It's been months. I had almost given this up for dead, as I have with every previous attempt and consigned it to the rubbish-heap of history, along with my baseball mitt, my guitar, and my novel in five volumes entitled Gillian Thistlebutton's Big Day: Or, The Eclectic Affairs of a Country Village.

But no. I have chosen instead to resurrect it. Inspired, if that is the appropriate word, by the realization that the reason I stopped posting was, in fact, my own sense of guilt at not posting enough remarks of a serious nature. You know the kind--the kind no one in their right minds actually wants to read but which, out of a not-dissimilar sense of guilt (or, perhaps, shame), people keep writing. There are various practical reasons for writing that sort of blog, I suppose: networking, advertising and getting feedback on one's scholarly work, pretending for five minutes a day that a readership of one hundred people (and fifty thousand bots) constitutes fame.

I will probably start a blog of that sort in the near future for precisely those reasons, where I can post all kinds of pompous and asinine remarks about things of such parochial interest that Yeshiva students shy away. It will, therefore, be basically identical to this blog.

I will probably also have to start washing away my shame until I bleed.

By way of digression, I do want to say that this is not to denigrate all serious blogs. Some are quite interesting. In fact, many of my friends and colleages maintain very interesting ones. There are several, in fact, here at Durham and one at Cambridge (although he somehow maintains, like, seventeen and they are in Swedish, so I have to take his word on their interest). Granted, they tend to talk about things with vigor and wit and, of course, cuss a lot less. I just suspect that my blog will fall in a somewhat different category. One perhaps a bit lower down the hierarchy of blogs--as defined by the Supreme Potentate of Blogging and Generalissimo-for-Life, Al Gore.

Of course, my initial self-realization was, in itself, meaningless--nothing more than another in a long series of such reflections which invariably end up in the downstairs closet with Gillian Thistlebutton. And rightly so. They're unproductive. Post facto realizations do not solve anything. They simply explain why something went wrong long after the opportunity to repair or restart has passed. The fact that so many of my self-realizations are of this sort undoubtedly speaks volumes about me (5, to be precise) but I'll worry about that later.

But, in this case, the realization was not entirely post facto. For one thing, we don't have a downstairs closet, so there's no longer any place to hide. Also, it was, in fact, inter facta, which is Latin for 'between faxes.' (No, not really. Or is it? YOU be the judge!) Basically, thanks to the almost limitless redemptive and purificatory possibilities of the internet, I can always begin again or, as in this case, sort of pick up a sentence in mid-clause. I don't even need to apologize for being such a punk. Because I have total anonymity. (Can you hear the maniacal laughter? I can, like burbling mountain brooks, but, you know, in my head)

I can, rather than going silently back to my former ways, as a pig returns to her filth, instead return to my blog, as a pig returns to her...blog, I guess. Admittedly, the simile kind of breaks down but you assuredly get the idea. If not, just pretend. Please? Just nod your head. Like so.

Thank you. I appreciate your understanding.

So I'm back. With all the flav-o(u)r/-a that you have come to expect from a man whose posting topics revolve perennially around monkeys, kung fu, and motorcycle gangs composed entirely of whizened theologians. Or, at least, those are the topics he claims to post about. I don't think I've ever posted about monkeys or kung fu except in a hypothetical sense. Although, there is some comfort even in hypothetical monkeys, isn't there? They are much cleaner, for one thing, and their antics never result in sudden outbreaks of rare and uncurable diseases or vicious knife-fights.

Although hypothetical monkeys have been known to result in sudden outbreaks of rare and uncurable blog posts. Maybe I should rename this journal 'The Hot Zone.' You know, since my blog is viral, like ebola or some other hemorrhagic fever--because, in the immortal words of Vanilla Ice, 'my styles is like a chemical spill.'

Precisely why he thought that simile would sound complimentary continues to elude me.

Anyway, I'm back. That was, indeed, only the introduction.

Nah, just kidding. That was actually the whole thing.

N.B.: I have never started a novel. If I had, though, it would most definitely be about Gillian Thistlebutton and her country affairs. Or robot dogs in prehistoric New York. One of the two.