Gang–homies–squad???–I had a long, rough day, and I sat down to write this without a damn thing to say for the intro. What do I tell the good people about? The new technique I’ve discovered for getting clinic managers to do what I want? What I just learned about the only reason octopodes haven’t killed us all yet? How the way South Koreans reckon their age is about to change in a gesture of good-faith assimilation with the West while simultaneously becoming one of the most significant cultural powerhouses on the planet? And then, my salvation appeared, in the unassuming guise of a new Hell’s Kitchen:
MY SEARCH FOR A TATTOO I’LL NEVER REGRET IS FINALLY OVER. GONNA PUT BREAKFAST IN MY SKIN, BITCHES.
January 6th:
Why Do You Write?
(Obligatory reminder to subscribe to my once-monthly newsletter here, which rounds up everything I wrote in the preceding month, grants access to a curated members-only Spotify playlist, and includes a piece of exclusive bonus collectible content I will NEVER repost anywhere else, ever!)
In my experience, there’s rarely one reason someone does something, and I am not that kind of rare; living as I do in Arizona, I am in fact medium-well.
In the Before-Time, when the internet was better, I was (and remain) a devotee of sites such as Dinosaur Dracula, The Bloggess, and Cerealously, and most of all Cracked before it was bought and stripped for parts; I will not link to what Cracked has become, lest its hungry corpse notice me and decide that chasing me down will burn off enough calories that I won’t ruin its diet. But plenty of people are inspired by plenty of great shit without trying to imitate it afterward.
Part of it, I am forced to admit by the candor-geas that binds me unless a lie would be funnier, is that I am at heart a Performer, and performers need–not necessarily want, but need–attention; it is the very buttered bread upon which we subsist. I’m not proud of it, but I value self-knowledge more than pretending to be without flaws, if a flaw is what that is. I wanna make the people laugh! Ain’t no sin, ain’t no crime, or so I am assured by my layer Mr. Priest and my vicar Father Esquire.
Part of it is my desire just to build a body of work, to develop as a thinker and a reader and a writer and a podcaster, to have something to show for it, y’know? And it can’t be a coincidence that I started this site not even six months after finishing my degree; maybe it’s just residual gifted-kid adrenaline withdrawal, but ya boi needs homework, or a project, or something to keep the knives sharp and the colors bright.
In any event, whatever it is that compels me, like so many Benoits Blanc, to do this thing, I am grateful to be able to share it with all of you, and I hope you have something that does for you what this does for me: expand both the range of your voice and the class of damage it inflicts.
–The Bageler