What it's all about

Rummaging through life's couch cushions for topics in the law, economics, sports, stats, and technology

Friday, December 31, 2010

Resolutions and Habits

My favorite saying is an old Chinese Proverb, "if you don't change your direction, you are likely to end up going where you are headed."

I like it because it underscores the perpetual nature of development. Life isn't about resolutions. It's about habits. The actions we take on a daily basis determine our skill sets. Talents we don't develop atrophy. The longer they atrophy, the harder they are to get back. Aspects of our lives we focus on tend to develop and blossom. If you obsess over Bell Biv Devoe albums, you're going to develop an encyclopedic knowledge of some craptastic R&B. If you do push ups every day, you're going to get some pectoral muscles.

If you want to change your life, the key isn't to make a set of goals. Rather, take the goals you have, and the dreams you want to pursue, and make them into habits. If you want to be a better writer, you have to get into the habit of writing daily (the purpose of this blog for me).

For most of us, our lives can broken down into a half-dozen or so habits. We have consistent work, diet, sleep, exercise, relationship, and entertainment routines that govern our existence.

It sounds so basic, but once a habit gets set, it ceases to be a conscious decision. It starts to become life. Frequently, what we value gets lost in what we do, usually because it's easy. When that happens, your life tends to get lost in what you do. And that's hard to get back.

Happy New Year and Best of Luck in 2011.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Ms. O'Donnell

Today, it was announced that Christine O'Donnell is under investigation for using campaign funds to take care of personal expenses, including rent. This is newsworthy regardless of the candidate, but it's no doubt much more so because Ms. O'Donnell is such a spectacularly polarizing figure, and the most mock-able political figure in recent memory.

Her die-hard followers will doubtless consider this a personal attack created by a politically motivated department of justice. For the many among us who think that she's emblematic of the worst of American politics, it's more evidence that she's a corrupt fool who has already risen far beyond her Peter principle: an absolute incompetent elevated because her image kinda sorta resembles Sarah Palin's.

But the phenomenon that is Christine O'Donnell won't go away. She's a national figure because of her hijinks - from her alleged hook-up with a 20-something last Halloween to her campaign commercial where she protested the allegations she was a witch. Her lack of self awareness, good looks, and willingness to put herself out there make her a perfect reality-TV political candidate.

And this is the direction that American politics (and probably world politics is going). The difference between the policies of the candidates are so narrow, that we align ourselves behind the candidate whose personality most closely aligns itself with what we value. Not who we are, but what we proclaim to believe.

Barack Obama is popular with the left because he's a walking poster child for what Democrats would like this country to be: a multicultural, intelligent, good-looking, worldly, cool, self-possessed thinker who attempts to deal with parties rationally. Palin's popular with the right because she's a gun-toting, strong, fit, attractive, witty, mother who refused to have an abortion, even when she learned she was having a special needs child.

It doesn't matter if either is or was qualified to be President. What's important is that they're the best human symbols each party has conjured to represent our party's beliefs.

And just as it is on MTV's The Real World, which each year carefully chose a perfectly representative group of caricatured young men and women to represent rich white, poor black, flaming gay, lesbianism, etc. each year on its show, so too should we expect our candidates to represent a caricature of what each party believes.

It may not do much to support the stability of the country, but it should be plenty entertaining.

Monday, December 27, 2010

Predictions for 2011

Predictions are fun, but rarely useful. They tell you what someone thinks is happening now, and attempts to extrapolate them into the future.

Nonetheless, here are my predictions for 2011.

1) Kick-the-can-down-the-roadism, the predominant philosophy of our time, and which claims equal numbers of believers on both the right and the left, remains in full force. Budget problems will not be addressed, imbalances in Europe and Chimerica will be ignored and grow increasingly unstable. Liquidity is such that these problems are not likely to be resolved this year.

2) There are two events I foresee that could cause a return to recession in the US: 1) Problems in the bond market that force Spain to seek foreign assistance to meet its funding needs and 2) increased pressure on the Japanese bond markets force it to seek international assistance or drastically lower the value of its currency. Current trends make the former seem more likely than the latter, but the latter would be far more destabilizing to the world economy.

3) Without exogenous shocks, the US will not return to recession in 2011, unless Congress aggressively attempts to reduce the budget deficit (very unlikely).

4) Even if they do not finish the season with the best record, the Miami Heat will win the NBA title this year. Easily.

