I don't blog anymore. I don't know what you call this. It's really what it used to be, except it's not. I used to just post something here that I didn't see how or why anybody would read just every once in a while.

Four or five times over the past few days I've been tempted to post here. Being out of the habit though makes that hurdle that much higher. It also lets all the writing organs rust, the spout crust over, and everything is then likely to just tumble out in a jumble once in a while.

I still read blogs, but not regularly. One of my most frequent stops is Byzantium's Shores. That's weird because I've never had any kind of back-and-forth thing with that guy, unlike some of my other semi-irregular haunts. The guy's stuff occupies a strange place too for me because I rarely agree with much of his opinion, but I also rarely disagree. He writes well, he posts often, he talks about things I've also got an interest in; but I rarely have much cause to strongly agree or disagree with anything he says.

It's probably intentional on his part, at least partially. Sort of alien to me in a sense, because one reason I blog, or used to blog, or occasionally visit blogs, is so that I can argue about something. This is not one of my most popular traits; nevertheless it's one that's pretty deeply ingrained in me. I'm not talking about online only; I argue about shit regularly.

Earlier today I read a brief post over there, and I read the linked article, and I felt a sort of disconnect, between what Jaquandor (Byzantium's Shores' author) wrote and what was presented in the linked piece. What Jaquandor wrote was "Note to self: Never, ever, ever, ever, stay the night in a hotel run by this guy. How disgusting can you get?"

Somehow I expected something else from the article after reading that "disgusting" descriptor.

So in short, some dude buys a hotel (he's a dude who buys lots of hotels) in New Mexico that he plans on remodeling and re-opening. He had Hispanic workers at the hotel, and he made some rules. They couldn't speak Spanish around him, and some of them he made use anglicized versions of their names.

To me: not disgusting. The guy gave reasons for what he did. Including, "Whitten says it's a routine practice at his hotels to change first names of employees who work the front desk phones or deal directly with guests if their names are difficult to understand or pronounce."

I'm not really defending the guy, I don't know whether or not I agree with what he did, but I certainly believe that motive, or at least think it's a believable motive.

But my point in this (much longer than planned) post wasn't really to argue this, though maybe that's some of it. My main point was about what happened after. I read the comments on the blog, posted one of my own, throwing an argument out there cuz this is something that could be argued; and afterward Jaquandor responded, sort of curtly dismissed my brief argument, and then said "I knew I shouldn't have left the comments open on this post. I'll be rectifying that now," and locked the comments on that post.

To which I say, wtf?

What I hate about having comments on my blogs is that sometimes I get spam. What I love about having comments on my blogs is that sometimes I get arguments, discussions, or interesting exchanges (or, well, I used to when I actually did this regularly enough to support any kind of traffic at all.)

Jaquandor is obviously free to lock down comments whenever he wants, including any time people express disagreement. We raving arguers can always post our responses on our own blogs, twitters, FacePageSpaceBooks, signs not allowed at Redskins home games. Even so: I don't get it. If these things serve no other purpose they at the very least can foster discussion.

So color me, "ih?"



In other news: I will be trying NaNoWriMo once again this year. I suspect I will find it difficult to do given my current time constraints, and more importantly my recent (or eternal) utter inability to remain focused on anything at all of substance. I "won" once, back before the children began shooting out of my wife at an alarming rate (yes, 2 in 3 years is alarming. to me. 'k?) I tried again when my daughter was a baby and my son was on the way but couldn't really manage it. That time I maybe got bogged down in working on a story that was just a tad too complicated, and too important to me, for me to find my way clear to writing in the required NaNo way. Unfortunately, of course, if I don't do it that way I don't do it at all, so the beginning of that story still sits at fifteen pages on a hard drive on the laptop I can't get data off of in any reasonable way. I considered cheating and continuing that story this time, but never got it off and decided that's not really the right way to go.

I had more but I think I'm gonna leave it at that.