Pre-Emptive Self-Congratulatory Year-End Round-Up

Wow, is that enough hyphenation for one title? Probably not, but let’s not shove the porous boundaries of taste any more than we already have…but on the other hand, why not? It’s never stopped me before, and although there’s no real reason for this senseless recycling, I’m perfectly at peace with yet again Doing It Because I Can. See, for a multitude of reasons, I blogged a lot in 2008-more than ever before, and probably too much, even-whether it was for my personal blog or my band blog or my book blog. Yeah, that’s three (3) blogs, but like many other people, over the past decade I’ve discovered that the internet is a great place to indulge one’s vanity. And I am chock-full of that, man, so the past two years in particular have been basically dedicated to amusing myself-when I actually have time to do that-while the world burns.

Another motivation is probably that same old “it’s time to assess your life” feeling that tends to hit people once they’re over 30 years old. Which I am, by a few years. In the past four years, I moved to a new place, got a “career,” got married, and bought a house. Add to that the facts that my second band went on hiatus and most of my friends live relatively far away, and you might understand why I’ve become even more insular and self-obsessed than ever before. It’s probably just a phase, like anything else, but it’s exerted a powerful pull on my coddled consciousness for some time now, so the damage will probably be permanent no matter how much ego-exorcism may or may not be undertaken.

Naturally this spilled over into my Soapblox diaries, because nothing helps a bad/weird/strange mood like spreading it around, and this foul election year put me in so many nasty humors that my oscillating state of dismissive arrogance had pretty much burned itself out by Election Day. Oh sure, it’s all gone-for now-but at what cost? How much time have I wasted that could have been constructively spent elsewhere?

Well…probably not that much, to be honest-and since quite a bit of this stuff will probably be going into a book (vanity-pressed, of course), it was arguably better-spent time than that of many other floppy and useless suburbanites in this greedy land of ours. Since it seems to be worth it after all, why not truly bash it into the karmaic dirt? Indeed, so with one final spasm of pure, ham-fisted, link-farmy egomania, I present my Diary Spew ’08 (* = DKos only):

The Last Binge of SupaDupaPhat Tuesday 2.4.08

Flashback ’05: A Second Lieutenant’s Grim Commentary From Iraq, Part I 3.15.08

Flashback ’05: A Second Lieutenant’s Grim Commentary From Iraq, Part II* 3.16.08

Ripping Fiction From The Facts 4.10.08

Beware the Terror of Campaign Bloat 5.16.08

An Egomaniacal Anthology of Stop-Gap Holding Patterns 5.19.08

In other words, Temporarily Swearing off Soapblox + Reheated DKos/MyDD Primary Vitriol Backlash, Parts I and II + Shameless Amateur Self-Promotion + Snide Condescension toward Fanboyism + Phoned-In, Unnecessary Compilation = Mostly Ineffective Whimpers, Bangs, and Gaffes.

When the Banshee Screamed for Thatcher 2.0 6.4.08

I Will Speak Ill of the Dead* 6.14.08

Five Vulgar Pictures 6.26.08

Sneers and Gloating at the FISA Hearings 7.9.08

Yeah, What Winston Wolfe Said 7.24.08

Dinnae eht Mehke Ye Proud tae be Scottish? 8.6.08

Also known as Picking on Hillary Clinton + The Inability to Hate on Tim Russert + More Amateur Self-Promotion + Fictional FISA Protest + Bad Tarantino Ripoff + Worse Trainspotting Ripoff = Sporadic Quality, but Basically Coasting on Fumes.

Wallowing Publicly in Our Own Guilt* 8.23.08

Brand America Goes For Broke…Sort Of 8.28.08

Fanning the Flames of Terminal Narcissism* 9.6.08

John McCain is Doomed, and it’s Bono’s Fault 9.8.08

How Many Barricades Have You Stormed Today? 9.21.08

Happily Chugging the Toxic Stew of Dumb 10.3.08

Or rather, Griping about Joe Biden + PermaGov Seeks Re-Branding + Needling the Anti-Narcissists + U2 Album/Presidential Election Theory + Chickenshit Slacktivist Manifesto + VP Debates and Political Heirs = Coagulating Consistency vs. Petulant, Reactionary Indecision.

The Crippling Nostalgia of Naranjastan* 10.9.08

Desperately Seeking the Holy Grail of Epic Fail 10.26.08

More Meaningless Presidential-Baseball Voodoo* 10.28.08

In Which Al Franken Steals My Act, Yo 11.2.08

Everything Was Fine Until I Looked Down 11.4.08

Projection Now, Projection Tomorrow, Projection Forever 11.13.08

Enviously Slavish Boosterism + Political Face-Plant Chronicles + Philly World-Champ Reaganism Bookend Theory + Geographical Territory-Pissing + Gonzo Lessons in Snarky Shark-Jumping + Bittersweet Post-Electoral Cringing = More Inexplicable Rescue-Bait and Obliviousness to Approaching Irrelevancy.

Verdict = Inconclusive Impact with Dubious Intellectual and/or Moral Value.

So there it is: gloriously inconsistent ranting and bad performance art, diluted even further than it was in 2007, when I discarded three years of objectivity and first staggered down the path of prolific diary time-wasting with this monstrosity. Long may it all fester on the wide web of tubes.

You’re welcome.

3 comments

  1. …but we’ll get to more of that later.

    This can’t be all about me, though–as much as I’d like that–so how about everyone tell me what they think their Greatest Hits ’08 would be?

    Come on, it’ll be fun.

    • RiaD on November 30, 2008 at 19:22

    there’s a little fiction& some pictures, and a cool pony…..

    people told me the journey thing was nice. i liked the follow-up better. it was a good song rather than so jumbly.

    thank you keir~

    what are roy & derek up to these days?

    do you have any idea when they might pop in??

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