Truesday: Some 'Splaining To Do

I left you somewhat in the lurch last week concerning my plans for a weekly column devoted to guests (that would be you), and that was a bit rude of me. But honestly, at the time I wasn’t convinced that I knew exactly what I was looking for.

Then it occurred to me: outside of offering up a platform for the organized presentation of individual expression, I don’t wish anything particular at all.

And here is one of those rare moments where you’ll see me take myself seriously.

You see, I have this nagging fear that apathy and middle-minding are taking over the American population and grinding us all into herd-searching sheep. That’s right, “grinding”. Because I don’t believe that anyone is an expressionless follower by birth. I believe that it’s a conditioned response to a constant droning of direction (often times: misdirection) which breeds out true personal opinion and honest debate. The result being an inadvertently amoral, sheep-like population, which is doomed to poison itself through apathy, all the while wondering why it’s failing to actually evolve or endure.

That’s the overall motivation anyhow, and even though you are likely (hopefully) asking yourself: “yeah, but what the fuck does some jackass column written by non-writer readers have to do with trying to reverse apathy? I want to read something profoundly filtered to keep the bloggy riff-raff crap out. What if people just write about their mom’s skin problems or some shit?” Which is a good question if you believe that this column should be used solely for something more… seemingly profound.

However, I would not discount the reader who chose to write about their mother’s skin issues because at least that reader had the balls to express themselves honestly in a public forum, and didn’t just parrot some bullshit they heard somewhere else in hopes of looking smarter than they need to be. There’s a beauty in true expression. Expression of any kind. Because to me, honest expression, any variety really, is the enemy of apathy.

And that makes any expression a friend of mine.

To begin this fun, I am going to contact a few of our regular commenters in hopes that they would enjoy the opportunity to express themselves outside the rat-a-tat-tat of the comments section. An opportunity to present their opinions in an actual (single) column, which would be more fitting and appropriate considering the time and effort many of them have put into simply writing comments, which we all appreciate immensely.

My hope is that others will see the value in this weekly column of mixed-bag public expression, and choose to take advantage accordingly by emailing me their intent, and eventually it will take on a life of its own. I look forward to hearing from you all.

Long live expression, in all its forms.