What is Alt85?

With the arrival of Headfoot—which effectively drains Alternate 1985 like a weird little vampire of its random videos and images* (because something like this doesn't really require any Alt85ish commentary or analysis, so putting it on Headfoot spares me the effort and embarrassment of forcing some kind of exploration or at least introduction), leaving behind only (or mainly—or more, proportionally) text and whatever cognition, intellection, and ratiocination might be articulated verbally—I wonder what will become of this old ugly blog.

This would be less of an issue if the old ranting and opinionating weren't beginning to feel much less satisfactory to me: as I get older (I'll be thirty-two in twenty ten) I am less and less confident that I know anything at all and more and more able to see (a) that there is another side to just about any argument and (b) that it might not be particularly useful to trace out all the ins and outs, if only because there's no end to that and the sense that one might be exhaustive about it is surely illusory—to quote (or possibly misquote) Stevens, "It can never be satisfied, the mind, never," and what does one do with a bottomless stomach? Keep throwing food into it, or find another solution?†

Of course Alt85 used to be a little more heady (not to be confused with headfooty§); it wasn't really until a fateful run-in with the highly functional wino that the shit got as visual as it is today. Maybe a kind of conceptual homecoming is in order? But there are some problems with that. Let's discuss.

First of all, as I become less argumentative (see above), my intellectual energies seem to have turned inward, which would be fine except that I have a reflexive aversion to the super-introspective, autobiographical blog. This is for a couple of reasons:

• a possibly increasingly outdated sense of personal privacy—after all, when I started this thing only one person, my then girlfriend, knew it was mine, and it was a little while before I started associating myself with it at all: one thing I miss about the early days is that now I know that if I say anything personal, at least some of the people reading it will be able to associate that personal thing with me, which restricts (whether or not it ought to restrict, an interesting question) my freedom of expression insofar as it affects my comfort in expressing such things;
• a sense of embarrassment at a kind of self-indulgence, although (a) if you don't like self-indulgence you probably don't like this blog anyway, (b) one might question whether it is indeed more self indulgent to write about oneself than it is to broadcast one's opinions about movies and politics and whatnot, when oneself is really the only subject one has singular authority to go off about, and (c) doesn't this bring us back to the old original problem of George McFly syndrome, in which case to back off now is to lose the original battle, which arguably is still being fought whether I've forgotten it or not?—and, finally,
• a belief that such subject matter is inherently likelier to result in triteness: a friend was recently talking about a blog, composed by a high-school girl, that comprises (in equal parts, it seemed) (1) incredibly awesome images, and (2) maddening verbal/intellectual content like, "Homework is hard!" and "I hate my mom!" He was baffled by the seeming disconnect, but (I suggested) maybe it's easy for us older folks to forget that from a high-schooler's perspective, these observations, in context, might actually be rather insightful and interesting. "Don't you hate it when you have like three tests in two days and this other teacher still gives you homework?" Don't care, but I guess some readers would respond with excited recognition. I've sort of lost track of my point, here.

So, yeah, am I going to write long, dense, text-heavy posts full of windy, hard-to-follow sentences? No. Yes. Probably sometimes. Is Alt85 going to change significantly? Eh, probably not too much. But normally the way I generate content for this thing is either I have some thought or idea, something I want to say, and I sit down and pound it out (I type fast) or I want to share some funny picture or video or something; lately the pictures or images are tending to go to Headfoot and the biggest or most interesting thoughts are just too damned personal.

None of this matters. What am I even talking about? I'll resolve the entirely imaginary autobiography–privacy tension (existing only within my own head) by putting up an actual recent photograph of myself, and then we can all get on with our lives.

Short Round

More inanity to come.

* Here's a nice picture of Harold Bloom scowling in headphones. (My imaginary friend "Gottlieb" said, "No, that is Bloom pleased.")

† That's a terrible analogy (or an inadvertently excellent one) because all our stomachs are bottomless: our hunger, of course, is finally stanched only in the grave. To paraphrase Sophocles (or whoever the fuck), count no man sated until he's dead.

§ Although of course it was always that.