Blogging strikes me as self indulgent, narcissistic, and arrogant - something I fantasized about when I was very young.
I suspect my early fantasy was prompted by overhearing a snippet of conversation about the silent movie child star Jackie Coogan. Coogan's fame and appeal was so great as the title character of Chaplin's film "The Kid" that everything he did was slavishly noted. Some mothers claimed that they fed and dressed their little boys to be just like Jackie. From this I imagined myself a star with someone slavishly reporting everything I wore and ate. If my mother intended to feed me Wheatina, mothers all across America would cook Wheatina for their children. (I was too young to have envisioned product placements and endorsements or to realize that children forced to eat food that I liked and they detested would grow up with but a single burning desire: to earn enough money to pay for a contract on my life.)
Riffing on that theme, imagine the disruption of the economy if people modeled their behavior on mine. I live without so many common items of American life. I never developed a taste for alcohol. I don't smoke. I don't drink soda. I don't gamble.* I don't own a TV, microwave or iPod. I gave up my phone. With the exception of buying replacement running shoes and chinos, I haven't bought new clothes for several years. It helps that I'm rather easy on clothes and work doesn't demand sartorial splendor. (A trove of ripped and stained clothes are available for outdoor work and working on cars. My mother, in her most tactful way has pointed out that those work clothes could better society by being used to tie up newspapers for recycling.)
(Looking at all the negatives in the preceding paragraph I should add something positive. Hmm, perhaps something like how I'll soon be available for speaking engagements after I finish mortifying my flesh and climb down from my pillar in the desert, but I digress...)
The American economy would collapse if a significant percentage of the country behaved like me. (Economists would not be the least perturbed. Adam Smith's "unseen hand" along with creative legislation would adapt: Tapioca pearl markets would develop. Book and music collection taxes would be instituted. Ordinances would be passed fining those whose style did not meet the GQ image.)
Enough is probably too much. If a blog of this size takes me as long as it did to create I can't imagine faculty intent on an academic career blogging unless they aspire to membership in the critical class.
It's the birthday of Raymond Carver and Theodore Roethke.
* By not gambling I mean I don't bet or visit casinos. All life is a gamble. (This last sentence would logically lead to a discussion of free will vs determinism, but I will defer that to a later post.)
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