No, not Zombie Norwegianity. (I wasn’t dead, only sleeping.) No bonus points or attagirls for seeing this one coming.

Yes I blog but no I have not always blogged. I have kicked habits before but this is not a habit. A tool is just a tool even though a kiss is never just a kiss.

Neither am I condemned to blog forever like a casket-riding Ahab surfing the cyberseas for Trig Palin’s real mother. (It’s not that I don’t believe this whale exists, I just don’t see any effort being made to frag and tag it. At least not before the fall of 2012, after the RNC.)

I have a new purpose, the expression of which constitutes the infotainment portion of this content (i.e., that which was not stolen, e.g., Google Images snitched Viking zombies). I’m still trying to become a better writer and while this isn’t a paying gig, I’m also not shoveling tuition to anyone for a writing class and circle-fed critiques that speak to the speaker, not the author.

The first time I blogged, I blogged like it was 1999. December 1999, actually.  I’d been waiting for just this kind of tool since reading Stand on Zanzibar in the late ’60s. John Brunner inserted a second vertical column of news items that split the page with the story, serving up two parallel streams of narrative. Bi/trifurcated cognition is hardly new, most of us receive public radio, talk radio, cable news or just look out the window or listen to the neighbors as we go about our daily. I prefer surfing because I read (and write) quickly, hypertext links provide immediate access to more information but only when I want it. In lieu of broadcast media, I have windows behind my monitor that bring me no end of car crashes, sirens, fire trucks and commuter hijinx. It’s like watching local news without the commercials.

HTML has done its best to save me from myself. Without links I’d be embedding paragraphs and brackets like they were MSM reporters filing Pentagon press releases. I also used to rely on footnoting as a joke delivery device. I liked the one-two punch you got from the delayed impact of the footnote. Links add layers of meaning and usefulness to text. They can also be abused in countless ways: insincerely, humorously, to close a deal, to make a point, to reinforce, to root or to shock (WARNING: GOATSE LINK [note: the "goatse" link is safe, it's the non-parenthetical hypertexted link that's the vessel to the obscene {in four colors no less, but alas no pestle — no wait, is that? no, definitely not a pestle}]).

Links you can get from Twitter but with this blog expect longer posts instead of caffeinated aggregation. Stuff I just gotta share will be twittered. Stuff I still care about five minutes later will be overanalyzed, rewritten half to death and posted here at length in all its Lileksian self-importance. (Twittering from a desktop computer, btw, is a bit like doing dial-up from a pay phone but isn’t it reassuring to know you’re reading words right now that were typed with ten fingers and not just opposable thumbs?)

Links? Sure, but only to what I’m actually reading. Topical? Only to the extent that events can goad me into a real time response. One stand alone essay a day, that’s the goal. A post-political expression of what I find interesting, not a vehement rehash of my old blogs. Which is not to say that politics won’t be a part of this as the current (and soon to be changed) mast suggests.

The Vikings are long gone, but the spirit with which Wall Street has buggered us all speaks to the Viking spirit. Still, my understanding of history suggests that Vikings born with penises as small as those of your typical Wall Street robber baron were bagged and tossed into the fjord. As it should be. Most troubles in this world stem from the actions of men with small penises (see Bush, George W., Cheney, Dick, and Warren, the Rev. Rick). And yes, this is at least my fourth blog in which I’ve expounded on my “tiny penis” theory as it applies to just about everything. If you’re interested in learning more about my theories concerning tiny penises, email me (sincere only).

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It’s now official: the Obamanation is upon us, the Obama will watch over us and keep us wholly not fucked but partially fucked as that’s W’s inescapable legacy. (And for a fat lady with a Confederate gray stars’n'bars hat, that Aretha sure can sing.)

This blog will not keep watch over Obama. Others will do that but I for one would like to get back to some semblance of a life. Second guessing our most wonkish president ever is not a job I covet.

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My twits will reflect multiple agendas but none quite this impoverished. Malkinism is homerism by another name. I appreciate the need to fight back but doing so in coordination with actual political parties and/or money people when you don’t make those relationships transparent is Brodkorbian, i.e., the sort of thing actual journalists should note and disparage in real time. Thune blogging is an abomination and Thune-style (paid under the table) blogs should always be called out and publicly denounced. We all know about Potemkin and Goebbels. Using their strategies doesn’t necessarily make you a Tsarist or a Nazi, just a fellow traveler — but you are known by the company you keep (and the checks you cash).

This blog will be about the truth and justice. The American way? Not so much. I might approach the subject cautiously or through myriad lenses, but by the end of each post I want you to “get” my point. Feel free to argue in the comments. I’m not writing to convert. Provoking dialogue is the new goal. Instead of filtering, think of this blog as the home of the defilter fisk. And yes, if there is a G*d I will be punished for that. (God without an asterisk doesn’t care so much, I suspect.)

I’d like to think that Obama will show the money grubbers to the door, but don’t believe he will (and I don’t think you think he will either). Jesus overturning the moneylenders’ tables at the temple this administration ain’t.

No, we’re stuck with the margin clowns, the fee-splitters, bonus hounds and mortgage bundlers who created nothing but flipped everything, skimming off your added productivity so The Eagles could play at their boss’s daughters’ first confirmation/bat mitzvah. Financial naifs who truly believed they could use a copier and notary stamp to print money teamed with wiser but more evil Ponzians who knew precisely what they were doing, and to who.

Hard times are upon us and the battlelines are shifting. If Obama doesn’t let the DOJ incarcerate some Bush administration lawbreakers, people will find more traditional scapegoats to blame for this mess. First the liberals, then the usual groups.

In the end it always comes out the same:

Rude and horrific death for scapegoats — distracting the many from the pillaging by the few. African Americans, Palestinians, uppity women, “illegals,” gays — it’s a long list we know all too well. Just as this is not a zombie revival blog, there are no zombie capitalists. Eating brains? Please! Real capitalists eat your future, mess with your present and reinvent your past. Later, Harper’s will enumerate the atrocities while future generations tsk tsk even as they create new invisible men to ignore (or oppress should they get uppity). Likely candidates for new oppressed groups:

• uninsured individuals with genetic defects
• journalists
• outsiders
• Jaycees (going with a hunch on this one)

I can’t stop any of that from happening. Not with this or any other blog living or undead. So I will address egregious matters indirectly so as to protect my assets (in case any of them should ever grow to seizable proportions). The objective being posts you’ll find worth sharing, or commenting about. 

I am me and you are we, and we are all together . . . running from the guns — flying, crying, textpertly choking. Snied? Like an alimentary penguin tricking Edgar Allen Poe. Cornflaked and semolina’ed . . . knickerless in Gaza . . . eggmen all in a row! ©

Like it or not —  I’ll be back tomorrow.