I suppose, in all sense of fairness, a brief explanation of why nothing at all, let alone of note, has been plopped onto Nurtz in a few weeks. To a certain extent, it has had to do with an extended wrangle between myself and my Editor in regards to what the hell this ramshackle collision of conversational snippets, bad photographs, curious news items and sarcastic nonsense based on the foibles of the intelligentsia and glamorati.  Thrusting my views of the coming political run-up inside this precocious band-box of half-assed "gee whiz, we're clever" gawpery makes as much sense as teaching a fish to tap dance.

When you pare it all down to the bone, is politics "culture"?

The King Bee, over several Mescal fuels nights of discussion, insisted that the current climate, driven as it is by demographics, buzz words, bulleted story encapsulation, and general ennui of the populace at large, has in fact turned campaigning for office into a perspex mirror of culture.

"Look at the pols," the Bee insisted, "they're flocking to crap like MySpace, Facebook and Second Life that used to be the purview of the shut-in, nerd and hopelessly socially inept. Since Howard Dean supposedly galvanized the disenfranchised with the internet, there's been a tectonic shift in perception in the alignment of politics and populism."

My first response was to scramble for my toolkit. I was reasonably certain there was a ball-peen hammer in there that I could use to pound KB's head into something resembling a working mind. It was apparent he'd fried any and all cognitive facilities into smoking ash through years of pressing his nose against a monitor improperly shielded and leaking gamma rays at a deadly rate.

We're four years into the abattoir lovingly referred to as the "Iraq conflict"; a meat grinder that given a little more incentive and less caution could easily jack the body count of coalition servicemen and women into Vietnam era numbers. The cost, fiscally, diplomatically, mortally and morally has been available to this same public that was "galvanized" by 'Howlin' Dean and it was only four months ago that the public seriously shook up the water-head frat king and his deathless revenge monster along with the pigs at the trough by sending a number of them off to the packing house.

Glaciers react faster.

In part, as I pointed out to the King, it has to do with the sheer "interactive" nature of this new new journalism. Bloggery has, as a core component, the ability for the reader to comment on a given posting by a "journalist" (and I use the term advisedly). Popularity has replaced worth in regards to the merit of these online writers. During my retirement (which I may run back to), I would, through sheer masochism, listen to talk radio, both local and national. I found it fascinating how both the blow hard pundits and the callers were more entranced by the sound of their braying than anything they might actually SAY. In the world of broadcast opinion, there is no MIDDLE ground, only the shrill cry of extremism on either margin. In the dissipated mists of an earlier age, I lived for a spell in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, my neighbors being junkies, Sterno juicers and pederasts of varying degrees. The conversations that used to seep through the steel barred transom of my blast doored apartment had more substance than the "dialogue" going on in the Web2.0 nowadays.   The single shared attribute is both the junkie and the blog surfer seem to have a certain removal from normal day-to-day existence. Reality has been displaced by constructs bounded by the case of an LED screen.

Why would I want to WRITE to this audience?

That stumped my editor. I saw a grand color shift as blood drained from his face and the tissue normally nourished by vitamin packed corpuscles girded itself for necrosis. This fugue state lasted an inordinately long time, as he shifted through the standard arguments any editor normally tosses out to recalcitrant reporters.

Add a voice of sanity to the clamor? Not likely. I am as extreme in my views, as vicious and acrid in my testimony as any of the current crop of online essayists out there. Whatever I write would be akin to dribbling egg yolk on a yellow bib as far as heightening his site's visibility goes.

Objectivity? Nope, I have an agenda and am not afraid to use it. The only objective website I've even encountered online would be the "Spam Camera", and it doesn't even exist anymore.

Cogent analysis? Consider the medium we're talking about here. There is no "qualifier" or standard for the internet.  There has always been an acceptance within the traditional journalist community that the average reader is a rube. Few people subscribe to organs of varying viewpoints in order to sift through the presented material, make comparisons, find holes and come up with their own viewpoint. Usually, people prefer to find something, ANYTHING that already fits their worldview. New ideas and conceits are few and far between. The shock of the new is an ugly and unnerving experience. People like comfort.

In the end, the best my editor could toss out was, "it might force an economy of style on you, at any rate. Hell, you usually write these... these... TOMES of 50,000 crank-fueled words that rarely to never stick on point."

He had me there. M-TV has poisoned the concentration of 2 generations. Short bursts of unrelated imagery, constant sensory bombardment and disassociative input have created a weird mutant ADD driven semi-human, capable only of digesting bullet points and 10 slide or less power-point presentations.  I had lost my audience years ago and unless I learn a bit of brevity, I am doomed to molder amidst the rusted car parts and spent shell casings deposited all about my property along Condumdrum Creek, high in the Rockies.

It was at that point I let the dogs out from the spare room, wild ravening beasts with a taste of editorial flesh and suggested that the King Bee depart and let me mull the matter over. I was impressed with the agility he showed clearing the razor wire strung above the mesh fence on the property.

I had already shrugged off the notion of "blogging" before the dust settled from my editor's hasty departure. I had resigned myself to living out the last of my days in the manner befitting a landed high-country gentleman. That is, antagonizing my dogs to the point of frenzy, raising peacocks and betting extreme point spreads during the NFL season.

Monday's LA Times editorial on Barry Obama's current political cachet, "Obama, the Magic Negro", changed my mind. The sheer presumptive lunacy that "white guilt" will propel anyone into the executive office, along with more than three dozen OTHER pundits picking up that ball and running with it before the week was out convinced me that my day isn't QUITE over yet.

Here's a news flash for every person plonking away by the sickly green light of their Thinkpad or Mac - there's an actual world of people who interact with each other out there. God's truth, they actually, physically DO stuff daily with other people. They may not like everyone equally, and some of them are xenophobes, isolationists, racists, misogynists and misanthropes. Some of them are hairy knuckled mouth-breathers of both genders who listen to talk radio and call in their feeble screeds on a regular basis and some of them are granola munching PETA protestors who seems to have an anathema to possessing both an upright stance and an opposable thumb, but nonetheless, they're out there - interacting and functioning, whether they like it or not, with human beings of every stripe and background.

The anonymity of online interaction is yet another separation from reality. Personas and poses are easier to slip into than underwear - once again, allowing anyone to present themselves as an "expert", even if their only expertise consists of hitting the submit button. A little blood and carnage might be just what the doctor odered.

This computer closeting game will be the death of any journalism... new, old or otherwise.

So, yes, I've decided to come back - if for no other reason than to shove sweaty, urine stained and stringwarted reality back into the fray as best I can.

Nenhuma mercê
D.S.