Musings from a Parking Lot

[Oh, now there's a promising post title. Clearly, I'm wasting no time in jumping the shark with this blog.]

So I pull into the parking lot at work and park next to a dark blue Jaguar with a bumper sticker which reads "High-Maintenance Cowgirl." And this sparks some idle speculation:

• Why on Earth would someone put a bumper sticker on a Jag in the first place? We know you've bought an overpriced, ostentatious luxury car - the least you could do is maintain some quiet dignity and decorum. Does the owner also dangle disco balls from her crystal chandeliers?
• "High-Maintenance Cowgirl:" what the hell is that supposed to mean? Is it a feeble attempt to maintain her down-to-earth bona fides? "Sure, I own a Jag - but at heart I'm just a simple cowgirl." Is it a public service announcement, a warning to those who might approach her?
  

These are the things which occur to me at 9 AM when I park next to a Jag with a tacky bumper sticker and I haven't had enough sleep for a few days.

But I have to admit, as bizarro as that seems, it's still less obnoxious than the Mercedes sports coupe I once saw with a vanity plate which read "V12BENZ." Should've rear-ended that one for its sheer crass: bet his bumper costs more than my whole freakin' car.

Rich people: they do some crazy shit with their money, don't they?

Ferrous Rebooted

Oh yeah - I have a blog here, don't I?

Funny how I keep forgetting that.

I wish I had some colorful excuse for only posting three times in 2005 - something involving daring rescues of precocious orphans, multiple broken bones, extended convalescences, and sponge baths from cute nurses - but that would be an utter, utter lie.

Pity, because it would've meant I was pretty awesome.

The truth is far more mundane: I was lazy. And, in a lot of ways, uncertain what I wanted to do with this blog.

I didn't want it to be yet another "personal diary" blog: partly because 99% of my life is the everyday boring shit we all do (would anyone care about my daily commute or what I had for breakfast or which co-worker I want to throttle now?); partly because the other 1% is nobody else's damn business, much less the entire freakin' Internet's.

I didn't want it to be some sort of political-screed blog, because...well, I think I pay enough attention to current events to develop informed opinions on various matters; but not enough to argue articulately about them in a public forum. The signal-to-noise ratio of the Net is bad enough - no need to add to the drivel. Let's just say I generally skew left of center, which should give you an idea of what I believe most of the time, and leave it at that.

I didn't want to be just another "here's some cool links I found" blog, because that's done to death already. Not to mention lazy.

I thought about making it a "personal musings" blog, but then decided that 95% of my thoughts were too sordid for public consumption. Also too incoherent.

And I already have a videogame-related blog - which also endured a lot of neglect from me last year. [I'm a baaaad parent.] So what was there left for me to talk about?

Not much, apparently.

But I started this blog as a way of trying to provoke myself into posting my thoughts in a public forum, how silly and half-formed they may be; and even after a spectacularly failed first year, that's still my intent.

So for 2006, I plan to forget the adage, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt," and try to post more freely. I still don't know where I'm gonna go from here - but hopefully, I won't be stuck in neutral the whole time either.

. . .

Anyone care to give me a push?