The Dustbin of Bloggery

My brain is a little worn out (not from overuse, I assure you!). Usually writing this blog is a way of doing some (minimal) intellectual work without the pressures of production. When I'm stuck at work, writing something low-stakes and/or playful helps me reconnect with why I like language and/or why I think it's important.

But lately I feel just as stuck with the blog as I do with everything else. This too shall pass, of course. But it's led to some rather banal posts (don't deny it), so I thought I would go into the "edit posts" feature of Blogger and see if I had started any substantive or funny posts that I could finish up.

Well, it turns out I've started and abandoned LOTS of posts, some of which just have a title and some of which have notes, and almost all of which are a total mystery to me. This one looks to be literary analysis coupled with some sleep-deprived raving:

Watching the Detectives

I am Feemus's insomnia. In desperation, have taken to falling asleep in front of tv. Detective shows are best for falling asleep. 21 Jumpstreet or The Rockford Files are the jackpot. Barnaby Jones ok, too. Wonder if Buddy Ebson liked Donna Douglas or Lee Meriwether better.

Structural difference between detective stories and fairy tales:

In detective stories, even edgy or genre-bending ones, the structure is revelatory; opacity eventually gives way to transparency. Motives become more or less intelligibe. Everything that happens means something. All process is process toward an end—even the inevitable red herrings are involved in that process. Fairy tales are the opposite. Instead of being essential, instead of leading the way to eventual unravelment, details in fairy tales are very often just there. They seem to resist rational explanation or to fit themselves into the plot in any way. Why, for instance, are Cinderella’s slippers made from glass? Does it matter? Is some point being made about transparency in the midst of disguise and dissembling? A girl born into privilege who is made to act like a servant dressing up as a privileged girl, the clarity of the glass slippers being emblematic of the fact that she was disguised as her true self. Is it suggesting that we are always in a state of performance even if what we are performing is the truth? Nothing is ever explained in a fairy tale. Details assume a kind of transcendent meaning because they remain at the level of suggestion, because they refuse to yield their secrets. Would Bluebeard have killed his wife if she hadn’t opened the forbidden room? And why was Bluebeard’s beard blue? This detail, important enough to find its way into the title of the story, important enough to name the character, is never explained. The blue beard was grotesque in its irrelevance to the story, in its inconsequence. Or is it inconsequential? Was Bluebeard murderous because of his disfigurement? Was his disfigurement the external manifestation of a maimed and brutal soul? Why didn’t he simply shave?

Lee Meriwether, I bet.

Well, at least I see where I was going with that one. But what about this?

bacon

weil - bacon - johnson - tom tancredo - risch

Your guess is as good as mine. This one seems simple enough:

Crazy Sells

Ron Paul, Mike Gravel. Crazy is the new White Southern in Presidential politics.

This one seems to have been on roughly the same subject:

Loyal to the UnRealpolitik

I love watching Gravel throw that rock into the lake. Don't ask me why. Dude's nuts.

This one, I was clearly pissed off. Frankly, I still am, but no longer have the energy to sustain it:

Harvey Mansfield Can Suck My Thumos

I don't even think he really understands the concept of thumos, and are we really going to let a culture that wouldn't let women out of doors dictate our notions of gender? Seriously?

But the jewel in the crown of incomprehensibility is this one, that has nothing but a title:

irredeemable evil

I wonder what side I was coming down on, pro or con?