Hamster Rides Again

I’ve decided to return to my blog.  Aside from a couple of false starts in the interim, which barely lasted one entry, my last active blog engagement was in 2015.  My blog friends moved to Facebook at that time, and I went with them.  I never really liked FB, but it was an all-too-handy way of keeping up with friends.  It was always annoying: changes made in how things operate without any info from the Facemasters, unresponsiveness of management, intrusive ads and posts, even more intrusive “helpful features,” and finally the ever-annoying Zuckerberg deciding that Trump can lie as much as he wants because of free speech rights.  (Oh, don't get me started on that…)  So, in order to retain the benefits of social media and limit its liabilities, I’m going to go back to blogging.

There are many benefits to be gained.  First of all, it keeps me writing in retirement.  I do like to write and I enjoy the English language.  I have things I want to say, and I am not fully comfortable saying them on FB, since they may involve persons and institutions of whom and of which I have less than a cordial opinion.  I do plan to make the blog available to the general public (that might change as I go along) but only “members” of the blog will be able to comment (that should keep out the riff-raff).  I have already endeavored to add all my active FB friends as members; in case I missed anyone, I will post on FB how an existing friend can be added to the blog.  I will decrease my activity on FB, but will not abandon it altogether.  I may post notification on FB of a new blog entry.

The blog will retain some familiar features from my FB page.  There will be photos.  I’ll try to keep memes to a minimum, since they are more FB rather than blog items.  There will be a good amount of my characteristic wit.  It dawned on me that on FB I was becoming too dependent on sharing memes from other FB pages, etc. instead of writing my own material.  I’ve always been much more of a stand-up comic and so I really don’t like using other people’s stuff.  As for things I’ve been wanting to say, I think I’ll make those separate entries, flagged with the title “Hamster Rants,” so that those of squeamish sensibilities and delicate constitutions might be warned.

For those new to my once and future blog, a word on the hamster persona.  Back in deepest antiquity in 2006, when I first started the blog, the pirated Hamsterdance meme was all the rage.  I’d always had a soft spot in my heart for the furry little critters anyway, and I realized that this would be a fitting metaphor for how I saw myself.  If you go back through the older parts of the blog, you’ll see that The Hamster is no ordinary little rodent.  He has a bad case of megalomania and grandiosity; he is, in short, bent on world domination—hence the “Wicked” part.  The problem, of course, is that he’s just a hamster, physically incapable of fulfilling his Napoleonic ambitions.  But that never stops him from dreaming.  (This is the source of various imperial adjectives you might see and the use of “we” when Hamster refers to his most august self.)  The Hamster is a sort of personal avatar cum totem cum personification of my rather rich and lifelong fantasy life (or at least part of my long and rich fantasy life).

So… with that WickedHamster once again takes to the aether.  I have no idea how this will turn out, but if I score a laugh or two along the way, I’ll be satisfied.