Hovering over the “delete” button, which will erase over four years of blogging, is nerve wracking. Even if the blog in question, as in my case, consists of endless posts about Katamari, that band I saw last night and, the absolute pinnacle of personal blogging, how infrequently it is being updated. And even if the entire blog has been backed up to your hard drive.
But this blog is sitting in the URL that is meant to be reserved for ‘professional’ matters, so it has to go.
Looking back, it’s not as embarrassingly awful as I thought. While writing, I felt like I was struggling to come up with a coherent voice (and struggling to be a coherent person at the same time). But it turns out that it is mostly quite comprehensible, and snarkier than I remember at the time. Some excerpts:
December 2002:
“This is me! I have that expression because this photo was taken on Christmas day. My grandfather was just finishing his ‘all arabs are terrorists’ speech and was moving on to his ’so what are you going to do after you finish uni’ speech.”
December 2003:
“We went to Baltimore to hang out with Todd, and went to this outsider art museum (I forget the name�) which was really interesting in itself, but also contained the wonderful Alan Rickman, who I said something ridiculous too.”
December 2004:
“Things are… well, crap, but we’re managing, with generous injections of PIRATE METAL, vampires, cuddling, and dressing Merry up as a small sailor cat.”
December 2005 (yes, a year later still on this theme):
“Sea of Red is not swashbuckling. A lesson in ‘just because I like pirates and I like vampires, it doesn’t mean vampirates works’ and no mistake. The sketchy plot could be excused if the art work had any appeal whatsoever. But it doesn’t.”
December 2006:
“Only Werner Herzog would say filming in Antarctica was easy. Of course, I suppose by his standards if no-one dies or is shot at, or is forced to actually move a ship over a mountain, a bit of a chilly day isn’t much of a problem. Can’t wait to see the film.”
December 2007? Silence.