5) Social tensions will rise, as the gap between wealth owned the top fraction of 1% and the rest grows. Local and state governments will cut budgets; business will reduce perks for all but the highest revenue producers. For all but the best entrepreneurs and executives, standards of living will be reduced, even if only marginally.

6) Opportunities for entrepreneurs remain great. Those who take control of their own professional destiny and meet relevant demands in the market will be rewarded. Anyone who tries to earn a living as a wage-earner or salary earner in a standard environment will see increased pressure on their standard of living, as high unemployment and increased mobility and fungibility of service workers allows employers to save money and cut costs.

7) Streaming television continues to grow in popularity and significance, with Netflix facing strong competition from Amazon, Google, Comcast, and others. A la carte cable will start to become a reality.

8) Dave Chappelle makes a comeback (I hope).

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

The Landycakes Debate

For American soccer fans, Landon Donovan occupies a central role in our fragile sports psyche. It’s not nuanced enough to say that we have a love-hate relationship with him. No, it goes deeper than that. Our relationship with LD is much more akin to that an overzealous parent with a precocious child. We scream at him from the sidelines, even though he ascends to heights we could never dream of accomplishing. We scorn him, despite the fact that he is, almost without question, the most accomplished American position player in history.[1]

We’ve laid insecurities on him, trying to channel our frustrations on him in hopes that it makes him reach for greater things.

Dedicated American soccer fans have known about Donovan since his teenage years. Since then, he’s built up a proud resume. In 1999, he led the US to a 4th place finish at the FIFA under-17 championships, which immediately led to skyscraper expectations. Shortly thereafter, he signed for Bayern Leverkusen, a team that was a couple years away from reaching the UEFA champions league final, losing to Real Madrid. But he floundered at Bayern, and he got a reputation for being soft. He then returned to the United States, played in the MLS for a couple of years, and led the national team to an excellent result in the 2002 World Cup, crushing cup darlings Portugal in the first game and losing only to eventual runners up Germany in the quarterfinals. He was on his way again, but his best years had some bumps. He went abroad to Germany again at Bayern Munich, but never stuck with the team. He’s played well in the MLS throughout his career, but it’s a second-tier league. Somewhere along the line he got the nickname “Landycakes.” I can’t imagine he likes it.

He was invisible in the 2006 World Cup, but came up big in 2010 to take the US to the Round of 16.

But the Round of 16 isn’t as sexy as the 4th place finish in 1999. Hmph.

Yesterday, MLS and Donovan drew criticism when they announced Donovan will not be playing on loan at Everton in the English Premier league during the MLS this off season. Again, as if we were his parents, we overreacted. It’s as if our collective soccer pride was on the line, and Donovan has no choice but to spend his off season defending it.

To American soccer fans, many of us view Donovan as the country’s first near-elite position player. But his career, though impressive, has yet to fully leave the imprint that many had hoped on the international soccer community, where Donovan is viewed as good, but not great. We feel as if his career has been a B-plus career, despite the fact that he’s accomplished more as a soccer player than anyone in this country’s history.

But maybe Donovan doesn’t feel the need to prove himself any longer. He’s had an excellent career, and he’s not done yet. Perhaps he doesn’t need to spend every month of his life trying to prove to “the World” that he’s good enough.

Maybe he just wants a few months off.

Any maybe American soccer fans need to take a deep breath and realize that it’s his decision to make, not ours.



[1] The United States has produced at least three international-class goalkeepers. Most notably, Tim Howard, Brian Friedl, and Kasey Keller. All three, I would argue, have performed better on the international stage than Donovan. Yet, for whatever reason, none of these players have suffered from the same kind of scrutiny as Donovan.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

On Lebron James

The Miami Heat are a basketball team. They are abnormal for multiple reasons. For one, they are very talented. They have three members of Team USA at their peak playing together. That makes them exceptional. It makes them very good, and perhaps spectacular.

But that’s not why they’re important. They’re important because they’re a cultural phenomenon with oddly shaped wings. Before they had a season together, before they had won any championships, before they had won (or lost) any games, ESPN hired a team of columnists to cover them full time. They hired stats expert Tom Haberstroh and former Cavs beat writer Brian Windhorst to cover every cough and sneeze. Bethlehem Shoals of FreeDarko.com fame writes about them (almost) daily. Deadspin covers every game. Or damned close.

