A New Start in a New Place

So...I have my own blog now. How exciting for me. Now all I need is something to write about. Maybe I can start by letting everyone know what to expect from me. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Once upon a time I had a blog. It wasn't really a blog, but more like an online diary. I did some complaining about my life, a little bit of expounding on issues I felt were relavent and some posting of short stories and poetries I had written.

You can expect to find more of the same here, though probably with less complaining about the life I lead since it is (all things considered) fairly fulfilling and fun.

A little bit about me: I was one of the multitude of upper middle class children in America who felt like college was yet another hurdle expected of me in life. I went to the University of Northern Iowa even though I wasn't really interested in being there. I don't mean that the subjects I studied were uninteresting, but I feel as though I could have gotten just as well educated if I and a few of my friends from high school had read the same books and had a few frank discussions. It was interesting to speak with some of the professors, though it seemed as if the majority of them were there just so that they could avoid doing work in the real world. In some ways, I feel like professors are students who were too afraid to leave school (or ran back to them in shame in some cases). I realize that this is a rather pretentious thing for someone with a Liberal Arts BA to say, but that's the way I feel.

After I graduated I moved out of Iowa to Wisconsin. Meaning I moved from one state in the middle of nowhere to a state close to Canada. I managed, after several months of unemployment, to land a job at a small town newspaper (pretty much exactly what I wanted) as a reporter/editor. Why did I move to Wisconsin instead of a mecca of culture like new york or LA? Well, first of all I never, ever want to live in LA no matter what any job their offers to pay me. The same goes for New York only to a slightly lesser degree. I'd move their for a hundred thousand a month. Also my girlfriend lived in Wisconsin at the time and I'd do just about anything to be near her (love makes fools of all men [and some women]).

Small town life (not too small) suits me. I like to have ready access to things like trees and rivers (ones that don't burn when you drop a match in them). I actually don't live in the town where I work, but commute from a nearby college town. Though the college life is not mine anymore, I do like to stay in touch with it.

As you've no doubt gathered (unless you started at this line for some odd reason) I come from the Midwest and like it here. As near as I can tell it's the only sane place left in the continental United States (Jury's out on Hawaii and Alaska, I don't have much data on them). From California's frivolous lawsuits to Florida's reputation for the bizarre I'm not sure how much longer Midwest sensibility is going to last if it stays stuck in the middle. Maybe California really will fall off into the ocean. I'm praying for 'the big one.'

Speaking of prayers I guess you might call me an agnostic. In a bit of self loathing, it should be noted that I hate agnostics. Dirty fence sitters, why don't you just make up your mind and believe in rational scientific observation or have the balls to take a few things of faith. I was once a Catholic, but when transubstatiation was finally explained to me I said "Really? You all really believe that this is flesh and blood you're eating?" That was enough for me. I'm as liberal as the next guy (I was going to say as liberal as anyone but that's just not true [more on this later]) but I just don't think symbolic cannibalism is for me. My girlfriends father once gave me the best advice on religion I've ever had. He said "you can belong to any church you want, you still believe whatever it is that you believe. A camp ranger gave me the second best advice when he pointed to the forest said, "We had our kids baptized, but my God, he's out there."

Moving on to politics. I guess I'm a liberal, or at least I've been called one. I think Universal Health Care would be great, if someone could find a way to make it work. I think social security is fine, but it can't continue in it's current form or it will go belly up by 2010. I love the outdoors, I also like to fish and hunt. Inheritance is stupid, if you didn't earn it then you shouldn't have it (Paris Hilton, case in point [you will hopefully never hear anything about that stupid whore ever again]). I don't have a stance on abortion, not possessing a uterus means that I don't think I'm entitled to an opinion. I also think that guns are awesome, though you probably could have extrapolated this from what I said about hunting. I think there are too many humans on this planet, though what is to be done about that problem I have no idea. Having a black president would be cool, but Obama is probably a bad choice. The same is true for a woman president, but Hillary Clinton probably couldn't be any worse than either Bush was/is. I'd really like to see John McCain make a strong showing, but with him polling in the single digits it doesn't seem very likely. My good friend James once told me that my politics are so twisted that assigning me to left or right on a political spectrum was an impossibility. I'd say that I agree with our first president, Mr. George Washington, who thought that political parties were bad for the country as they were too dividing. I also feel that left or right is a stupid direction to drag political discourse which should be aimed at moving us forward.

I don't think I mentioned yet that I love to read. Unfortunately with my new job being pretty much entirely reading and writing I am often left without the inclination to do either at the end of the day. Be that as it may, expect to see an occasional book review posted here.

This post has already stretched far longer than I meant it to, so I'll be cutting it off here. In the near future expect to see a commentary on presidential canidates and why beginning to run in 2007 for a 2008 election is moronic. Also in the works is a review of the late, great Kurt Vonnegut's "Jailbird" and Tom Robbins' "Villa Incognito."

Cheers,
Ryan