If I'm a bibliophile when it comes to books by my favorite authors, I'm a slutty drunk when it comes to collections of non-fiction or essays by some of those writers (and by others like Larry McMurtry, whose fiction I have yet to get into). One thing that always crops up in some of those collections are pieces that the authors wrote for the express purpose of getting them published...only to see them unpublished until whenever they get a chance (or their estate does, if they're deceased) to put together an anthology of their work. Sometimes the unpublished stuff is unpublished for a reason. But often times, even the second- or third-rate musings or autobiographies or (yes) relations of songs and/or other popular arts to ones' life story are worth a look, at least once. And sometimes the author of the piece knows something that the editors of magazines or literary journals does not.
With that in mind, fueled by my recent rampage through Jonathan Lethem's "The Ecstasy of Influence" during the snow week (when the power's out, you just need something to read to while away the hours), I hereby with some humble intent and a lot of wariness about overstepping my bounds to my imagined readership present a blog that will be an Island of Misfit Toys, pieces or essays or articles that haven't yet found a home but which I think (at least when I post them here, anyway) deserve an airing. It is with some regret that I can't actually start this off with said item of neglected prose, as the flash drive I brought with me today to the library actually has a lot of stuff already posted to my other blog or in the "hoping to be published" bin with websites for whom I've done work in the past. So over-the-top mission statement it is, because like all mission statements it can't be backed up immediately.
The title, "Life During Wartime," comes from a favorite Talking Heads song, and is an acknowledgement that we do indeed live in wartime (though it's easy to forget that). I started writing for internet websites (mostly humor, mostly short-lived) in 2002/2003, when Afghanistan was going to pieces so we thought "hey, let's invade Iraq and see what happens." Today, the news is ominous from Eastern Europe (Putin once again living up to my rule that "there's no such thing as a benevolent Russian dictator") but I'm sure that any outbreak of war will be omigod was that a nuclear missile going overhead?
Just kidding...
Anyway, perhaps when I grab the right flash drive (the one with unpublished stuff on it) I can do a proper intro to all this, and maybe I'll find a home right here for the things I haven't found a home for elsewhere. I still want to do my other blog, the one that's all about music, but this will hopefully be different. Anyway, thank you if you read all this.