The Spanish have an expression, “Morbo,” to describe a morbid fascination that a person, event, or group might have that piques your interest, regardless of whether you might typically interested in such a thing. The Heat have “morbo.” Mucho morbo. The interest surrounding the team defies standard classification of when you’d objectively want to cover a sporting event. They don’t have the best record. They don’t draw the best crowds. They don’t have a great history or a loyal fan base. They’re just three superstars who defied expectations and decided they wanted to play with each other in South Beach. And that’s what they did.

And people hate them. Not just die-hard fans, or traditionalists, or folks from Cleveland. Fans boo them as if they were Nazis or something. It’s worse than after Kobe had the rape allegations in Eagle. Way worse than Gilbert after he drew a gun on a teammate. Infinitely worse than Melo after he got a DUI.

You have to wonder why something this trivial makes people so upset. I mean, viscerally angry. Thinking about your ex-girlfriend sleeping with another guy angry. The Heat are to your average basketball fan what Obamacare is to Tea Party supporters. It’s deep, it’s irrational, but it’s real. We can forgive Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson for running into the stands and swinging at fans who may or may not have thrown beer at them, but we can never forgive Lebron James. We can forgive Ray Lewis, who may or may not have been involved in a murder, but we can’t accept what the Heat have done.

Why?

Maybe it’s because we’re jealous. We can’t just leave our crap jobs, our crap cities, and go to a nicer place, party with cooler people, and make the sex with the hot women. We can’t just ditch or current colleagues and replace them with more competent ones. We can’t just change the terms of our employment and tell our boss make us ice cream sundaes every day lunch, employ our friends, and shine our shoes. But Lebron James? He can. And he did. He didn’t stick out a bad or mediocre situation out of loyalty to people he never met. He made his life better. And people hate him for it.

And that says a lot more about the people who hate him than it says about Lebron James.

Monday, December 20, 2010

Boo. Hiss.

When BLADU was a magazine that was read by at least a few human beings, one of the common criticisms of it in its first few years was that it was bitchy. Having read over the first few postings of this edition of BLADU, the blog, I started thinking that it was something I was going to have to guard against once again.

It makes sense. It's easy to be critical, but it's hard to create. There's a time and a place for bitching, but as Vonnegut once said, "Give me poison, and you'll make me sick." In the end, building something -- anything -- is almost always more rewarding than tearing something else down. It's a lesson I've learned before but have largely forgotten.

So I'm going to have to get a bit creative if I'm going to post a majority of semi-positive daily posts. But I suppose that's the point. We'll see.

Fortunately, I suspect that there isn't anyone reading this. So, at a minimum, there won't be much pressure.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Sideways Premium

Just checked out the wine list for the restaurant I'm heading out to tonight. I compared the the retail price and compared to the restaurant price. The mark up on the Pinot Noirs was an average of 500%. The mark up on the Zinfandel was 100%. Humph.

Every major Pinot producer in this country should be sending a heckuva Christmas gift to the author of Sideways, Rex Pickett, this year. They certainly owe him a few bucks.

Friday, December 17, 2010

On Status (cont.)

What concerns me about Cowen’s perspective on status (or at least what I perceive it to be), is that it does not allow for much dissonance between perceived status and actual ability. Nor does it provide much solace for those who don’t find themselves in the best position when others view at them from a social hierarchy. Secretaries are secretaries and executives are executives, folks rise to their Peter Principle, and that’s that.

I have a number of objections to this. Perhaps, in line with the Vonnegut analogy, my taste simply does not align with the masses, or the intellectual elite, and I happen to disagree with what they value. There are geniuses who are misunderstood in their time and there are those who are never understood. And there are very good thinkers who aren’t timely, or were slackers in high school, or college, and therefore were limited in their ability to obtain an advanced degree from the types of institutions that make it easy to be recognized.

It is a narrow world when you chose to limit the perspective on what’s valuable and what’s worth listening to based on whether someone has achieved a certain status in a hierarchy.

From the perspective of those who receive Ph.D’s in economics from Princeton, I suspect they look at themselves as if they were starting on Duke’s basketball team. Elite basketball players receive national recognition starting in junior high, and by high school, the best of the best know who each other are. Then, they attend a select number of schools. While it’s possible that the best in 2010 that the freshman best point guard in the country plays for Division III Ripon College in Wisconsin, it’s far more likely that it’s Kyrie Irving, the likely top-5 lottery pick playing for Duke. And most of the freshman point guards in the country are probably going to agree with that.

