A NEW LOOK...THE SAME ME

Hello!

Bet you didn't think I'd be back so soon! Every couple of years I get the itch to change things around a bit. I think this is human nature, don't you? So, I have once again updated the look of my blog. My point of view remains the same, although I admit I will probably try to steer away from politics and current events a little more than I have in the past.

When one is commenting on events in the current news cycle or on the neverending political wars, there are thousands of blogs out there that will do it better than I can, blogs written and posted by insiders, news junkies or journalists who blog for daily newspapers or major magazines. Where is your incentive to read what I'm posting if I'm posting the same stories as these people are--and their stories are more thoroughly researched and more informed?

Nope...I'll stick to essays about pop culture, books, movies and TV, sports and random digressions. If I do that, I may actually be tempted to post more too. (If I can't think of anything, I may just decide to post a random picture of my cat Sammy. He's usually good for a laugh.) You can decide whether or not me posting more is a good thing.

As an example of what you have to look forward to, I've been thinking a lot about emoticons lately. "Hi, my name is Reggie and I am addicted to emoticons." These little computer-keyed smiley faces, frowny faces, kisses and general expressions of canned emotions are a part of the downfall of sophisticated human interaction in modern day society. This is because emoticons are the natural outgrowth of email generated anagrams like "LOL" and "OMG" and the new one, "IKR!" (I Know, Right!) that reduce all of written communication to a series of lazy, fatuous and largely disingenous catchphrases.

Yet, I love them. I IM them all the time. Why can't I quit :-P ? Or :-( ? Or my favorite, the old reliable :-) ? It is ridiculous.

If you're willing to search on the Internet long enough, you can find an emoticon for anything. Currently, I am looking for an emoticon that expresses "I-work-with-some-annoying-nitwits-and-my-job-does-not-come-close-to-fulfilling-my personal-career-needs." That is a mouthful as a sentence, but if only there was some kind of face that could convey that, well, then I'd be on my way!

Come to think of it, there's probably an app for generating new emoticons. I'm sure I can download it from the Apple Store for 99 cents. I should go look into that.

Ah hell...