A thought occurred to me earlier, so I went back and checked, and I was right: I’ve barely written about politics at all in the past few months. Why, I’m quite proud of that fact.

When I first started reading blogs, I pretty much thought they were synonymous with politics. I was reading Tom Tomorrow’s site at the turn of the millennium, and he kept mentioning this “blog” of his, which I figured was a different site he maintained somewhere else on the web. I thought I was just reading a website that was updated regularly. Then he started linking to other sites like Eschaton, and I started following more links like that, and eventually I figured out the concept. I guess I always had an inkling that there were people who used blogs to write from a more personal perspective, but I was wary of wasting too much time on what would seem like reading a bunch of strangers’ diaries. With an insular network of bloggers only linking to others who share their opinions and write about the same topics, it can be hard to find anything new and interesting without feeling like you’re looking for a needle in a haystack the size of the entire Midwest. It’s taken the better part of a decade, but I think I’ve found a good roster of interesting writers that touch on much more interesting stuff, and I hardly even glance at the political blogs anymore.
I was listening to my brother, a perpetual aggrievement machine, venting his bottomless spleen as usual this morning about Obama Obama liberals Obama snarl spit blargh, and as has been the case for some time, I just didn’t even care to listen or try to fruitlessly argue with him. Laugh if you must at the spectacle of me talking like a hippie, but the sheer caustic negativity that he and the rest of my family give off in their monomaniacal obsession with politics just wears me out and disgusts me. Like, mucho bad vibes, dude! When he tried to bait me into it, I told him he was one of the most miserable, bitter pissants I’ve ever known, he talked like someone three times his age, and why didn’t he just talk about sports or prostitutes or alcohol or whatever else he enjoys for a change? We live in a one-corporate-party imperial state that will eventually collapse under the weight of its own effluvia, but try to enjoy life anyway.