Similarly, there’s an elaborate process for weeding out the best of the best in Economics. High school grades, SATs, and college grades are only a fraction of the data points used in determining the most capable. If you didn’t excel at the highest level at the type of undergraduate institution that could prepare your for Princeton’s economics program, you likely wouldn’t have

The difference is thus: Kyrie Irving could have three mediocre games, but his overall body of work would still demonstrate to scouts that he’s someone well worth drafting early in the first round in the NBA draft. But if you get three Bs in undergrad, you’re not getting into Princeton’s Ph.D. program in Economics. Or Harvard’s. Or MIT’s. Or Berkeley’s. Or the University of Chicago’s.

What does this say about the ruler we’re using to measure the table, in Wittgenstein’s metaphor? It’s so competitive and there’s so little margin for error that any slip ups and you’re immediately removed from the elite talent pool. Thus, what’s valued appears to be constancy of intellectual production, combined with extraordinary talent. And there’s something to be said for that. But, in a field such as economics where significant breakthroughs and insight are rare, it is narrow to limit the field to those who produce very good work consistently, at the expense of those who create brilliant work, but with less consistency. Forget genius, run-of-the-mill creative types tend to be a little erratic. Harking back to my school days, the Venn diagrams of the most intelligent and the most successful students did not always overlap. Anecdotally, in my experience, the ones who fell into both categories were studious, constant, and generally risk averse. Unfortunately, risk averse is not a characteristic of someone whom I would expect to break down boundaries in any intellectual field.

This isn’t meant as an indictment of academia. Anyone in a position to accommodate only a fraction of qualified applicants must make difficult and imperfect choices. Grades and test scores allow schools to evaluate work ethic and intellectual capacity, and that’s fine by me. It’s as fair as anything else. My only plea is that the ones who are selected to join the elite remain open to the possibility that others still have something to offer. Not only that, there are many without the pedigree who have a greater capacity to produce extraordinary works than those who do. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Work-life balance

The term work-life balance is a pervertedly Anglo idea. It makes me think of lady justice, balancing her scales, with a pop-up image of “work” on one side and “life” on the other. It’s the professional’s job to keep them level, I suppose, though it’s not particularly clear what that means.

One assumption might be that we’re supposed to partake equally of “life” and “work.” That could be construed as 12 hours of “work” per day and 12 hours of “life.” But for the worker, that doesn’t seem satisfying, because sleep will inevitably have to be taken out of the “life” allotment. Taking it out of the “work” portion of the day could get us in trouble with the boss. In fact, even a modest suggestion of splitting sleep time down the middle would be considered off-putting for most employers.

For those of us who sleep 8 hours each day, and don’t sleep at work, that leaves us with only four hours of life per day. That’s not much. Especially if you consider that some of that time might be spent getting ready for work, or commuting to work. Showering, making your lunch, getting dressed, shaving, it all takes time. That means your lucky to have 3 hours a day of really living. And if you’re half as tired as I am after a 12-hour day, you’re probably not doing much living when your work-day is over.

We can probably agree that 12-hour days don’t leave much of a life balance. Most would shoot to divide the work-life-sleep balance into three separate and equal groups. 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, and 8 hours of life. Better than 12-hour days, and probably largely commensurate with the ideal.

To me, this perspective gives too much consideration to work. We shouldn’t assume that work gets half our waking hours. With family, friends, hobbies, food, and exercise, it’s hard to cram a full life into 7 or 8 hours a day.

For those who live a healthy life, there is no work-life balance. There is only life balance. Full stop.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

On Status

One of my favorite thinkers, Tyler Cowen, emphasizes the importance of status in how we view other people, and how we view ourselves. He comes at ideas from so many different angles, many of which are non-conventional, that I typically enjoy his writing immensely. But when it comes to a subject such as the Nobel Prize, he adopts a serious tone, and approaches the award as if it as a crucial mechanism for determining merit and status in his field. I don’t get it.

It’s nice to receive accolades and awards, but to me, the receipt of any award is so circumstantial and dependent upon the whims and biases of those who bestow the awards, that it’s hard to take them as anything but the recognition that a certain cadre of experts or individuals have found your work to be worthy of merit. It reminds me of Wittgenstein’s ruler: Unless you have confidence in the ruler's reliability, if you use a ruler to measure a table you may also be using the table to measure the ruler. And so it is with any subjective group of people who get together to decide the best art, the most peaceful, the most intelligent. Whoever they decide to honor says more about them than it does about who is truly the best in their field. Just as an LSAT, IQ test, trivia competition, and spelling bee will yield different results in gauging who is the most intelligent, so do the Academy of Arts and Sciences, MetaCritic, and the voting public.

