Nobody ever sees them come or go, and nobody knows where they sleep or work; the high cost and low availability of hotel rooms at such events has no effect on these mysterious harlot nomads, who move like shadows, live in invisible tents and caravans and then vanish into the dust like Bradbury’s Autumn People until the next mega-competition. – “Broken Record”
In these retrospectives, I’ve sometimes mentioned the style of the columns, the way they “feel” to me when reading or referencing them. And by the time June 2012 rolls around, they feel completely “normal” to me; I don’t imagine these would read a lot differently if they were written today. When I refer back to an essay from this period, I often think, “Damn, that was that long ago?” because I clearly remember writing or posting it. I can remember details of nearly every column this month, the last before the weekly schedule settled into the form it would occupy until just a few months ago. Oh, the monthly patterns
still persisted; this month’s harlotography was “Rhodopis“, its fictional interlude “A Haughty Spirit“, its favorites “My Favorite TV Dramas” and “My Favorite TV Comedies“, and its holidays “The Birth of a Movement“, “Father’s Day” and “Litha“; there was also a Q & A column and the longer answer to a more complex question in “Coming Out“.
With my second anniversary coming up, the subject of blogging itself was on my mind; “Quite Contrary” and “How Not To Get Your Comments Posted” are on that topic. “The Odor of Socks“, “First They Came for the Hookers…“, “Willful Ignorance“, “Imagination Pinned Down“, “Yellow Fever“, “The Schizoid State“, “The Swedish Cult” and “Broken Record” are all looks at prohibitionists or their tactics, and “Reframing” is on a closely-related topic. Rounding out the month: a new entry in my “Hall of Shame“; a comparison of life-traumas with landforms (“Driskill Mountain“); a discussion of how American political parties are simply a case of “Pick a Color“; an explanation of how prohibition leads to “The Suppression of Virtue“; and a reminiscence on my lifelong love of astronomy and space travel in “Ad Astra“.
