Friday, September 30, 2005

Dusting Myself Off

Now that I’ve effectively chased off any readership that I might have heretofore collected by not posting for 6 months, allow me to start fresh. I regret to inform any potentially displaced electrons that the Mental Stew shall be undergoing some ‘Organizational Restructuring’.

Thus far into my brief foray of the blogging world, I’ve found that by attempting to combine all of my interests into a single blogspace, I end up self censoring myself far too often. Whenever I come across a juicy topic on which I want to comment, I find myself considering the interests of my audience. Thoughts such as “SoAndSo wouldn’t be interested in that…” end up pre-empting any expository impulse I may have. Why bother the entirety of my vast, ever growing audience, I ask myself, with something that may only be of interest to a small minority? By throwing everything into a single stew, I attempt to please everyone and, naturally, end up pleasing no one. Least of all myself.

And so in the interests of providing dishes more suited to the palates of each segment of my potential readership, I’ve decided to split the stewpot into a collection of smaller bowls. From this point on, my thoughts/rants shall can now be categorized into the following pages:

  • Apply Topically: Commentary on politics and world events can be found here. Let the amateur punditry begin.
  • TvB: Random geekery of all kinds, but particularly gaming related rants, reviews, and links.
  • Unpopped Kernels: Reviews and thoughts on movies old and new, as well as cinema in general. Heck, maybe even the occaisonal bit of theatre.
  • Tom's Mental Stew: Oh yes, the stew shall still be served, hot and sloppy like I know you like it. Anyway, here is where I’ll keep the more generic, personal items related to my life and what’s new in it.
To give you a basic (and completely unnecessary) idea of how this system works, I shall now provide a series of completely self-indulgent and ill-advised examples. If I were to go out and see the film “The Matrix”, I would write up my considered impressions on the finer points of its acting, plot, and cinematography in ‘Unpopped Kernels’. However, if I were to purchase the entire set of posable action figures inspired by The Matrix and then take pictures of them engaged in elaborate reproductions of the movie's fight scenes, I could post all that in “TvB”. I wouldn’t. But I could. On the other hand, if Finland were to declare war on Canada in protest of the fact that Keanu Reeves is a Canadian citizen, my outrage on all things Finnish could be found in “Apply Topically”. Finally, if I had suffered a complete and catastrophic mental breakdown due to my monumental dissapointment with the movie sequels, and my subsequent dissallusionment with the Wazchowskis were to land me in a rubber room, pictures of me in a straight jacket would likely have been posted to the stewpot by a friend or family member.

Let's have some fun.