It’s not worth asking, which of these groups is most capable of determining who is best? The better question is to analyze the group’s criteria in making the decision. That’s not to say that Nelson Mandela isn’t worthy of an international prize to reward those who promote peace (ahem, Henry Kissinger) or that Paul Krugman isn’t a truly elite economist. They are independently of what the Swedish elite decide.

I happen to think that Kurt Vonnegut was among the best writers of the last century, and that an author such as Saul Bellow couldn’t hold his jockstrap. But Vonnegut never won the prize. It’s obvious that the Nobel Prize committee values flowery prose over the straightforward. So it goes. Kurt Vonnegut’s insights into life and how we interact with each other are far more valuable than Bellow’s (It’s unfair of me to harp on Bellow. I actually like his writing overall – I just think he’s no Kurt Vonnegut). There are those who will always consider Bellow to be a superior writer because the Swedish fucking say so. And that makes me want to scratch out my eyeballs with a guitar pick.


Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Oh, Sepp. You’re a real skid mark of human being

Sepp Blatter is an abomination.

When the President of FIFA jokes about the draconian ways in which gays are treated in Qatar, it’s a powerful indicator of how backward and corrupt the organization is. The decision to host the World Cup would be similar to giving the World Cup to South Africa . . . in 1982. FIFA has rewarded a country with no respect for fundamental human rights.

Sepp Blatter and Qatar deserve each other. And by the time 2022 rolls around, he’ll likely get the karma he deserves. There’s just too much contingency with Qatar 2022. Not-yet-built stadiums, which will require a not-yet-invented technology of outdoor air-conditioning. A fragile eco-system and a delicate political environment. Whenever you have a situation where everything must go right, or everything will go wrong, the laws of
probabilities tells us we can expect the latter more often than the former.

There’s a good chance Qatar 2022 will be a disaster. On the bright side, that will allow everyone to remember exactly the kind of man Sepp Blatter was.

Monday, December 13, 2010

Journey, Hipsters, Bacon, and The Tipping Point

If, around 1999, you selected Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” on your local yuppie neighborhood bar’s jukebox, you wouldn’t expect much of a reaction. Many would look at you as if to say, “that dude has crappy taste.” Others would think of it as a throwaway early 80s garbage rock, akin to “Shout at the Devil” by Motley Crue or “Panama,” by Van Halen. Decent enough, but nothing to get excited about. Hipsters were focused on bands like Radiohead and Pavement. Journey just didn’t match the ethos of hipsters of that era.

Fast forward ten years, put Journey on the radio or on jukebox, and the result is eye-gougingly typical. Everyone sings along, each in his or her own version of sharp off-key bliss, belting out one of the hardest rock songs to sing despite everyone’s complete lack of ability to sing it.

“This is my favorite song,” the vapid blonde across the table tells you.

“I’ll sleep with you,” your internal monologue says, “but I won’t like it.”

What happened? Well, it started popping up in crappy television shows, and kids started liking it. I heard someone say that its revival could be attributed to a memorable scene from “the OC.” Others claim its ascent to a wave of sports teams using it as their theme song, from the ’05 White Sox to the 2010 San Francisco Giants. Wikipedia provides no definitive answer.

Regardless, it reached its Gladwellian tipping point a few years back, and now it’s huge in a big way, nearly 30 years after its release.

Kinda like bacon.

When I was in college, it wasn’t cool to eat bacon. It wasn’t uncool to eat bacon, either. I mean, if you were hungover, you’d eat it. And that’s fine. But it wasn’t any different from eating waffles, or sausage links, or potato wedges.

Now, bacon is the new sushi. On facebook, twitter, TV, movies. Bacon, bacon, bacon, effin’ bacon, bacon, bacon. No need for clever nuance or insight, just say bacon and mumble something underneath your breath. Ah, bacon. Everyone’s so happy and giddy when you talk about bacon.

Why?

Whatever. I don’t care. I don’t know whether Jung is right and we have a collective subconscious that subliminally craves bacon because we’re hungover from the Dionysian excess of Western society over the last three decades (I think that’s what he said) or whether it’s just a fad like Right Said Fred or Snuggies.

