The Kernel

The idea is pretty simple. A group blog written by us. I submit it is a much better forum than "reply all" email strings. Admittedly it is more cumbersome to deal with at first, but the set up is much more friendly once established.

How did I get this idea? Is it presumtuous to start off a blog with a rhetorical question? Probably. The kernel for this idea started with this post from the blog I wrote while spending a law school semester abroad in Ireland. You can click on the link to read the post, the point of which was to talk about the in-between feeling I became aware of after a few months in Ireland by myself: there was a comfort and familiarity to my surroundings, but also an acknowledgement that I would never be completely at home there.

I also mentioned Freud in my post, which prompted the Angry Grammarian to respond with the following epistle:

I will defer comment on the first half of this post to honey dijon, who will no doubt revel in its syrupy sweetness.

But allow me, if you will, to expand a bit on the 'unheimlich,' Freud's uncanny. The dirty old town blogger is essentially correct: the uncanny is that which is strangely familiar. For Freud, this tension is present already in the German 'heimlich,' which, while translating as, say, the 'friendly' and/or 'comfortable,' also contains within itself traces of the hidden, the malicious, etc. In other words, the 'unheimlich' is already present, or immanent, within the 'heimlich.'

Any student of literary theory will recognize one possible implication: a prefiguration of deconstructive criticism, in which language is ultimately unstable and without any grounding. For if words contain these traces of their opposites always already within themselves, and if the binary oppositions refuse to remain separated, how to keep the sign system stable - how to pin down meaning?

But to unite the two (seemingly, but ultimately not at all) disparate threads of this post, let us return to Freud and psychoanalysis. Two obvious sites of the uncanny for Freud: death and the unconscious - that which appears as strange but is intimately familiar. But, more specifically: the female genitalia. Freud noted that neurotic men (i.e. Patrick's joke-telling friend there at the pub) often feel that there is something uncanny about the female genital organs. Makes sense, right? Sexual difference would lead the man to approach the female sex organs as something strange, something other. BUT...as Freud so eloquently phrased it, this uncanny is also "the entrance to the former Heim of all human beings, to the place where each of us lived once upon a time and in the beginning." So that which appears to the male as most strange is actually that with which he was once most intimate.

In other words, this post is a classic case, Freud would say, of transference. The uncanny here is more accurately located in the jokes at the bar -- and, as you may or may not know, Freud was a serious student of jokes -- and not the play of light on the walk home. Or perhaps it is a bit of both, but it is more fundamentally the former.

This comment spawned a sleu of other comments, mostly picking on Angry Grammarian for being such a dork. That was when I realized that "my" blog wasn't just mine anymore. People were interacting with each other, being funny, thoughtful, or even crass. It was wonderful.

Since then, the group that (a) read and commented on the blog, and (b) tends to attend "game night" over the holidays, have developed a random habit of getting into email discussions that are in the same vein as the above. It occurred to me, though, that inevitably someone is left out of the email forward, or days later you think "I shoulda said X!" but the moment is lost.

So this is my Christmas present to us all. A blog where those exchanges can take place in a format that makes a lot more sense based on what we do. I love the banter. I think the rest of you do to. To get us started, I'm going to post a few of the email exchanges that I loved.

BUT, and this is key, my vision is for this to be a GROUP blog. Initially I am making Angry Grammarian and me "authors" on this blog. Author status means you can come onto the blog and post on your own. My catch is this: if you want to be an author, I want a commitment of one post per quarter. Merely four a year, that is. I fully understand that some people are happier as 'commenters' as opposed to authors. That's fine too, and I want to encourage those of you who can't commit to being authors to be readers and commenters, AND if you once in awhile find inspiration, then submit an original post anytime to Angry Grammy or me, we will happily post them for you.

Also, I am soliciting your opinions on pretty much everything on this blog, from the name (I tried to pick something that reflected the group, but it seemed too diverse for most names, so I went with something that described AG and me), to the styling and coloring, to the sidebars (should we have a recommended reading? favorite games?), to what's IN the sidebars, and anything else you can think of. Again, the idea is that this is a group effort.

Merry Christmas. Read and enjoy!