There sure a lot of cobwebs in here for me to clean out

Okay, so it's been 3.5 years since I last made a post to this blog.

I don't even know if people still bother blogging with Twitter and Facebook having overrun the interweb. Twitter seems kind of desperate ("I have something to say and you need to know it RIGHT NOW") to me and Facebook is just annoying.

There are, of course, your very large blogging communities where people of similar views on one issue or another tend to congregate. I never really got the point of a lot of those: "Here's my opinion which is going to be pretty much the same opinion every day and I really only want people who agree with it to respond. If you don't agree with it, me or one of my moderators will likely toss you."

Then there are messageboards where people of absolutely opposing views shout shrilly at one another with endless ad hominem attacks, strawman arguments, red herrings and complete fabrications. For a long time I used one of those boards but, as with this blog, I ended up just stopping, cold turkey. It became over run with extremely angry and personal attacks based largely on whether you supported or did not support Barack Obama. I doubt very much it is unique in that regard.

So, why do any internet writing at all? Well, like a lot of people, I'm opinionated. Or, depending on your perspective, I'm an opinionated asshole. Also, a person whom I have a lot of respect for advised me recently that my blog had been enjoyable. Stopping was never a conscious "I quit" decision. It was more like one day became 1200 or so. At the time, it seemed I had presented my viewpoint on issues that were important to me.

Last night, I re-read the posts I made 3.5 - 4 years ago. It was interesting to see what had changed in the world since then and what, sadly, had remained essentially the same. Also, I could look at what I had predicted what would happen in certain places or to certain people. Anyone who wants to - though I can't really imagine why anyone would - can judge for themselves whether I can compete with all the brilliant talking heads infesting 24/7 news channels.

I'll probably get to some more stuff in the coming days and weeks now that I've fallen off the wagon. Or, maybe I'll forget my password again and we'll see what the world looks like in 2015.