More thoughts

A number of thoughts have crossed my mind since I made my last post. Cor of Road Rash Chronicles (see the Blog Roll on the right) had a couple interesting points. Cor’s remarks can be read without deep contemplation and simply taken at face value, or being that I am the contemplative person I can summarily attach more significance to each word Cor wrote than he may have intended.

For example, Cor has a good point that discussion of politics has no place in a journal (or Blog) unless it directly effects me. This is true, but on the other hand, I like to write, I like to contemplate, and I like politics, is it unreasonable for me to become angry/sad/disgusted (rarely happy) with the decisions of our leaders and then express an opinion? (Alright, rant.) By the standard of, ‘your blog should be about you’ the World would be full of, frankly, boring Blogs.

I’m sorry if this upsets anyone, but it is true, for the most part life is very repetitive, we all acknowledge it when we call the commute to work the “rat race” and honestly, when was the last time any of us did anything exciting? I rather much doubt it was since the last posting to a Blog. More to the point, according to the Wikipedia definiton of a blog: Several broadly popular American blogs emerged in 2001: Andrew Sullivan's AndrewSullivan.com, Ron Gunzburger's Politics1.com, Taegan Goddard's Political Wire, Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit, Charles Johnson's Little Green Footballs, and Jerome Armstrong's MyDD — all blogging primarily on politics (two earlier popular American political blogs were Bob Somerby's Daily Howler launched in 1998 and Mickey Kaus' Kausfiles launched in 1999). The Wikipedia entry goes on to point out that it was Blogers who forced Senator Trent Lott to step down as senate majority leader. Granted, I highly doubt I will be cognizant to such information that would force a US Senator to give up a position of power, mind you that would be a remarkable achievement for little me. But is it not part of the rational of personal journaling to track the evolution of one’s thoughts? (And since so many of my thoughts involve politics it stands to reason this Blog will be consumed from time to time with matters political in nature.)

Anyway clearly much contemplation on my part is still required. But I don’t believe by changing, slightly the focus of my Blog I will be taking away from those readers who simply want to hear about skating. If your sole interest is skating, skip the parts that do not interest you. Use the Internet Explorer or FireFox find tool and look for the regular expression ‘skat’ as in skating or skate. You will still get occasional reports, but now they will be more significant than: I did badly today, I just didn’t have my heart in practice. Which describes in twelve words what far too many of my postings really are saying using far too many words.

In any case, today I would like to consider proper behaviour in polite society. You see I know someone who does not fail to express his opinion even when it is inappropriate. It is very easy to skip a blog, or even a paragraph when reading, but consider the following example:

Some time ago I organized a skate bearing cleaning, (for lack of a better term) party. The idea was, bearing cleaning is a hated activity, its boring, tedious and you have to repeat it at least 16 times (two caged sets of bearings per wheel, four wheels per skate, two skates per person, 2 x 4 x 2 = 16). Well since I had to clean my bearings I thought I could make it a little more entertaining by inviting a bunch of friends over to join in the fun. I figured we all have our pet theories on how to clean bearings, and at least we could entertain ourselves by being overly pushy in promoting our preferred technique. It was not to be. Too many people begged off, although I can not really say I blame them much, given the choice between cleaning bearings and I don't know, picking belly button lint? I'll have to take the lint Pat.

One person though, who shall remain nameless, did not beg off. Rather he wrote and explained to me that I am wrong. There is no need to clean bearings, just spray them with WD-40. I pointed out, as I have in other places, that WD-40 is not a cleaning agent, its very initials stand for Water Displacement, 40'th attempt. He replied that I should pay attention to what other people do at the 24 Hour marathon in Montreal. I wish I had the original email thread, the very tone from our antagonist was so condescending that, well, I deleted the emails in disgust.

What is interesting is that in Montreal it was pouring rain, around 2am when my shift started it was coming down so hard I could hardly see 10m in front of me. (The lack of sun light did not help the situation.) Under such circumstances WD-40 makes excellent sense, the adhesive nature of WD-40 although bad under any conditions will be an acceptable trade-off given that keeping water away from bearings is key. (As well, with all the rain, the water will wash any dirt the WD-40 picks up.)

But the events in Montreal are unusual, and writing to someone to say, 'what you are trying to organize is silly and anyone who joins you is stupid', well forgive me but I find that sort of sentiment rather offensive.

It strikes me that my mother was right, if you've got nothing good to say, do not say anything at all. It seems to me that more people ought to heed my mother's advice.