Thursday, May 15, 2008

It's Good To Be Back

It’s good to be back. If, indeed, I am. It’s hard to say right now.

I’d like to apologize to the twos of readers who missed the Runes during its lengthy absence, and who sent emails expressing their fear that something heavy might have fallen on me or that I might have been incinerated by divine lightning bolt after manufacturing a quote from God in my August 14 post about the concerned Christians of Athens, Alabama and their efforts to outlaw liquor sales in their community. No such lightning bolt materialized, though I did receive a sarcastic chiding from an anonymous reader who said that quoting God is a good way to get into heaven.

This was obviously an anonymous reader who hadn’t spent much time in the Runes archives.

Anyway. It’s been nine months since I posted, and on the off-chance you might be wondering why, here’s the closest thing I have to an explanation: Last August I got busted for surfing the internet at work. They got me dead to rights and showed me a whole list of sites I’d visited: a St Louis Cardinals fan site, my credit union online teller, a couple of political blogs, and the Runes. Scandalous, I know—not a naked picture in the bunch, but nevertheless I contritely agreed to curtail my web-surfing during working hours.

But wait, you might be asking—where’s the connection? Why did you stop posting at the Runes just because you couldn’t surf the internet at work? Why didn’t you just write and post from home? Why did you stop when you were on such a roll?

(OK, you might not be asking that last one.)

Truth is, it suddenly felt dirty. I know I don’t have much of a following, but by golly I want people to visit the Runes because it makes them laugh, or because it makes them think, or because they share my indignation about hypocrisy and self-righteousness and willful ignorance, or even because they’re strongly in favor of those things. The idea that anyone would look at the Runes for any other reason just kind of creeped me out.

Hey, I didn’t say it was a good explanation.

So here it is April 2008. I’ve passed up some choice stories just because I wasn’t in the Runes frame of mind. But today, with John McCain trying to make people forget he’s spent the last seven years making a nest in the Poor Dope’s shorts, and with the Poor Dope continuing to smirk his way through the last year of his disaster, and with the Democrats we elected to get something done in 2006 still doing nothing, the time is right.

Back to the Runes. Let’s see what happens.

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