Blogomaton

"I'm just not feelin' it this week."

"Why is that?"

"Dunno. I've said pretty much all I have to say. But now that I have readers, I feel this strange duty to keep them entertained, or distracted. Something."

"Well," replied Jon, proud parent of A Tiny Revolution, a site starting to make "inroads" among the informed set, "all this comes pretty easily to me. But then, you have to remember, I went to Yale, and they do not admit people who cannot produce fresh material filled with new and startling ideas."

"Yeah," I said wearily into the phone, "I know you Ivy Leaguers are a special breed. Hell, I married one, and she reminds me of this constantly. I don't know how you guys do it."

"Breeding is only part of it," Jon informed me. "But there's a deeper quality that, if you do not possess it, you would not recognize, much less clearly understand."

"I suppose you're right, as always."

"Do not let this dissuade you from further composition," Jon encouraged. "You do have a knack for this, albeit in an undereducated, nearly primitive kind of way. It is charming, at times quite amusing."

Jon then excused himself. He had to finish his newest graph chart highlighting the connections between recently unearthed Bechtel inner-office documents and the rise of extrajudicial executions among various Burmese Maoist groups, while I went to You Tube to watch videos of hillbilly teens pelting each other with rocks and garbage.

Man, this has to be biggest start/stop/trash week I've experienced since I kicked Red boy into action. Six, seven new posts, all outlined and planned down to the close, all abandoned with a shake of the head. It's not a matter of writer's block -- I simply lost enthusiasm for each post a few paragraphs in. And anyway, much of what I had to say I've said already, numerous times. It was then that I began to realize, rather late in the game, admittedly, that the secret to successful blogging is being able to repeat yourself ad nauseum, day after day after day day day, and not get sick of your repetitive voice. I think that readers, for the most part, like this too, esp at the more ideological sites. It gives them the hive security they dearly crave, and the bloggers, if they are at all ambitious, will grind out the same shit for their readers to swarm to.

Formula, baby. What makes the wheels spin.

It got so bad for me this week that I actually started to write a response to Andrew Sullivan's latest Time essay, where he "re-thinks" his position on the Iraq war.

"Mon Dieu, Monsieur D'neese! Surely you know this is the fool's errand!"

Yes, I know. But I was desperate and figured I'd work my way back into shape by hammering this preening pretentious faux-warrior poseur and his new "regrets" that perhaps things didn't go as planned with tens of thousands dead and God knows how many maimed or psychologically shattered or tortured or kidnapped or otherwise beaten and plowed into submission and silence but we are where we are and there's no turning back and maybe things will look brighter tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya tomorrow, you're always a day away . . .

Then, after tapping out some twisted rejoinders, I bagged the whole thing, feeling more mechanistic than someone trying to make honest sense of a sordid topic. A bit like Dwayne Hoover in Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions," who snapped and began believing that he was the only real human left, that the others around him were simply robots pre-programmed to behave as they did daily, which eventually led Hoover to violently explode, sending 11 people to the hospital before the cops cuffed him and took him away.

But I'm a much calmer man than Dwayne Hoover, however fictional we both may be. So no restraining orders are necessary.

Oh, I suspect I'll get past this patch and write more of the long-winded crap I'm becoming known for. Whatever works. But before I go, I must share with you the close to today's Justin Raimondo column at Antiwar.com. Like me, JR is disgusted with the utter hysteria and political hypocrisy over the Dubai Ports deal; and after trudging through all of the bullshit that's been on prominent display, he concludes:

"The revolting display now taking place before our eyes – of pro-war Republicans and phony "antiwar" Democrats uniting in hatred and fear of a tiny emirate on the Persian Gulf that has been abjectly loyal to the U.S. – is almost enough to make one retire to the sidelines and forget about the follies of humankind: because if this is a taste of what the future has in store for us, then we are doomed anyway, and the few sane people who still care about such things would just as soon retire to a beach somewhere and live out their days contemplating the sunset of reason."

With a stiff drink in hand and a loved one at your side. What better way to watch reason sink slowly into the horizon?