Alright, my burning question of the day is as follows:

Is everyone else's blog as painful to read as I think it is? Or is everybody else great, and I'm the one who sucks canal water?

When I read the tripe that's kicking around the internet, I wonder how those people have readers. Maybe they don't. Maybe this whole "blogosphere" notion is a myth. There really isn't any such thing. The truth is, there are only 12 semi-literate losers, posting garbage that hurts to digest on their nowheresville blog. With them, comes an army of illiterates who quote sound bites off of bumper stickers and feel informed (and maybe even edgy; a little alternative) because they've made reference to a blog that they heard of.

Or maybe it's just me.

I read The Dawn Patrol; a blog that is an exception to my petty grievance. This lady is really a pleasant read, regardless of her politics.

If you can recommend a blog that is well-written, by all means do so. Until then, I remain unconvinced.

Author's disclaimer:

By no means am I trying to say that I'm some kind of John Steinbeck. Or Beverly Cleary. Heck, I'm probably not even an Ariel Lefkowicz.

Put down the bumper sticker, and no one will get hurt.

You want to know what I love about the Navy? (In retrospect of course, there's lots to love.) The swearing. Possibly the foulest, crassest, most vile speech on the planet is made available as a staple, right alongside the scrambled eggs.

I understand that George Carlin used to tell a joke about some list of words that you could never say on network television. The way the joke went, he would recite the words, and everybody laughed, precisely because you couldn't say them. And he had! (Gasp. Laugh.) Having uttered the 5 or 6 unutterables, he put himself so far beyond the pale, that it was a shock to the system.

The people who laughed at George Carlin had a network television frame of reference. If it didn't fly with Ozzie & Harriet, it wouldn't fly with them. If Mork & Mindy found themselves put out by the language, or the difficulty, or the situation, chances were good that these same people would be troubled.

In the Navy, a sewage main once opened in the overhead of our bathroom, depositing a two inch deep layer of raw human waste into our bedroom. In the Navy, you visit people who eat fermented duck embryos for enjoyment. In the Navy, working for thirty-six hours isn't uncommon, and you should anticipate no special attaboys. Your hands will be cold, you will be wet, tired, uncomfortable, thirsty, hot, and filthy; you will be able to fall asleep on an eight-inch wide I-beam, you will know men who urinate in their beds out of laziness, and you will be thrown up on at least once or twice. (Otherwise, how will you know that you've had fun?) You will clean things that are repulsive, and then eat pringles off of the floor. You may be beaten with a fire hose, you might swim through garbage, and you will see a side of humanity that that you probably wish you hadn't.

All of the cursing, swearing, and expletives that are deleted from our lives here in Suburbia, are the elements of a life that has long since lost its delete key. Shipboard speech is symptomatic of a shipboard frame of mind. Shipboard speech is born out of a raw and unvarnished existence. The life that deletes that speech, is the life that has whitewashed over elements of humanity that really aren't far from Suburbia. Every time we neglect to drop a well-placed F-bomb on some moron who desperately needs it, we rob them of a valuable experience.

festering mediocrity

I didn't think that I would be laboring in such obscurity.

I thought that once I plunged into the blogosphere, that I would have a sort of instant notoriety. I thought that hip, young, subway-riding men would be subscribing to my almost daily blog looking for moments of enlightenment to brighten their otherwise dreary train ride to mediocrity. I expected people to read my posts and be either inspired or inflamed, and be compelled to respond.

So what happened? Where are my subscribers? Where are the impassioned responses to my posts?

Here is the ugly truth:

There are precious few Bentleys on the information super highway. It doesn't matter how wide the lanes are, inviting more vehicles hasn't done anything to raise the overall level of discourse. Most of what is printed, posted, or published is heaps of festering mediocrity.

Probably, my writing is only adding to the traffic. Just one more idiot who refuses to use his turn-signals.

"Put down the bumper sticker and no one will get hurt."