Monday, May 9, 2011

Where Blogs Come From

This is just an introductory post. Anyone who wants to take the time to read my gibberish and such should have the option to at least be forewarned about what they might encounter.

First, I will introduce myself, but I will try to keep it succinct, rather than inundate you with paragraphs about my oh-so-interesting life prior to finding out anyone with a router and free time can talk about themselves to an unknown audience. In the many circles of the Almighty Internet, I am comfortably within the "thoroughly average person making another blog so normal people can read someone else's normal thoughts and go about their standard day" realm. I don't fly a jet, I don't wrestle sharks, and I have yet to wrestle an enemy shark pilot while attempting to hijack his jet, but I hope I can take care of that one someday. I am now one of many twenty-somethings who has a blog, as well as those other wonderful web devices that allow my inane thoughts to be broadcast to an unnecessarily large audience (oh, Facebook statuses!).

But enough about me. I can see you all aching to go lick wallpaper and watch paint dry, since those would be much more exciting activities than hear about this blogger. I'll tell you a little bit about what I'll be writing. It is important for you to know that I believe good grammar is essential to effective communication. That does not mean I expect perfection, especially since I am far from grammatically perfect, but if you are in charge of a widely-read publication people use to get information (such as a newspaper), I do think good grammar is necessary. I say this because I will occasionally post newspaper articles hauled from the annals of cyberspace that make English majors grind their teeth and have nightmares about the word "your" being used as a contraction, then sprouting teeth and devouring brains.

Occasionally, I will post things from my own experiences, such as odd encounters at work. Since I am positioned in a retail store with an interestingly diverse customer base, I get to meet people wearing foil hats and refusing to approach televisions for fear of "gov'ment radiations," explain to self-important gentlemen the difference between "The Googles" and "The Apples" and which one makes a device with more "googlehertz," and sometimes I get to turn down date requests from gentlemen in their thirties who are buying alarming quantities of Jonas Brothers merchandise and bragging about the new pants their mom just gave them. Of course, I am not all business. I may also talk about or post images of side projects I have taken on, such as when I sew, or interesting findings from around the internet.

But first and foremost, I will be posting the most painfully stretched narratives I can. This is where "Overanalyzed" comes from. It started when I was in school and got bored of writing, presenting, and hearing from classmates the same type of compositions. It would always go something like, "The poem 'Friendship' is about good friends!" or "F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' is about excess and wealth and excessive wealth." While these are quite true, writing and talking about them repeatedly is as stimulating as bashing one's head on an overripe cantaloupe, then cramming one's skull into a beehive. So, fairly early into my school years, I started taking advantage of the public education system's adamancy that literature (like art) is open to any interpretation. An English teacher and important mentor I had encouraged this - as long as I could support my wild generalizations and offensively off-kilter analyses (whether it was with context from the story, history from its period, or the author's biography), I was welcome to spy shades of odd in perfectly innocent tales. It has become a fun way to look at the world differently, and sometimes it has produced some interesting ideas.

Now that I have explained that, though, I must issue a cautionary word. Some of what I post might actually be true (is that song really about that? YES. It is.), but much of it will be the most ridiculous spew I can back up with context clues. Please do not take what I post to heart. Instead, enjoy it, and make your own wild assumptions. If nothing else, it's nice to sometimes put your noggin to use and look beyond the face value of a piece of work. And if you have suggestions (stories, songs, movies, video games, and so forth) for something I should interpret poorly and to the most extreme level I can, please do send it my way.

You have been warned. Enjoy your stay.

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