It's a little unusual, isn't it - the assumption that the world wants to read my thoughts? The assumption that I have something new to say... that I'm not a "parroting lunatic" who dresses old ideas in new vernacular?
It is egotistical. But everyone else does it, so by god I'm gonna do it too.
So welcome, interweb, to my blog...
and welcome, me, to the 21st century.
Being the first date that this is, I imagine that I should announce my intentions to you, world. I imagine that I'm just going to do a lot of talking here. Most likely I'll make some embarrassingly bad jokes, and/or offer a comment on the endless episodes of Law & Order that I watch each and every hour of each and every day.
As a student of theology, I'll do my best to theologize on occasion, and will, without a doubt, post endless quotations from whatever fantastic piece of literature I currently find myself reading.
So here goes nothing....
Thought #1: Scooters. I am becoming aquainted with this blogger webpage. It instructs me to label each post. The labeling options are intriguing: scooters, vacation, fall. So I have chosen to comment on one of these labels: scooters. I recently bought myself a scooter... and when I say "scooter" I mean a rad red Razor scooter x2. That's right, interweb: two of 'em. I have two red razor scooters, and I will run you over. Actually, I'm a bit afraid of the cement, so I will probably not "run you over." I have to stop before I go over any bumps so as to avoid an incident similar to the December 25 2k1 tragedy (see hole in my head for further details). One of the scooters (B$ as it were) is on permanent loan to a good friend who will remain unnamed so as to aviod internet predators. So I have scooters. And, being "with it" so to speak, I bought myself a pair of Vans to match. They're green and brown and they will rock your world.
Thought #2: I have no idea how to get this spell check to work, so I guess I'm not as immersed as one would hope in the 21st century world.
Thought #3 and 3.5 (on "The Appalling Strangeness" and "Understood Backwards"): The name of my blog: The Appalling Strangeness is lifted from Graham Greene's "Brighton Rock." Greene's priest notes to the anti-hero, "You can't conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone--the...appalling...strangeness of the mercy of God." Brilliant, indeed! There is something appalling in the mercy of God, something inconcievable, something foreign. There is something that, in this moment, cannot be understood -- it is the mercy of God, it is beautiful, we know this. But it is often beautiful only in retrospect; it can be hideous in the present. (I wish this blog had footnotes. If it did, there would be a little (1) next to "present", whereupon I would offer an apology to God. But I've said it instead in this awfuly long parenthitical statement.) So now to the "Understood Backwards" part of this blog's URL. It's from, you guessed it, Soren Kierkegaard -- my oh so favorite Dane. Kierkegaard observed that, "Life is understood backwards, but it must be lived forward." So it is. This is my attempt to understand backwards while living forward...at least for now.
Adios, my friends.
