Bring Out Your Dead
In order to keep our broadcasting licence, we devote Sunday night dead time to public service shows of limited appeal.
--KBBL Radio announcer, Springfield
This page is getting dusty because I haven't played much discussion-worthy poker since my last trip to the Air Conditioned City, and I prefer not to write about my personal life. Given that this is *my* blog, that may seem like an odd preference. G-Rob remarked recently that a whole year's worth of Joe Speaker's posts about Joe's personal travails would be far more entertaining than any old analysis of how to play AK out of position in a 3-way pot. Well, sure. That's because Joe Speaker is an excellent writer. An excellent writer can make anything an interesting read.
The vast majority of bloggers are not excellent writers. The writing ability of any blogger chosen at random will range from average to "how did you graduate the sixth grade?" awful. In order for me to care about reading the details of such an individual's personal life, they had better be either *very* interesting or a friend. Most random people, with their average to atrocious writing ability, fall into neither of those categories. Their blog posts are no better than a Christmas form letter you get from an aunt you see maybe once every five years, in which she updates everyone on her Christmas card list on everything that's been going on with her and her family (your cousins) over the course of the last year. You feel like you should care, because these people are blood relatives, but in the end the reason why you've received this Christmas letter, instead of a more personalized card or (God forbid) a phone call, is because your aunt and cousins are no better than strangers. All you're reading are the ordinary details of the ordinary lives of some ordinary people that you might not even recognize if they walked past you while crossing Fifth Avenue. Who cares?
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, of course. I don't think of myself either as an excellent writer (a la Ryan, Joe or Wil) or as possessing a scintillating lifestyle (a la Flava Flav?). I don't even care to engage in wild hyperbole and/or poorly worded metaphors to make it seem as if I have a scintillating lifestyle. You will never find me subscribing to the Marilyn Manson theory of "Act like a rock star and people will eventually start treating you like a rock star". Add it all up, and the result is that I try not to be "that aunt" by keeping most details of my personal life off of this page.
If you've ever felt like you don't know much about me, that's probably why.
[N.B.: Poker blogs are dying.]