A Portrait of the Artist with His Socks Round His Ankles

I haven't been doing a lot of blogging on Saturdays and Sundays lately: it's good to get away from anything assoicated with computers for a couple of days and do other stuff, like taking walks along the Merri Creek, reading and indulging in other sundry amusements, like listening to Bach's famous Concerto for String Orchestra and the Neighbour's Idiot Friends Who Are Sitting Outside Her Door Singing "Smoke on the Water" A Capella Because They Didn't Have the Common Sense to Telephone Before They Came Visiting and Now the Inconsiderate Bastards Are There They're too Bloody Shiftless to Find Anything Better to Do. The listening pleasure rivals Herber von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic and the Beach Boys performing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The on-line sessions have usually been short, just a quick check on the comments threads here and a visit to one or two other blogs to see what's current. I try not to think too much about the blog on the weekends - taking the time off is important to maintaining a credible pretence that I'm a sane person. Any ideas that I might have usually go into a notebook (paper variety) for later.

This weekend was a bit of an exception - looking back on last week's blogging I decided that I wasn't too impressed. Much of it was of a pretty low standard, even for an avowed Bilgist. Too much of it was written in the mistaken belief that I couldn't really let something I'd read go by without saying something about it. There was also this venture into "Simon Crean" territory, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but really should have been better executed. Or just executed. As it is, it's there and in line with the general Potemkin policy of what's written is written, it will be staying on the web somewhere. After reading Robert Weaver's post Mmmmm, It's Good to Be Wrong, I finally looked down and realised that the elastic in my socks had worn out. I was well down the slippery slope that leads to unconscionable earnestness and, unless I lifted my game, I might have to ban myself from my own blog.

To start with, I got out the notebook so that I could check out those ideas that had been put aside for later; some might be turned to good use. This resulted in some enjoyable writing: instead of writing on the topics that I was supposed to care about, I was writing about things that I did care about. I'll be posting the results as I get them up to a postable standard, but don't be too alarmed if it looks like I'm putting in a really prolific day. I've been cheating.