if at all. That's not everything I've been doing wrong, but it's a good portion.
So I apologize. I'm not going to put up another piece about Edward Snowden, how Bradley Manning is still ignored (and his connection to the repealing of Don't Ask/Don't Tell - a very interesting hypothesis), or how the two men are very similar even though Edward Snowden is a civilian. I won't post about the odds of Snowden getting nabbed, disappeared, or simply imprisoned for the rest of his life. I won't opine about what would be fair, or if what he did was right. Though I will say that it speaks volumes about society that even 'the good life' wasn't enough to silence him, and that he is being denounced as rotten traitor, and that a decade+ ago the things he recently brought to light would have be mocked as patently paranoid. And I will also say he is lucky that McCarthyism has worn off somewhat in the 'States, even though it lives on in spirit, as so many things do.
I really wanted to, of course. Why else have a blog if not to write about issues that one considers important? Well, the world doesn't seem to care very much what Snowden did. I haven't met a single person since the story broke out who gave a shit. I don't know if they're unsurprised at the totalitarian security state slowly caging them in, or if they are just anesthetized to it. Maybe the oversharing internet attention junkies have won, the concept of identity is permanently deformed and bureaucracized, and the privileged are smirking, and anyone who thinks differently is already a fool in the eyes of the world. Yes: the state looking inward is nothing new, but the implications have never been this clinical or far-reaching.
You can tell how tempted I am to write about it. I would continue to approach the topic as if it mystified me. I would slowly bring in the revelations that this, ironically, takes the modern world another step towards the supposedly obsolete and abandoned precepts of Stalinism. I would use the word totalitarian a bunch of times and I would put in a few choice burns at facebook's expense. I would not mention Orwell, because I'm not an idiot, but I could. I would point out that collusion between government and industry is never a good sign. Damn, it could've been a fine piece for the world to ignore. Another feather in my cap, but I don't want feathers in my cap and I don't want to say too much. Suffice it to say that the modern world has been making me more and more uncomfortable and uneasy.
[Oh, and I could go on...]
I don't know, but I used to talk about TV and music and movies a lot more. Things were lighthearted and even fun from time to time. The lows weren't as low and the highs were a lot higher. That bit about 90's action movies is what prompted the Cloud Atlas piece (in which I used, for the first time, a .gif) but going over it and comparing the two posts, I can honestly say there is a bit of a lack of focus. It's not as entertaining as the 90's action movie post which is among my most popular. It's not as tight. So either I'm a little disillusioned, a little lazy, or a little cynical.
[I mean, I recently posted a big thing about spelling, and the insipid new words that are becoming things because youths don't have dictionaries or proper education. Why not throw grammar in there, too, and just quit leading by flawed example, and instead become a huge pedantic turd? What's stopping me anymore from becoming a total, boring, oppressive clusterfuck?]
Don't worry. As if you would worry, right? Well I do, but that's exactly the point of this posting. I want every 'article' I post to be as brilliant or better than 90s Science. When I look back, way back to 2011, to the great Bon Iver piece and that great time of output. It was glorious. At the time I was engaged in blogging as a hopeless industry that could distract me from being unemployed and bleeding rent money every month (hoping against hope that I could monetize in time to avoid having to dig into savings) and the general shit of my life. Since then the numbers have gone to my head: the mere thought that I could top, say, ten thousand hits a month is intoxicating. With a readership of that magnitude I could probably begin to demand money and try freelance writing (the true holy grail for a terminally broke idiot such as myself)...
[Why else post about the Robert Ford Crack Scenario? For hits alone, but then: you gotta keep swinging. I'll admit it wasn't done with the flair of earlier Canadian politics bits. Since Jack Layton's death I can say I haven't done anything good about that beat.]
Oh... how I've fallen, but blogging isn't what it once was, either. In 2011 the biggest names were recognizable, some of them even to me. Now there are many who have fallen silent, moved on, sold out, shilled for big advertisement monies, etc... And I sit here, as ever, hoping that 1) I can write a good article, 2) find good topics and engage them, and 3) have as much fun as I obviously used to, without taking everything so seriously. The world is just as stupid and dark as it was then, and the hypocrisy of it annoyed me just as much, and I... had faith in myself or something? There must have been some ineffable Who knows. My recent output might be just as good as the old stuff, but I feel differently. Wish me luck, and hopefully something good happens instead of me just abandoning ship.
[Part of this blog even existing is that I've conditioned myself to a point where I have to type, simply for the mechanical joy of it, at least once a month. It's something to keep even a complete loafer somewhat in the game. Blogging as hopeless exercise.]
If I gave up it would be a dark admission and then why not quit writing and take up a trade? Buy a truck, vote in every election, become completely inconspicuous and nominally productive, eventually reproduce, and just essentially shut up, stop worrying and become a real person. Real people don't blog, right? I mean, some might, but there's no proof and I certainly wouldn't know.
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