Of course, what this really is is a very strong statement about just how much the rest of the world hated Bush, how completely he buggered the national reputation, and how much everyone wants to believe in the United States again. I knew all of these things already, but this news makes me re-evaluate in the same way as the pictures of those monks in Vietnam who set themselves on fire back in the day: if you believe in something that strongly, whatever it is, then people better bloody well pay attention.

Anyway. That’s neither here nor there.

You know that I hate linking to Penelope Trunk, but honor demands it. Her post on how blogs need themes comes at the right time. This is probably why I hate linking to her, not because she’s solipsistic to the point of dementia, which she is, but because the results of her solipsistic dementia so often approximate my own thoughts. Which is probably a statement as strong, in its way, as that of the Nobel Committee, and one I will think about later when I feel more robust to the conclusions I would inevitably reach.

If you’re reading this you know that posting at LSH has fallen off considerably. We kind of peaked around last year’s election when passions were high and drums were beating. But that peak belies a general trough. A few times I resolved half-assedly that I’d do better, post more, but that was a stupid resolution since it was resolved in advance of really thinking about what I was supposed to be resolving, and why.

The long and short of it is that I’m not sure what to say anymore. The distinctions PT draws in her article are, as usual, stated too absolutely, or else maybe just inapplicable in their extrema for my own situation, which doesn’t match her own. I’m not trying to draw a giant audience. I’m not trying to be about any particular thing, and I have no interest in being the definitive source for discussion about top hats, or whatever.

On the other hand, the lack of focus at LSH serves mostly to keep me from talking about stuff. I don’t talk about writing because other forums exist better positioned for that, and it would be a waste of time to do it here. I could talk about the shit inside my headspace but I see no point in that anymore. If I’m struggling through a depression I don’t feel like making yet another I’m Depressed Again post any more than you want to read another one; and if I’m not struggling through a depression then what am I to say? Life is fiction, and fiction is drama. To ignore this reality is to damn yourself to a blog that resembles the Twitter feed of someone who doesn’t understand what Twitter is for: “Eating lunch.” “Going to work.” “Picking ass.”

Other themes, which are neither drama nor a catalog of minutiae, are possible, but tend to fall into the writing bin – if I want to talk about Big Ideas then a post here is, frankly, wasted. I don’t have the readership to make a conversation out of that, and what readership I have doesn’t care about the implications of audio illusions on cogntive pleasure.

Anyway, you get the idea. I’m not sure what I should be doing. LSH’s best days were when I was traveling, and I could post and keep friends in the loop, and those posts became records of experiences during an important and vital time. Every day I felt that much was at stake, that whatever shit I was dealing with could change the direction of my life, and so talking about it mattered. Those conditions no longer pertain. If life were a basketball game, that wandering period was a series of overtime free throws. Now, well, it’s the second quarter grind in a mid-season game. And maybe that’s a pathological way of looking at life, but that’s what I’ve got.

So I’m trying to think about what to do. If I should do anything; if LSH should change to something else or just go away. If you have an opinion on this you can post it here, or email me.

I’ve been talking for years about changing the software.  I’ve always talked about changing it to this custom thing I was, am, working on.  That still might happen, eventually, but it’s time to acknowledge that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and to acknowledge that I’m about 80% a fuckup.  And after we acknowledge that, moving over to WordPress makes a lot of sense.  Why, you ask?

First, this is the most actively-developed blog software in existance.  There are plugins to do lots of great shit; it evolves, and (perhaps best of all) it’s well-supported by my ISP so I hardly have to fuck around at all.  That last bit is pretty important.

Second: I’ve decided to use the Disqus comment system.  Disqus is pretty damn cool, and is based around the fact that blog commenters are actually creating their own content, and that content should be treated as such.  Imagine if DDB had been running around commenting on all sorts of blogs; well, you’d never know that if you only read LSH.  Disqus allows blog commenters to create stable identities that persist across the blogosphere.  Admittedly, there are so few readers of LSH that this doesn’t much matter.  But that might not always be true.

Third: there’s more, but later.  I’m redirecting from the old LSH to this new blog.  The good news is that I’ve moved over all the old posts.  The bad news is that, with the move to Disqus, your comments are “lost.”  They’re not really lost, but for technical reasons they can’t be mapped to any Disqus identities, and Disqus doesn’t seem to import them as anonymous, which is a pity.  Still, rest assured that those comments do in fact still exist, and the old LSH will continue to exist for archival purposes, at least for a while.  But there are changes afoot.

Fourth: OK, I lied.  Turns out you *can* import WP coments into Disqus, which is utterly splendid.  Could life be any sweeter?

Fifth: It’s likely that I’ll take the old posts (and comments) away eventually, since for most of time LSH has been a between-friends affair, and in the future it won’t be, or at least, it won’t have to be.  And I don’t want incriminating evidence getting out.  In fact, this will likely happen sooner rather than later.  So be warned.