In Which I Complain. Par for the Course, Really.

What is up, gentle readers?

Elevennames's's state of neat constant exsanguinated nature is none of your concern - the surviving writers are all terribly distracted with going to shows and being hippies and not actually knowing that they are still writers here. I, myself, spent he past few weeks building a deck! And it has yet to burst into flame. So, perhaps if this blogging thing doesn't work out (snrk) I can always just rely on improvised carpentry.

Regardless.

I feel I should address the constant, near plague-like scourge that is striking down our good celebrities, leaving only younger, less-in-every-way balls of semi-sentient filth in their place. Tim Russert, George Carlin - both dead, like doorposts and doornails and other parts of doors! Knobs! Repeated consonant door similes! Or that guy from Monty Python!

There is, sadly, no greater wisdom to be had in the deaths of these individuals. They were about as connected to my life dead as they were alive. I had an old college roommate who once insisted on listening to George Carlin stand-up for hours at a stretch, which is where I was first introduced to him in a non Bill-and-Tedly fashion. He was observant and cranky, which are really the two best qualities you can have when you're a comic, but he was also a bit self-righteous, or at least came off that way. Always sounding like he was rallying the troops to invoke social change or whatever. Tim Russert was the grinning fat man who was also kinda clever on Meet the Press and sometimes other nebulously irrelevant news programs on MSNBC.

So when they died, what difference does it make to me? Knowledge of their continued existence is not going to make my work day go faster or slower, nor is my daily sustenance dependent on their continued removal from the lifestream.

It shouldn't make one whit of difference, but I am still made sad because these were intelligent men who, in their respective ways, were each insightful and creative and not at all the sort of miasmatic dullard which is so commonly found in popular media these days, and in their passing, there is no immediate heir to their standards, no Hamlet, but a plethora of Claudiuseses, each one a Mencia or an Olbermann, a medium-talented individual not seeking the same excited creativity that Russert and Carlin possessed, but rather, just to exploit a niche.

And not to say that there's anything wrong with that - I wish I had a niche to exploit. But it is a sign, an indicative symbol of the loosening gyre of the world, expanding and growing more distant from itself. More than individuals die, in other words - their examples are the foundations upon which we build ourselves. When they die, we realize that we cannot grow on them anymore, that they have become finite, that it is then our turn to take up the mantle of idealism, and try to project it forward.

More swearing and less soppyness in future posts, I swear.