Keeping up with the blogosphere joneses

Just because I haven’t posted anything in almost a week, it doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy; I do, after all, have a day job that takes-up 18 hours of my time four days a week. Some people actually make a living at this kind of thing, like over at the Seattle Times, where people get paid six-figures to come-up with an opinion twice a week that may or may not be complete bovine scatology; just that they are employed by the paper is supposed to be reason enough for us to believe that they are credible. One of their columnists was apparently booted off the local section, probably for offending too many readers with commentary that sounded too much like unjust personal attacks. However, the paper couldn’t just fire her; her radicalized “fans” would have cried sexism, so she was shunted-off to offer opinions on local entertainment, where presumably she would have fewer opportunities to offend. Frankly, getting per diem to do the kind of things most of us would consider recreation (maybe even a luxury) is hardly “work” but fulltime pleasure; however, this person is still given the opportunity to occasionally berate readers about the travails of being a white woman in this society.

There are lots of people on the web who are far more glib than I am, and find it easier to knock-off an off-hand opinion; I can only do that if I can relate something to personal experience, or it is a subject I have a particular interest in, like various forms of hypocrisy, police abuses, history, film or music. Sometimes I draw from cultural influences that are of little interest to the current generation, such as classical literature; Voltaire’s Candide is my favorite book of fiction, and I lifted that passage from Tom Jones last week because I remembered it from reading the book the years ago, after watching the Oscar-winning film starring Albert Finney on television (I fondly remember another passage in the novel depicting a beautiful flower surrounded by those of a less delightful variety, but unfortunately its scent did not match its beauty—thus Fielding described Lady Bellaston’s bad breath). Otherwise, I spend much more time researching and reading than I do writing. I won’t walk into minefields like domestic violence or human sex trafficking blind; you have to arm yourself with facts that obliges the forces of runaway advocacy to explain the incongruities of their versions of reality. 

In the meantime, if I don’t post anything for days, it’s not because I haven’t written anything, but because I’m been working on several projects simultaneously and I’m not satisfied with any of them to post. I’ve been working on commentary on the late Hugo Chavez, the social implications of the Jodi Arias murder case, why voters should blame themselves and not Barack Obama for the current political stalemate, my investigation into the Looking for Mr. Goodbar-missing-on-DVD case, and a couple of other things; they’ll eventually make it on my blog. Or not; right now, the Michael Vick canceled book tour/death threats story has suddenly piqued my curiosity.