Brief Essays With Pictures

A blogger could eke out a decent existence simply linking to Glenn Reynolds and carefully analyzing his inciteful prose. Much as viewers needs guides to David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, so to could some enterprising blogger explain to us the specific differences between Reynold indeeds and hehs. For the casual reader, understanding the subtleties involved in caring so little as to summarize each and every position you take with an indeed or a heh is a practical impossibility. How can anybody understand the genius that is Glenn Reynolds?

Yesterday, Reynolds prepared to ring in the New Year, bravely predicting that this coming year could be either worse or better than last year. Seriously.

“Will 2007 be more of the same? It could be worse. Or better.” Glenn Reynolds, Blogger Extraordinaire

(Reynolds then immediately links to Professor Bainbridge, who is his boyfriend I think. Or, perhaps, his instaboyfriend. I’m not sure. They’re definitely friends, and they definitely link to each other all the time. Sort of like me and Josh.) In the coming weeks, look for the Instapundit to analyze:

-The Weather - “It could be hotter. Or colder.”
-The Dinner - “It could be tastier. Or blander.”
-The Newspaper - “It could be biased. Or objective.
-The Super Bowl - “I could be won. Or lost.
-The Iraq War - “It could be won. Or won.”

All of this and more, courtesy of Glenn Reynolds, Blogger Extraordinaire.

I had never realized this, but I stumbled upon a mention of me, but not the website, by the Instapundit. If you’ll excuse me, my limo just pulled up. The doors of the high class blogging establishment have been opened for me, so you’ll excuse me if I leave you losers behind.

(I’m kidding.)

(Or am I?)

Radley Balko seems like the kind of guy I could read again in the future. He’s now permanently linked, which will no doubt increase his daily traffic by oh, I don’t know, .0000003 percent? Maybe .0000004. No way to tell really.

I’m going start cross-posting some of what I write at my self-indulgent MySpace blog on this website. Don’t like it? Don’t read it.

-Earlier this week, I was thinking about the first time I saw Bjork’s “Human Behavior” video. I remember it distinctly. It was three in the morning at my friend Zach’s house. We were bundling Sunday newspapers and watching 120 minutes. When that Bjork video came on, we watched it, confused. “Human Behavior” is a good song.

-I remember a lot about music. The first song I ever danced to with a girl? “Soul to Squeeze” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Whereas you were busy remembering the Pythagoream Theorem, I remember my seventh grade dance at Suncrest.

-The first ever tape that I bought? “Flood” by They Might Be Giants. First ever CD? “Greatest Hits” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

-When I was in high school, during my junior year in the midst of intense anger, I had this strange night when I was manically happy. I remember just being intensely ecstatic, for no real reason. I called my friends and talked to them, and the whole time, I listened to Edie Brickell’s “Shooting Rubber Bands at the Moon.” In college, when I had a shaved head and big sideburns, I borrowed that album from Sue, a girl living downstairs. I’m pretty sure she thought I was strange for looking like that and listening to Edie Brickell.

-Converse to all of my memories about music is the fact that rarely, if ever, can I remember song lyrics. I have friends who remember every lyric they have ever heard; I can’t remember lyrics to They Might Be Giants songs that I’ve heard hundreds of times.

-I get sucked in by songs and terribly disappointed by albums. Story of my life. Want to know what the great albums are? “Graceland” by Paul Simon and “Endtroducing” by DJ Shadow. That’s it. The other day, I was fighting with Julie about music, and she pointed out that I listen to songs but not albums. The hint was pretty clear: I shouldn’t claim to like or dislike bands based on single songs. I ought to listen to more before I pass judgement. But what are you supposed to do when albums are always disappointments?

-One night in high school, I rode around with my friend Aaron. He was a couple of years older than me, and if it wasn’t his car that he was driving, it was soon to be his. We listened to Bob Marley and drank Den sodas. That night sticks out to me. There was something vaguely free about the experience. This is what adults do, I might have been imagining.

