My first blog.

"There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice," is a quotation attributed to Nietzsche. It seems to be a line from Beyond Good and Evil but the only copy I have translates the line differently, and less well.

This won't be a self-serious blog but it will be critical of things I find in culture, the media, political attitudes and the books I (mostly) randomly pick up along the way. I try to keep a critical eye on all things. I prefer questions to answers, the complicated to the simple and the counter-intuitive to the widely accepted. I delight, especially, in questioning views on the "sacred cows" people hold dear, but my scrutiny of such things comes from a good-natured search for meaning and values, with no malicious intent. So, that's how I landed on the name for the blog.

There will also be (I imagine) a lot of humor, so I think the name of the blog sort of points to that too.
I'm not sure how dedicated I will be to this blog yet. Hopefully, I'll have a lot to say. Be ready for a lot of links to the Onion, AVClub, MarginalRevolution, Metacritic and other sites and blogs I follow through Google Reader. Also, I'll probably focus some on issues and goings-on in Kansas City, but not so much that you wouldn't be interested in following this blog if you've no interest in our cowtown.

I thinking my writing is rusty. Thanks.