PC Update For 2006

Howdy y'all!

It's been a whirlwind year for me. At the onset of 2005 I was quitting my job in NY to move to Miami. By July I met the woman whom I'd end up being engaged to. Unfortunately she lived 4 hours north of me and so from about August to the end of October I drove back and forth from Miami to Tampa every weekend to be with her. All the while I still made sure that provided fresh content for this blog.

I started PC back in November of 2004 just after the presidential election. I had spent the previous 3 years (since 9/11) arguing with and ulitimately alienating my friends and family with my political analysis. Up to that point I didn't even know what a blog was. I was turned on to the blogging world, ironically, by a group of "friends" who actually thought my opinions bordered somewhere between insanity and fascism. Anywho, this blog ended up being the perfect outlet for all of my political energy and more importantly, it got me back into a hobby I've long neglected, writing.

PC is a labor of love. When I started it, I had visions of being "seen" and possibly tapped to be a professional opinion writer. I used to joke that I wanted to apprentice under Sean Hannity as I could shill with the best of them for the rice price ; )

However, at 100 hits a day, while anything is possible, I've gotten away from the idea that this is a living resume for political writing and have just embraced the fact that this blog is indeed my hobby. A hobby I relish and will continue to pour my heart and soul into in the new year.

There will be some changes though.

Over the passed year many people have commented to me that while I write well and cover interesting topics, many people don't comment because they either don't see the relevance of the story to their lives or my commentary isn't particularly bombastic. Some folks have said that my blog tends to be very reasonable and even-handed. There's not much I can do about the latter but the former I intend to fix.

Next year I will abandon my own rule about covering stories that nobody else seems to be looking at. I used to believe that doing this would peel away Drudges readership. It ain't gonna happen. Instead I will mix it up a bit. I didn't talk at all about Iraq because everyone else seemed to be doing and I wanted to stand apart from the pack. Next year I will make more of an effort to throw my two cents in on mainstream topics along side the more obscure foriegn affairs stories. As they say in Hollywood, you do one for the business and one for yourself.

I'm also going to try and write more authentic columns drawing on my experiences as a social worker and a therapist. I've already started to experiment with these themes and although I personally enjoy writing about foriegn affairs, it is the social commentaries that seem to garner the most positive responses. In fact, my "Politics of Star Wars," piece ended up being the most commented on story of the year on PC. In addition, my pieces on farm subsidies, parenting, education, child welfare/sex trade and alternative fuels were the most reprinted stories across the blogosphere according to a recent google search of my name.

Intermitten with the news items, both domestic and foriegn, and the social commentaries, I will still try to cover some business news. It's not the most popular part of my blog but I still like it and in reading about these things I end up learning a lot. I will however try to make those posts more interesting for you readers.

The other part of my blog that seems to get a lot of responses in reposts if not in direct comments is book reviews. As a matter of fact, my review of "South Park Conservatives" ended up being linked to Wikipedia. Maybe that doesn't mean much but I think it's pretty cool.

Unless I'm told otherwise, I'll still be reviewing books for Popandpolitics.com once a week in the new year. My editor seems to be posting my reviews Thursday nights so said reviews will still be posted here Friday mornings and through the weekend.

This year I'm going to try and balance what I review between 5 main topics. Politics/Current affairs, religion, history, business/financial and science. I've mapped out my reading list for the 6 months (because I'm a nerd) and here are some of the books that I will be reviewing:

Plows, Plagues and Petroleum by William F. Ruddiman
How to Make Love Like a Porn Start by Jenna Jameson
Rogue State by William C. Triplett II
House Poor by June Fletcher

The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney
Excavating Jesus by John Dominic Crossan, Jonathan L. Reed
The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by John Battelle
The First World War by Hew Strachan

Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution of Human Sexuality by Jared Diamond
Paris 1919 by Margaret Macmillan, Richard Holbrooke
Pornified by Pamela Paul
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins

That about wraps it up for me. They'll be one more joint post with 411Mania.com sometime between tomorrow and the New Year and then we'll start fresh on January 2nd.

Thanks to all the people that have kept coming back to this blog and have left comments. I appreciate it.

Happy New Year! (Condi in '08)