Google and Ego

There is a little exercise I do gaining perspective on personal creativity: I take the latest clever idea, or phrase, or band name etc, that I have thought up and enter in into Google.  More often than not, I get multiple hits...on urban dictionary, a name of a band, now broken up, a movie stuck in planning on IMDB...  It's a good way to remind myself that I swim in a sea of memes that combine in my mind and subconscious in their own patterns and do so in a number of other minds at the same time.  It's also a reminder that if I truly want to be original, I need to spend less time on the cultural freeways, and choose my inputs with care.  Ah, screw that...what's on Hulu?   

Auto Didactivity

If the internet has made a culture of autodidacts, then maybe blogs are where we hand in our homework.  I shall consider this blog as such, and do my best to source my ideas and provide bibliographical information.  By no means will this be exhaustive, since I am seeking here to only speak for my own perspective and not trying to add to the heap of "solid knowledge," which becomes nearly immediately outdated and is usually rendered useless by the caution that comes with "defending it."   I'm more interested in what in life is personally vital and dynamic to me as I apprehend it and in conveying it as clearly as I can for my own understanding and for adding to what Wendell Berry describes as the "great conversation."  Yeah, I know his teacher at Stanford called it that but I don't have the book any more, so it goes back to Berry.  

Initial Post

I'm aware of some sort of tradition that advises to do on the first day of the year that which you intend to continue through the year.  Since I don't want the year to be limited to banana and peanut butter burritos for breakfast, I'm starting this blog.  I have a tumblr also (http://paracog.tumblr.com/), where I post music and more whimsical things, but no one has a chance there to comment, and I want a personal forum to write at length and start conversations.  I've long had some things I want to say and discuss, but comments sections of popular blogs are a good place to be lost in the dimwitted arguments and digressions.  

As an aging man who has become increasingly resigned as my nation and state (California) have pursued shortsighted and worthless goals, I find it rather inconvenient to wake up into a new year filled with hope, promise, and energy.  I reluctantly accept the challenge to step up and be heard, to find ways in which a reclusive, nay, sociophobic geezer can contribute to the new uprisings of sanity and reason in response to the issues that confront the world.  

So, belatedly, now that everyone and their pets has a blog, here is mine.