Love my woman, love my baby, love my biscuits sopped in gravy.

Monday, June 11, 2007

What the heck is this for anyway?

The following is a bit of self indulgent vanity and should be disregarded. For the time being it is kept as personal mockery and negative motivation.


So almost four years ago I started this blog, and of course there were a few people who read it in the beginning. However, those people have wisely ignored it, and now it sits here, rusting away, taking up server space, unfocused as ever.

Recently I thought it would be cool to put my thoughts on books I've read up, but again, since I'm the only person who bothers to look at this little darling, it's more of an archive for nobody. There are a million opinions on books, and I earn nothing for this, along with the fact that nobody reads it anyway makes it a pointless endeavor.

Then recently I was tracking an online argument between a couple of blogs. Phil Johnson basically called my friend Dan out on the carpet about his theology, and his minions at team pyro jumped on the bandwagon. I wrote something about it, cleverly disguised as a meeting between two dog owners. Of course, I thought it was clever, but anyone who wasn't tracking the little spat would just think it useless drivel. Again, it was mostly for my own fun, so it didn't really matter.

I look back at the variety of posts, and some of them were funny to me, but I run into a sort of glass wall with many of the posts here. That is a glass wall made of and invisible audience. Here's what I mean, and I had the same issue when I wrote a column for a daily rag in college. I have definite opinions on things, but I tend to think of every counter argument, and worse, either evade offense or curb the directness of what I want to say. That weakens the impact, and makes a potentially good story come with a very weak ending.

A perfect example, other than probably the majority of the posts on nerdbilly.com, was a story I wrote once on the previously mentioned college newspaper. It was about a time a friend and I were fishing and I caught a seagull. I just cast a long one out toward the ocean and some dumb seagull decided to turn my fishing line into kite string. Instead of the humor that I saw in real life, I ended the story with a mamby-pamby feel good ending about how nice it was to see the bird fly to freedom. I still am embarrassed by that, even though nobody in the world but me remembers it and in all likelihood, wouldn't remember it if it had been written in the New Yorker. The funny part is that's been closer to twenty years ago than ten, and the bird is dead by now anyway.

So what is the point of keeping this little site on life support? Well, it's personal edification, and practice. In my little world, I am a writer. I hear others called writers, and deep inside, I think to myself, "I'm the writer." I know I have the ability to write, but get sidetracked by life. It probably stems from a story I wrote when I was ten about a monster that ravaged Watsonville that I was able to whip single handed. I got an A+++ and a star, and my Granny (an English professor) made copies on the ditto machine and sent me twenty duplicates of it. I was ten, and published. It was all gravy from there, except I seldom bothered writing any more stories, and new stories I kept to myself.

What I want to do, starting with this ridiculous rant, is to write, not for you, the invisible or nonexistent audience, but for me. That should have been the point from day one. I think once or twice I succeeded in doing just that, but as often have written with the notion that some invisible person was ready with a criticism.

There must be an intended audience, I guess, but I am narrowing my audience to one, and I think that will appeal to more people than trying to justify every other sentence. I enjoy writing, and I have my opinions, so I will put my paper firmly against that glass wall and scribble for myself.

So with that in mind, let me venture a few opinions, that if you happen to read, you can agree or disagree with, but you are entitled to your own opinion.

- I love Jesus. He died on the cross for me and I am indebted to Him, because he saved me from myself.
- I love the United States of America.
- I love my wife and my daughter, and I try my best to be a good husband and dad.
- I can't understand why anyone would want to be a hippie, but I know and like a few of them. It's not my bag, though.
- I like cowboys, westerns, and country living.
- I like good American music. You would think that when someone says music they would mean that the people who produce the music would actually know how to play their instrument. Talking doesn't count, even if it is rhythmic. Singing by itself doesn't necessarily count, either. Just because you have a good voice doesn't mean you are a musician, although Frank, Dean, Bobby, and Ella all were. So my top three musicians are Charlie Daniels, Ricky Skaggs and Brian Setzer, in different order depending on the week. They can all play at least three instruments each, and can all sing. So throw in some blues, some Skynyrd, some bluegrass and some jazz and you are getting closer to what is good. "In my humble opinion" is implied.
- I like a good book. Some of the best are by Thomas Hardy, PG Wodehouse, and Cormac McCarthy. Some of the worst are by Nicholas Sparks, Dan Brown, and most of the stuff on posters in Borders. I'm still trying to figure out the Bible and its central character, but at least I have a head start on most of the people I interact with on a daily basis.

There's a snapshot, but is just that. A partial picture, but hopefully a more honest one than I've ventured before. And hopefully not the most honest one yet. It's been said by musicians and writers that unless it's honest, it will come across as false. Whether fact or fiction, I hope these posts, irrelevant as they may be, come across as honest.

Labels: