Opening Post

Ever since I discovered blogs, I’ve been a fan of blog-surfing. I’ve found it an enjoyable way to pass the time, particularly in the evening while sitting in my La-Z-Boy with a tumbler of brandy on the rocks, to simply click on the “Next Blog” button at the top of any Blogspot page and see where it takes me. Better than TV channel-surfing where you come to know the order of rotation and, even if the programs change, the general content of the channel stays pretty much the same.

But I’ve noticed that the powers-that-be at Blogspot have fine-tuned the process. It seems like when I first started blog-surfing, that button would take me anywhere: cooking blogs, mommy blogs, travel blogs, even porn blogs.... (Blogspot also used to offer a stream of blogs on their home page whereby you could click on them at random, but that feature has unfortunately disappeared.)

Then there was a frustrating period when I’d land repeatedly on the same blog over and over again; some pages are designed without a “Next Blog” button so that I’d have to back up to the previous blog, but I’d land right back at the same dead-end. It drove me to tears and led me to suspend surfing for a while.

Now it looks like they’ve gotten rid of those cyberspace cul-de-sacs for the most part; only problem is, “Next Blog” now takes me to a page with a theme similar to that of the blog I’m jumping from – which is handy if I’m foraging for recipes or surveying American political opinion, but frustrating if what I crave is randomness.

And so I decided to create my own random blog.

My cat Peaches – one of three – is particularly fond of this pose, even more so when striking it with my wife Beth, who has more hair for her to knead. We refer to it as “Peaches getting head.” I won’t pretend that Peaches is responsible for inspiring any of the comments that may appear here; it just seemed like a good lead on which to hang my posts. This mancathead blog will strive to focus on a wide range of topics; but strangely, when I hit “Next Blog” before even loading my first post, I hit two sites devoted to dance and a bunch of mommy blogs – so go figure.