-The first time I ever rode in the car with people my own age, it was with a guy I know named Eric. He was playing some tape by Skankin Pickle. I never got into ska music, but I remember that.

-I can’t disconnect music from my memories. I really liked Justin Timberlake’s newest song “My Love,” but now I can’t listen to it. I was into it when things were falling apart a few months ago. It’s all I can think of whenever I hear it.

-Right now, I’m listening to Cat Power’s cover of “Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” Apparently, there’s a debate between Beatles fans and Rolling Stones fans as to which band is better. How about neither? Can I go with neither? I hate the Rolling Stones. I used to think Devo’s cover of “Satisfaction” was the best, but this one is better.

-I have a cousin named Evan. When I was in high school, I visited him on Cape Cod. He sat around smoking weed and being cool. Needless to say, we didn’t hit it off. But he listened to DJ Shadow before anybody I knew, and when I later discovered him, I was blown away. I saw him a few years later and asked him what he was into. Jamaican Dance Hall Music, he said. So of course it was popular a few years later, with Sean Paul leading the way. Don’t ask me how he predicted two trends.

-When I was in sixth grade, we had exploratory days on early dismissal Fridays. Professionals would visit our school and host hour long sessions. We got to pick two to attend. One time, U92 came to visit, and gave us a chance to be on the air. The person on the mic asked us our favorite music. Everybody said Mariah Carey or Madonna or whatever was popular those days. I said They Might Be Giants. The person on the mic thought that was cool. And for the first time, I felt like it was cool. Obviously, I wasn’t then, nor am I now, cool. But that validation was important to me.

My Dad picked me up after the final day of school that year, and we ran errands in his yellow Volkswagen Rabbit. He let me pick the station, and so we rode around listenined to U92. And wouldn’t you know it, that the best part of that station is stumbling onto unknown songs that blow you away? The albums almost always suck, but great songs are great songs are great songs. Regina Spektor? Meredith Bragg and the Terminals? Mount Sims? I’ve gotten great songs from that station.

As blogging drags onward, we can begin to track subtle changes in the attitudes and opinions of bloggers. See Josh’s ongoing jihad against Andrew Sullivan. Or peruse the bigger blogging sites for ongoing criticism of the Instapundit. It would seem that the allegeldy libertarian Instapundit has, for all intents and purposes, become a Republican. But because he won’t admit to such, readers have to sift through what little cover there is for his apparently new political position. In the case I’m about to cite, Reynolds agrees with the sentiment, but shields himself without actually saying it himself.

ANN ALTHOUSE IS DEPRESSED: “It’s the failure of Americans to support the war. It’s the folding and crumpling because things didn’t go well enough and the way we conspicuously displayed that to our enemies. They’re going to use that information. For how long? Forever.”…It’s okay to be depressed. It’s just not OK to give up…Austin Bay takes a less negative view.

In other words, Reynolds agrees with Althouse’s belief that Americans just gave up on Iraq, but he didn’t actually have to say so himself. What I don’t understand is that little reason for why Americans might (if you actually believe that they did) have given up on Iraq: the Administration’s jaw-dropping arrogance in the run-up and execution of the war itself. We don’t live in a world where either you’ve given up on the war, or you support whatever the administration says blindly. It seems clear that had the administration been willing to actually look at the Iraqi situation and adapt, things there might be better. Voters recognized this, and elected politicians who have promised to approach the war differently.

Why can’t Reynolds argue this? Isn’t he supposed to be the middle-grounder, the moderate, the man who looks at the evidence and makes reasonable conclusions? Yet, he seems perfectly willing to accept that America is a country in which only two possibilities are…well…possible. This is mistaken at best, and downright stupid at worst.

One of the problems with blogging is the polarization inherent in it, a belief that either you’re with us or against us, and you’re not capable of being in between. Instapundit’s recent blogging is evidence of this, sadly.