Oh, I’m so blind Oh, I’m blind
I wasted time Wasted, wasted, all too much time
Walkin’ on the wire, high wire
But I must let the show go on
Do you ever stop in the middle of doing something seemingly inconsequential and wonder why you’re doing it? Sure you do. Maybe you suddenly wonder why you’re taking the time to gather all the rubber bands tangled in the junk drawer in the kitchen, and loop them around the doorknob on the inside of the broom closet. It’s rational, and they’ll be there when you need them. (I’ve never done it; I just made it up. But I made it up because I can picture you doing it.) But wouldn’t you, if a 747 dropped on your house, just hate that you wasted those last four minutes of existence that way?
Anyway, I made such a stop in the middle of writing that last post about Bush’s guts, earlier this evening. I was sitting in the Starbucks here in Carpinteria, watching a family of tourists from Europe trying to vain find a decent cup of joe in the culturally dessicated US. I stopped and wondered why I keep doing this anti-war blog thing. I’m not convinced it’s half as rational – in my case – as that thing you do with the rubber bands.
So I admit there are times, having wasted 22 minutes writing, linking, editing, and posting one of these yawps against the Shrub, that I’m forced to say Well, there’s 22 minutes of my life I’m never getting back.
It’s not that I don’t care about my readers, all 3 of you. Actually, I think there are two of you, consistently, right now; one of my regulars has opted out of my insegrievious ubiety for a time. So it goes. (Don’t you love my vocabulary? I should sell it on e-bay. Back in elementary school, they called me Webster. Don’t blink now, ladies and gents, he’s workin without a net up there!)
I started blogging against the war a few weeks before it started, in March 2003. I’m starting to feel like I’ve said all I can say about this evil, twisted war and its hellspawned origins. It’s not as much fun as it used to be. The war has dragged on – like Wilfred Owen’s cart full of the dying gagging lost – for infinitely longer than I feared it would. My imagination then couldn’t open wide enough to get a grip on such a clusterfuck as this.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs …
[Link]
Still, I could go on dishing it up, damn the torpedoes full steam ahead … but let’s consider this:
The greatest problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.
— G.B. Shaw
Have I communicated well? Well, I’ve made some like-minded friends, which is great. I hope that you would keep reading my stuff if I didn’t write about W and Iraq and the Fall of the Western World. But I don’t think I’ve made a difference. There are some great blogs and sites out there, really carrying the message and getting read. There are lots of other kinds of blogs; I might like being another kind of blogger just as well. And there are bloggers who are actually good at blogs like this. I’ve been linking to all kinds of great materials. Have y’all been clickin through to some of that stuff? Skimming the articles on Common Dreams and TruthOut, watching the YouTubes of Olbermann, etc.? I assume not, or I’d occasionally get a comment on it. That’s cool, whatever you want
Anyway, I’m not shutting down Peaceable entirely, not tonight. There is one factor arguing in favor of keeping it running a while longer: These little blogs must fight to exist, to keep the yawning sphincter of hell from constricting on the First Ammendment altogether.
A still small voice.
But I am sharing these thoughts and letting you know that we’re heading into the home stretch with this, and it is time to increase the time I devote to my other work, and posts here will be less frequent . If you don’t know my other blog – and my primary Web site, send me an email and I’ll link you up.
Peace.
Metaphor 
Yes, I have been paying attention. Now, did they call you Webster because you were short? Sorry, you would have been in elementary school a little before that was on the boob tube.