As Keats warns us, there is no greater hell than failed ambition. Poking through random pages on the Internet, one encounters dozens of such hells: the abandoned blog. Once-proud stallions charging from the gate now become Death, the destroyer of worlds. Shuttered, beaten, downtrodden. The teeming masses yearning to breathe free who all drowned back in steerage when the ship capsized in sight of Jersey.
And yet, there they are. Like tiny fetuses suspended in formaldehyde tanks, Blogger and WordPress keeping them in a dank tent for the gawking masses at so many bits per gander. The lingering spectacle more the punishment for the noble thing each creature once was. Stray too close to the glass and occasionally one will spasm and try to get its ovipositor down your throat.
Today, LabKitty has decided to brave this harsh realm. Stage Zero of that tragic Markovian succession, the starting gun with loud report that will one day without fail bring us to the page-not-found finish line towards which all blogs race. Today I throw in my lot with the rest of the nobodies. Cock-eyed optimists, all.
Why have I only now given into this siren song?
The era when proclaiming "I have a blog" might get you famous is at least a decade past. Today having a blog is about as rare as having a cell phone or an STD. There was a time when blogging about, say, a private presidential peccadillo turned you into a millionaire instead of, say, a corpse in a 55 gallon drum at the bottom of the Potomac. But heutzutage, blogging no longer makes you a special snowflake. There is no cranny of the human condition so esoteric that it has not been explored in this most peculiar of literary forms. No doubt this very day there is somewhere impassioned dolls duking it out over the preeminence of integrating factors versus variation of parameters or debating claims that, while QED may have cinched him the Nobel, if you really want to get into Feynman his work on Taylor instability is where it's at. Manufactured outrage is about the only industry left in America. Well, that and Facebook, and I will never never give in to Facebook. [ LabKitty shakes paw at Mark Zuckerberg. ] My contempt for Facebook burns like a thousand burning suns of burning (a story for another time; perhaps in these very pages!).
Peer review usually keeps thoughts like these from prying eyes.
So why now? Let us here apply the old academic's saw if you cannot answer the question, answer a different question. That different question is: Why should you read anything LabKitty has to say? Answer: I have no idea. I can only promise I will never lie to you. Also, I'll keep the cussing to a minimum. (If you have to use bad language to make a point, you're either Joe Biden or a rapper.) In short: I can only do what I can with the time I am given. Beyond that, you're on your own.
Indeed, it's possible you are reading this when LabKitty has already joined that solemn roll call. The House where Nobody Lives. Time has already made history of us. So be it. As Gaff told Deckard, it's too bad she won't live
Then again, who does?
Play us off, Beach Kitty.
And yet, there they are. Like tiny fetuses suspended in formaldehyde tanks, Blogger and WordPress keeping them in a dank tent for the gawking masses at so many bits per gander. The lingering spectacle more the punishment for the noble thing each creature once was. Stray too close to the glass and occasionally one will spasm and try to get its ovipositor down your throat.
Today, LabKitty has decided to brave this harsh realm. Stage Zero of that tragic Markovian succession, the starting gun with loud report that will one day without fail bring us to the page-not-found finish line towards which all blogs race. Today I throw in my lot with the rest of the nobodies. Cock-eyed optimists, all.
Why have I only now given into this siren song?
The era when proclaiming "I have a blog" might get you famous is at least a decade past. Today having a blog is about as rare as having a cell phone or an STD. There was a time when blogging about, say, a private presidential peccadillo turned you into a millionaire instead of, say, a corpse in a 55 gallon drum at the bottom of the Potomac. But heutzutage, blogging no longer makes you a special snowflake. There is no cranny of the human condition so esoteric that it has not been explored in this most peculiar of literary forms. No doubt this very day there is somewhere impassioned dolls duking it out over the preeminence of integrating factors versus variation of parameters or debating claims that, while QED may have cinched him the Nobel, if you really want to get into Feynman his work on Taylor instability is where it's at. Manufactured outrage is about the only industry left in America. Well, that and Facebook, and I will never never give in to Facebook. [ LabKitty shakes paw at Mark Zuckerberg. ] My contempt for Facebook burns like a thousand burning suns of burning (a story for another time; perhaps in these very pages!).
Peer review usually keeps thoughts like these from prying eyes.
So why now? Let us here apply the old academic's saw if you cannot answer the question, answer a different question. That different question is: Why should you read anything LabKitty has to say? Answer: I have no idea. I can only promise I will never lie to you. Also, I'll keep the cussing to a minimum. (If you have to use bad language to make a point, you're either Joe Biden or a rapper.) In short: I can only do what I can with the time I am given. Beyond that, you're on your own.
Indeed, it's possible you are reading this when LabKitty has already joined that solemn roll call. The House where Nobody Lives. Time has already made history of us. So be it. As Gaff told Deckard, it's too bad she won't live
Then again, who does?
Play us off, Beach Kitty.
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