(This)Blog's Not Dead!

Alright folks

I do the oral defense part of my comprehensive exams on Monday and i promise after that to be here on a regular basis. I had some illusions that the informal qualities of blog writing might spur me past the pain of academic writing and generate insights that i could then pour painlessly back into my work. Well, such are the rationalizations that have for years supported my tendency to overextend myself. As it turns out, whatever kind of writing i'm doing it has to take a certian amount of care and consideration and/or the real spark of "that just hit me!" or it turns out as shitty as the half-baked or overbaked piece on the Hold steady that was my last real attempt to put words up here in hyperspace.

So there are a number of things on and in my mind that i hope to put up here after Monday, some generated by the process of preparing for comps, others by free floating encounters with popular music. One thing long overdue is an inquiry into the Hold Steady's second album, Seperation Sunday, in which your intrepid reporter tries to figure out why the literal descriptions of the story of the album (teenage runaway becomes meth addict and is saved by christian rock and the Catholic church) sound so dim and unsatisfying compared to the story that unfolds listening to the record itself. But i don't want to write that now, not only because i have other very important things to do, but because i don't want this to become just a Hold Steady blog.

Instead, I'll just sign off by mentioning that it was Vampire Weekend, and specifically the self-reflexive genius of the song "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" that really made me want to get this blog back up and running. More in a couple of days.