There’s already too much. Too many things to buy, shows to watch, stuff to do, books to read, music to listen to and, above and beyond all of that, too many blogs and websites.Why (oh, why?!!) add to it, then? A fair question:
Reason #1: Because a few people have asked me to. Although it's been awhile, I have written things to send out to the long-suffering folks on my e-mail list. Recipients have sometimes responded with the suggestion that I start a blog. Some percentage of them, I'm sure, meant it. I suspect others were actually saying, "Please stop. My in-box is quite cluttered enough, thank you." Nevertheless, friends, family and the occasional random searcher through the blogs of strangers will, I presume, make up the bulk of The Brouhaha's readership until I decide whether to promote it more broadly.
Reason #2: Because, damn it, I'm a writer. This simple fact puts me at odds with any pretense to modesty. As one of that self-obsessed breed who are incapable of keeping their fingers off keyboards, their pens off paper, or their thoughts to themselves, I like people to actually READ what I write. Furthermore, if I don't write on a regular basis, I can't legitimately call myself a writer, but I find it ever so much easier to write when I have an audience. Even an imaginary one. Blogging at least offers a forum and a reason to write, though no promise of an audience. One thing at a time.
Reason #3: Because I used to write letters, but the fine art of letter writing is dead and e-mail just does not fill the gap.
Reason #4: Because I finally have a bit of time to devote to a project like this. As blogging has become a widespread practice over the last few years, I've been immersed in completing my dissertation. The degree is done. (That chorus of angels you hear is actually just my wife, singing and dancing like Gene Kelly on a rain-drenched Hollywood backlot). I'll be working to turn The Big D into a book now, but that feels like a different kind of commitment than writing for the Ph.D. I may find out I'm deceiving myself there, but we'll see.
Reason #5: Because it is there. To stretch the analogy: much as Mt. Everest is a geographic imperative that compels certain overachievers with a knack for impossible exertions in inhospitable conditions to scale it, so the existence of even-a-yokel-can-do-it blogging technology demands that a certain type of person (see Reason #2) dive in and give it a whirl. The blog is a (relatively) new form, the relevance and durability of which remain a subject for much analysis and speculation. One cannot help but notice, however, that much of that analysis and speculation is undertaken in blog form.
Reason #6: It seems kind of cool and cruel at the same time. An irresistible combination to anyone masochistic enough to be call himself/herself a writer. (See Reason #2).
By "cruel" I'm acknowledging that a truly interesting and relevant blog is a beast that demands feeding. Content (the newfangled word for the writing I am promising to undertake in service to the hungry blog) translates into time. We'll see how that works out.
The opinions of the Hipper-Than-Thou set can't really matter to a late-adopter like me nor will they matter much to the people likely to read me. Having a blog is still "cool" in my corner of the universe because, out here, far from the Cutting Edge, we know naught of MySpace and Facebook. My four year-old son (see above) navigates YouTube with more facility than I. Heck, proper nouns with capital letters sticking out of their middles still look strange to me.
And so . . . Being new to the blogosphere, I can’t tell you what the mix of topics in The Brouhaha will be. I need the room to experiment and grow as I go. I can promise there will be loads of pop culture commentary, notes on what I'm reading, watching, working on, and observing in the surrounding cultural commotion and kerfuffle.
Beyond that, I'm sure I will find plenty of fodder in politics. Every once in a while – probably more so when we get closer to the '08 election – I’ll embark on the genre of blogpost known as The Rant. Certainly plenty of fuel for that fire these days. Imperial imbroglios like those in which our nation finds itself caught up overseas, as well as the teapot tempests and under-card dust-ups posing as championship bouts that constitute our popular and political culture, will all make an appearance here.
In shuffling through the day-to-day stuff that bewitches, bothers, and bewilders I am, like most of us, always in search of connections to What Really Matters. With that in mind, another category for posts in The Brouhaha will be those little Moments of Bliss that sometimes come out of the alarms and excursions of daily life. As the parent of a young child, a lot of these entries will likely be of the "sweet parenting moment" variety which those of you with no interest in the sweetness (or the horrific realities) of parenting have my permission to skip. Your loss.
Most of the time, I’ll shoot for a light and entertaining tone, strive for relevance and work to connect each piece to the broader themes implied by the blog's title and the definition provided for it in the header.
Now, about that title. I’m a great lover of language in general and slang in particular. Nothing makes my ear perk up like a great turn of phrase, an intriguing combination of syllables, or the deployment of old words in new contexts. Not being as erudite on the subject as William Safire, I probably won’t be digging into the origins of words or phrases too often in these pages, but I bring it up because the title of this blog is one of those slang terms that deserves more currency, particularly when it seems to define so much of what passes for turn-of-the-twenty-first-century culture.
What else is the 24/7 babble of infotainment that passes for a "national dialogue" these days but a brouhaha? Otherwise it's all just a collection of tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury signifying . . . well, to say "nothing" is to surrender to cynicism. So, not nothing — but amid all the buzz and flutter, all the burble and blather, intuiting something about What's Really Going On is, to put it mildly, a challenge.
Every once in a while, I sense a pattern in the cacophony. Like a good academic, I like to take the insight and work through it to arrive at a conclusion. You might find my reasoning compelling or the way I write about the issue engaging -- or you might decide that all I've done is beat something about the ears with an overworked thesis and pelted it with over-ripe prose until it keeled over.
You'll have ample opportunity to judge for yourself if you keep coming back.
-- Tj
Beyond that, I'm sure I will find plenty of fodder in politics. Every once in a while – probably more so when we get closer to the '08 election – I’ll embark on the genre of blogpost known as The Rant. Certainly plenty of fuel for that fire these days. Imperial imbroglios like those in which our nation finds itself caught up overseas, as well as the teapot tempests and under-card dust-ups posing as championship bouts that constitute our popular and political culture, will all make an appearance here.
In shuffling through the day-to-day stuff that bewitches, bothers, and bewilders I am, like most of us, always in search of connections to What Really Matters. With that in mind, another category for posts in The Brouhaha will be those little Moments of Bliss that sometimes come out of the alarms and excursions of daily life. As the parent of a young child, a lot of these entries will likely be of the "sweet parenting moment" variety which those of you with no interest in the sweetness (or the horrific realities) of parenting have my permission to skip. Your loss.
Most of the time, I’ll shoot for a light and entertaining tone, strive for relevance and work to connect each piece to the broader themes implied by the blog's title and the definition provided for it in the header.
Now, about that title. I’m a great lover of language in general and slang in particular. Nothing makes my ear perk up like a great turn of phrase, an intriguing combination of syllables, or the deployment of old words in new contexts. Not being as erudite on the subject as William Safire, I probably won’t be digging into the origins of words or phrases too often in these pages, but I bring it up because the title of this blog is one of those slang terms that deserves more currency, particularly when it seems to define so much of what passes for turn-of-the-twenty-first-century culture.
What else is the 24/7 babble of infotainment that passes for a "national dialogue" these days but a brouhaha? Otherwise it's all just a collection of tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury signifying . . . well, to say "nothing" is to surrender to cynicism. So, not nothing — but amid all the buzz and flutter, all the burble and blather, intuiting something about What's Really Going On is, to put it mildly, a challenge.
Every once in a while, I sense a pattern in the cacophony. Like a good academic, I like to take the insight and work through it to arrive at a conclusion. You might find my reasoning compelling or the way I write about the issue engaging -- or you might decide that all I've done is beat something about the ears with an overworked thesis and pelted it with over-ripe prose until it keeled over.
You'll have ample opportunity to judge for yourself if you keep coming back.
