I once had a conversation with a former professional clown. He told me that the reason he quit was because every time he went on stage, a voice in the back of his head kept saying, “I gotta be funny; I gotta be funny.” It wasn’t so much that he hated being a clown, but that he felt he was under so much pressure to do something that should have come naturally that it was killing the art. Being funny wasn’t fun, anymore.
Blogs were, originally, web logs. They were a way to keep one’s thoughts organized on a computer in a semi-permanent fashion that had no set time schedule or pressure to post. It was, in its crudest form, an electronic journal, with snooping privileges. Somewhere along the way, blogs became a professional enterprise for some and a little voice in the back of their head started to say, “I gotta blog; I gotta blog.”
Blogging, like humor, should be something one does, naturally. Everybody has thoughts. Sometimes, those thoughts are interesting. Sometimes, they are shareworthy. Sometimes, they are substantial. Occasionally, they are brilliant, but as Capt. James T. Kirk once said: “But a genius doesn’t work on an assembly line basis. Did Einstein, Kazanga, or… or Sitar of Vulcan produce new and revolutionary theories on a regular schedule? You can’t simply say, ‘Today I will be brilliant’.” [1]
This blog is a cross between a single topic blog and a day-in-my-life blog. I will not be posting vacation pictures, but, every once in a while, something in my day might strike me as interesting. I won’t be having debates with professional colleagues, here, either, for the simple fact that this is an anonymous blog and my research topics are pretty specific and there are only a small group of experts in the fields, so, it would be too easy to give my identity away (which I keep hidden because, for all its talk of freedom of speech, academia is notoriously unfriendly to the First Amendment).
One of the things I need to establish is a schedule for blogging with different topics each day to keep things fresh. Here is my proposed schedule*:
Monday – Mysteries and Detection
Tuesday – Theology
Wednesday – Science Fiction and Comics
Thursday – The Arts
Friday – STEM Topics
Saturday – Culture
*I reserve the right to interrupt this schedule for other topics.
I can’t promise that each day I will be brilliant, but I hope to post a good read. At least, I will be thinking.
The Chicken
Are you The Masked Chicken that used to comment at Jimmy’s blog?
Don’t know whether you remember me or not but it’s great to find you here; I hope you’re fine.
Yes, I am the same Masked Chicken. I think I do remember you. I miss the old days on Jimmy’s blog, when apologetic topics were argued. I wish there were still some place like that on the Internet, outside of Facebook.
The Chicken