Along the Dotted Line

Here it is. A blog. If I was from Boston, it would be a blaaahg. But, for better or worse, I'm not; so, for the time being, it's a blog. A HoddBlog, to be exact. If I'm gonna enter the blogosphere and take part in what is essentially a digital vanity project, I may as well stamp my identity on every visible open space - Must. Assert. Dominance.

In all fairness, this isn't my first blog-type thing. It is, however, my first real attempt at blogging as an adult. Last time around was nearly a decade ago. Ten goddamn years. I had never had sex. I spent an impractical amount of time cutting Slipknot posters from Hit Parade magazine and swapping them with my metalhead bretheren. I was heading into my first year of university via a transfer year at a community college that was essentially an extra year of high school - but somehow with even less responsibility than high school and better cafeteria food.

Nowadays, I don't honestly know if Slipknot is still a band - though I listen to Stone Sour, the lead singer's completely bad-ass, long-term side project; I've got two university degrees that are probably lodged between a couple of comicbooks in a box somewhere; and I abandoned that first blog about a year later because I moved into student residence and realized I could spend my night's eating criminally cheap pizza, drinking with people I barely knew, and talking nonsense, instead of scouring the internet for hours and ranting about the nonsense I found on a little known website that was probably still called an 'online journal'.

Otherwise, not much has changed.  I'm still a smart ass; I still love staying up late, having a couple of beer with friends, and having long, meandering conversations with good people until the early morning light breaks. And even though I abandoned that primordial, ancestral blog ten years ago, in a weird way, I feel like I've been writing it in my head ever since. 

This isn't a beginning so much as a relauch; the continuation of a cancelled TV show after a short hiatus; an underground tunnel that burrows into the soil of one country and emerges on the other side of the border in a foreign, unknown, but strangely liberating land.

Mom was right. I should've brought a jacket.