Today I am a blog.

Hurricane Isabelle has introduced itself with a drizzle of rain and wind. I've so far staved off the desire to put So Central Rain on repeat. In grade school, fourth I think, we learned that hurricanes are no longer named exclusively after women, because feminists were bothered by the characterization as tempestuous and destructive. The girls in the class were all unanimous that they liked the idea of girl hurricanes, because they're strong and assertive. [They alternate boy and girl names now, in case ya didn't know, and annually alternate between two lists, one with boy name first and one with girl name first.]

I hope I'm keeping the proper blog tone here... From Nerve.com's list of fifty most unsexy things: ``9. Livejournal. How I'm feeling: bored. Song stuck in my head: "Raspberry Beret." Air of mystery that once surrounded me: gone.''

I was really into Carl Steadman, a sort of internet pioneer and the guy who runs Plastic. I really felt for him after reading his autobiography in this Wired article, and could relate to the leitmotiv `Carl is tired.' Kid A in Alphabetland is everything a work of art should be. [I've found conflicting sources on whether Radiohead stole the title from Carl or not.] But then I read his blog, which is exceptionally histrionic. Air of mystery surrounding Carl: gone.

Our motivations for blogging are twofold. First, there's the pleasant ego boost of having random 14-yr olds who found you on Google write to you to tell you that they read what you wrote and now they like you. Also, I have a chance to shill books and try to leech a bit more of an Amazon commission out of people. Got a book/DVD/toy you want? I'll give you a dollar if you write me with the item name and then buy it from my link.

Re: comments. The blog form mandates that there be a mechanism by which readers can contact the author. Well, dear reader, I'm not gonna invest time in putting together Php forms and such for comments until I feel this is useful; instead you just have the cute little animated gif to the left. If you write interesting things about the content here, I'll post your comments (whether you like it or not).