A Spoonful of Cynicism

I hate blogs.  Hate them.  Why am I writing one, then?  Mostly to vent, like Lear shaking his fist at the heavens; partly to show the world that yes, Virginia, you can have correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation on the Internet. 

This is a blog for people who hate blogs.  At least it is if it becomes a long-term thing.  Who knows?  I might give up on it when I decide I hate it, which, given the major premise of the work, seems rather on the likely side.  We'll see. 

Do you know what I miss?  Essay writing.  Crisp, tight, ad unguem.  I miss writing that is formal enough to publish, yet personal enough for the average educated reader to ken.  I miss topic paragraphs and allusions and wordplay.  I miss writing that has a  point. 

For example, Paul Krugman is one of the few voices on the New York Times' opinion page who makes an ounce of sense and isn't annoying as hell.  (Even if he is a phrenologist.)  Still, I read his column, not his blog.  I don't need Paul Krugman's opinion every single day of the week.  A series of thematically related yet topically selective expatiations is all I ask. 

It irritates me that blogs are seen by an alarmingly large segment of the public, of whatever political persuasion, as the wave of the future, a technological force majeure.  Blogs, it is said, will eventually supplant the traditional media (be it conceived as liberal, corporate, freemason, or whatever), ushering in a new utopia of chrome and neon and penis enlargement. 

The reality is that, to the extent that they have had any impact on human society, blogs have contributed to the erosion of traditional media -- which actually pay reporters to gather information -- while adding nothing but distortion and pontification (typically of the most puerile and uninformed variety). 

What you will get from me, to put it plainly, is simply a series of essays or columns or just plain rants.  Every so often, I will choose some topic that interests or provokes me, and attempt to analyze it or argue about it. 

I will not bore you with excessive details from my personal life, although I may regale you with some or other anecdote that I find amusing, revealing, funny, or just plain weird.  By way of introduction, I will say that I am 28 years old, a white male of Jewish extraction, though atheist in belief.  I am politically progressive, though in a perhaps surprisingly unconventional way, a gay guy (deal with it, assholes), loyal but often stubborn and irascible.

I emerged from the darkest pits of suburban Long Island, that alienated wasteland of postmodernity, and attended college at Sarah Lawrence in Westchester, New York.  I have done some freelance reporting (Here are some links to my work: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/10/117_54131.html, http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2010/04/160_55501.html)  I am currently finishing up an MA in Philosophy.

Finally, please note that I am theoretical in my orientation.  That is, I usually interpret the world by applying some larger idea to particular things, showing how details fit together systemically.  If this turns you off, well, don't read it.  Right now, I would describe my thinking as a kind of "formal materialism," for want of a better term.  What does that mean?  A subject for another column.

Be seeing you....