So far...

... not so good. From the pattern of conscious neglect I've shown over the last week and a half, it does not appear that I will have the problem of spending too much time on the blog. I have been busy lately, but not entirely without moments here and there to patch on a link or post that I've let slip past.

Oh, well. Content is what I require, although I have not yet settled the boundaries of acceptable disclosure here on the blog. Certain things need to be known, otherwise I couldn't really write anything. I am an educator (hence my recent busyness) and teach about law and courts. Thus, I follow politics and what's going on in the judicial branches (state and federal.) Much of my spare time is devoted to reading and other media, typical stuff, really.

I have no guilty pleasures. I'm always a bit puzzled when someone refers to something as a "guilty pleasure," although I think I know what this is intended to mean. There are all sorts of things that I like, movies, music, books, whatever, things that I enjoy and that give me pleasure, that I don't actually think have great value. To the extent that these things are "guilty pleasures," then I have many, but they don't make me guilty. It seems to me that you should only feel guilty if you allow your peculiar, idiosyncratic tastes to govern your assessments of value. I try to make clear distinctions between things I like and things that I think are "good" or have significant value of some form.

For instance, I like horror. Written, filmed, whatever... I like horror. I watch a lot of bad horror movies and enjoy some of them. That doesn't mean I'd recommend them to others or claim that they are good, just that I like them. Some horror, I believe, actually is good and should be appreciated by people even if they don't have an affection for the genre, but that's a separate assessment.

One thing that's worth noting, though, is that I don't like many things. I dislike many of my friends' favorite movies, books, music, etc. and often find that very popular or critically acclaimed works leave me cold. I'm also not terribly enthusiastic about things I like. Now, I can be enthusiastic about things I don't like. I actually find I'm often quite worked up about things that suck, yet are widely praised. I'm sort of a hater, dedicated to heaping disparagement and scorn on things other people cherish. It's a calling.

Well, if that isn't a dedication of principles, I don't know what is.