Letter From the Editor
by Bruce VanWyngarden
I'm not trying to go all Andy Rooney on you folks, but ... Did you ever notice how many bookmarks you have on your web browser?
I agree, it's not quite as good as "In my day, rooms were drafty. You needed paperweights. You don't see paperweights much anymore. ..." But hey, I do what I can. Bookmarks, paperweights, shoelaces. Not much of a stretch. (It may help if you read the following in Andy Rooney's voice and kind of wince every now and then, like your bursitis is acting up.)
I've got a lot of bookmarks. I recently upgraded my web browser and decided it was time to get rid of some of the excess baggage, namely my bookmarked websites. I'm almost embarrassed to admit it, but here are a bunch of websites on the Internet that at some point in the past five years I thought were important enough to bookmark:
Professor Hex, Huff's Crime Blog, Crunk and Disorderly, Rox Populi, Rigorous Intuition, George W. Bush Speechwriter, Stalkerati, Daddy-O's Rockabilly Clothing (huh?), Soul Jerky, Rotten Fruit at Last, My Damn Channel, Anaïs Nin: A Book of Mirrors, Anything Left-handed, Dylan Chords, ZeFrank, DeskTopBlues, Landover Baptist: Where the Worthwhile Worship, Cranky Old Bastard. (Okay, I made the last one up.)
There are more. Many more. It's a weird list. It's like a virtual bookshelf — a catalog of things that snagged my brain for one reason or another.
For example, I once decided it would be useful and entertaining to be able to type anything and have it be vocalized as a speech by George W. Bush. I'm sure I forwarded this link to many friends. I'm sorry about that.
I also decided that I needed to be able to know the chords to any Bob Dylan song at the click of a mouse and that the wisdom of Anaïs Nin needed to be on permanent ready alert. (Sample: "We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.") Ditto for Professor Hex (Scholar of the Strange and Mysterious) and Soul Jerky (just because it's not real, doesn't mean it's not happening).
But that was then. This is now. I've deleted most of these, and I don't think I'll miss them. They're not much use to me anymore.
Sort of like paperweights.
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