here's something new and completely useless!

this blog will suck. no, seriously, it will suck worse than most blogs (which, as we all know, suck pretty fiercely). that's because i have nothing interesting to say. nobody will read this blog except me and possibly a few close friends (though the latter will probably check in irregularly for a couple of weeks and then never come back).

i'm not saying this because i'm a pessimist or have a low opinion of myself; i'm saying it because my experiences are neither extraordinary nor unique. i prefer life in the unremarkable lane, and i know it makes for shitty reading.

so why am i doing this? i dunno. i've spent the last three years living in a marginally communistic household with three other nobodys, and during that time i got used to describing the boring minutiae of my blissfully uneventful life in exhaustive detail to my housemates and the small circle of regular visitors. now i'm living by myself in a city where i don't know a soul, so instead of making friends i've chosen to drone on into the cybervoid.

so here's my run-of-the-mill story (which will probably be the focus of this blog): i'm inescapably a member of the oppressor class (western european/british heritage, slave-owning ancestors, marginally protestant, middle-class, heterosexual, midwestern), though i'm trying to overcome it via liberal guilt and knee-jerk feminism (which is hardly a new way of dealing with it). i grew up in iowa among a family full of teachers (both parents, 3 of 5 aunts, 1 of 1 uncle, 1 grandmother, etc.) with my older brother and younger sister (all born within 6 years of each other). after a 4-year undergraduate stint in ohio, i returned to iowa to get a master's degree and live in the aforementioned quasi-commune.

now ambition and circumstance have led me to abandon my beloved midwest and a social life whose mission was far from complete. i moved to los angeles, of all places, to work on a phd. after growing up in a town of 8,000 and never living anywhere larger than 60,000 i'm living in one of the largest metropolitan areas on the continent. so there you go: i'm a small-town midwesterner trying to make his way in the big city. i'll try not to be too cliché.