I just want hipsters to stop acting smug every time they sing Journey or talk about bacon. It’s not novel or exceptional. It’s just some crap that’s been around forever, and your decision to get excited about it right at the same time as your next-door neighbor shows your complete lack of imagination and initiative.

Have a nice day.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Shortcut #1 12/12/2010

I don't believe in hell, but for you I'll make an exception: Gay people need to get together and start staging pride parades at the funerals of the Westboro Baptist Church. Fight fire with fire. Or flames with flamers.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

March of the Cowards

March of the Cowards

Guess what, dude? The Obama administration reached a deal with Republicans on what’s been dubbed “the tax compromise.” It’s totally sweet. In essence, Democrats have agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts for all income groups, including those who make more than $250,000, in exchange for a 13-month extension of unemployment aid for the long-term jobless, a one-year cut in payroll taxes and tax breaks for small businesses.

Ugh.

Never mind that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy were originally justified on the basis that they were “temporary stimulus” needed to boost the economy after 9/11. (How’s that working out for ya?)

Never mind that this could add an extra $857 billion to the national debt over the next few years.

Never mind that Obama ran partly on the platform that he would raise taxes on those making more than $250,000, to help curb the spiraling deficit.

Never mind that this is the kind of decision that reflects the complete lack of adult leadership in this country.

That shit’s all nauseating. But it’s par for the course.

That’s not what gets me.

This just strikes me as bad politics, and a perfect example of where Democrats are flat-out cowards.

Why not take a stand on this issue, and let the political ramifications fall where they may?

Imagine, if you will, a parallel universe. In this universe, Democrats have spines. In this Universe, there’s a planet named Luxor. This parallel universe has a country that faces the exact same predicament that the United States faces. Let’s call the country the United Plurality of Whatever. On this planet, in that country, Democrats say they want to extend unemployment insurance for the long-term jobless. Republicans say no, unless Democrats agree to extend the Bush tax cuts for those making more than $250,000.

Democrats politely respond, “Eff you, no way.”

Both sides refuse to compromise.

How does this play out in the press on Luxor? The Republicans get obliterated on the Nightly Show. Anyone resembling a neutral commentators (those exist on Luxor) flame Republicans who refuse to agree to an extension of benefits. Then, over time, popular opinion goes against Republicans. Republicans cave, and Democrats show that they are capable of leadership. Not only do Democrats get what they want, they gain popular approval in the process.

Yes, there might be tough times for some long-term unemployed in the interim. But when you have a financial crisis like Luxor and Earth have, and you have a massive budget deficit like the US and the United Plurality of Whatever have, you can’t avoid pain. You can only make a political decision about who will suffer and when. The $800 billion tab on the $14 trillion dollar credit card bill will have to be paid off sooner or later.

We’re putting at risk our ability to put food on the table in ten years to have extra helpings of caviar today.

And so it goes with the march of the cowards.

Friday, December 10, 2010

It's on!

Yea! BLADU is back. Sort of.

The original BLADU is as dead as God now. It was a college magazine. And I am no longer in college.

But I’m feeling a strong hankering to write again. And so write I will.

Enter BLADU #2.

BLADU #2 will be to the original BLADU what you are to your college self: Fatter, balder, hairier, and with less passion. We will have less to say to the world, and less time to say it. Having a job now, I’ll have to skate along the fine line of writing good shit and not getting fired for it. Fortunately, I expect few people to read this blog. If that changes, I could be in a heap of trouble.

Sadly, many of the people who made the original BLADU great are now off grid. (Paging Moshe, Max). I will be inviting all the ex-BLADU writers with whom I’m in touch to contribute. Still, BLADU #2 will almost certainly be inferior to the original, for a variety of reasons. The original was the brainchild of many great people. This time, it’s just me and then some friends (I hope). Nonetheless, I am confident we will have our moments when surfing to this site will leave you with a chuckle or two.

As with everything else in your adult life, you should not expect much from BLADU #2. I only make one promise on this blog, and I almost certainly will fail to live up to it. I will try to provide daily effin’ content, but I have a busy job, lots of hobbies, and so that may not always happen.

But it’s free, so whatever. Deal with it, Princess.

Finally, a request: please come back regularly and post in the comments. Feedback is what keeps us from falling into a solipsistic coma. Post in the comments, even if you have nothing intelligent to say. It means a lot. Thanks.