Right Turn, Clyde Thursday, March 25, 2004

I started reading blogs largely for politics. I didn't care about quotidian tidbits from anybody's life, no matter how interesting or how obsessively detailed. (The big exception being Robert Fripp's "pathologicly neurothic" online diary. Like the graffiti says, suck it and see!) Seeing friends' blogs, and some old hands like James Lileks, I've softened some, but mostly I look to online commentaries as a way to translate news, or even as a source of news I can't get elsewhere.

But I've stayed away from posting that kinda stuff myself, frankly out of terror about what people will think. Catholicism has been the proxy for it, I guess: Everybody knows I swing that way, so I can lay on the religious talk as thick as I want without offending. (Which is not say: without boring.) But that's got to change.

The other morning, I offended Mrs. WTJ with an offhand comment about la vida loca gripping Spain at the moment. I had no idea why she was offended, but as I kicked it around I realized what I said would only make sense if you'd read all the essays, articles and blogs I've been keeping up with for years. If I don't start coming clean, people (meaning "people close to me"; no global audience here) are free to fill in the blanks about what I think and where I'm coming from. And that ain't good.

So expect some spicy controversialisms at some point soon.

@ 10:45:00 AM, ,

Harsimus Cove Tuesday, March 23, 2004

I've been called on the carpet for not posting, so here's a post. It's been a tremendously busy couple of weeks, lots of editing and furious work when I get home--again, trying to figure out how laser guns are supposed to work. Secret Thing #1 will be thrown open for general discussion sometime in June, and available for inspection sometime this fall. Secret Thing #3 should be debatable in a couple of weeks and arrive, God willing, in October. Secret Thing #2: Oy vey.

For those of you just joining us: #1 is a game I'm working on for a friend's company. #2 is a bigger-scale project with a friend of mine that I'm not prepared to talk about no way, nohow. #3 is its own thing.

What else can I say? I've been reading Robert Louis Stevenson, who is no slouch, but I'm not sure he's a genius. He's capable of wonderful flourishes, and his sketches of friendship, loyalty and peril are enough to bring on the sobs. Not to mention his villains, who are as black and cunning as they come. But overall I'm not sure he's got the oooomph of a real genius. His books--with the notable exception of "Treasure Island"--take an unbearable time to get rolling, from a post-modern reader's point of view. Then they usually end with incidents that have become cliches (but were fresh at the time). The second acts, however, are marvelous; witty and exhilarting. (The middle section of "Kidnapped," for instance, perfectly anticipates Sam and Frodo hiking through Mordor.)

Now I'm back to Bertie and Jeeves. Any writer who can make you giggle in a doctor's waiting room at ten of eight in the morning is worth his salt.

@ 4:16:00 PM, ,