An undertaking of this sort, it seems, should begin with a fanfare and a profundity or two, or maybe one of those one-size-fits-all mission statements, or at least some huffing, puffing, and pontificating. No doubt it’s a sign of the times that the best I can offer are disclaimers. In keeping with the full disclosure, I herewith confess that
1. Most of the content now displayed is not freshly minted but is instead drawn from emails and such that I’ve previously inflicted on my friends and family. This violation of the minty-freshness commandment will continue at least until I learn enough behind-the-curtain Wordpress mechanics that, should a fortuitous sequence within the lexical Brownian motion that passes for my consciousness seem blogworthy, there will be a reasonable chance that I’ll actually be able to post it. Some of you may, consequently, have seen some of these pieces before; if so, well – now you’re seeing them again.
2. I’m operating this blog under the authority of a grandfathered literary license, originally acquired during my English major phase, with all the rights and privileges thereto pertaining. My contention is that the occasional enlightened prevarication is justified if it enhances the reading (e.g., by improving the flow, obviating ponderous explanations, avoiding distractions, …). In any case, this is fair warning that I allow a deviation from fact in the service of the writing if it meets one of these criteria:
- It is an obvious hyperbole. This would include, for example, pretty much everything I say that follows, “When I was your age, … .”
- The misrepresentation or equivocation, should it be discovered, would not embarrass me (e.g., nothing that would lead to Oprah castigating me national TV) or cause the reader to feel scammed or victimized.
- The dissimulation qualifies as a white lie in the performance of tactfulness. The author’s right to use the lives of others as literary raw feed, it seems to me, is accompanied by the responsibility not to hurt those folks unnecessarily. I mean, it’s not as though I’m planning to post any hard-hitting, muckraking, whistle-blowing exposes here.
As Groucho Marx declared, “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”
I’ll see you later.
