I recently ran across a literate, intelligent blog, one which I believe belongs to an acquaintance of mine. This would normally qualify as a pleasant surprise, and it probably is one. Usually, I doubt that it would bother me, and yet in this particular case I can't help but feel that Misfit Island looks and reads a bit shabbily by comparison. There are many reasons, rationalizations, and exculpatory sleights-of-hand I could deploy here to justify the status quo. I might talk to you about my 'unique voice', my total unfamiliarity with HTML, my schedule, and a dozen other things.

But none of that would alter the ineluctible fact that I will in real life sink or swim based on my ability to write. Theoretically, anyway, in the next few years I'll be coming up with several hundred pages of prose with which to justify the way I've chosen to earn my daily bread. If it is the case that I have difficulty filling even this space with a reasonable amount of intelligent and thoughtful monologue (and I certainly feel like that is a serious and recurrent problem on Misfit Island), then perhaps I ought to sit down and put some serious effort into working on my writing.

After having mulled it over for a couple of days, I've come away a bit more determined to fill this space with something reasoned and literate a bit more often. There are, I hope, going to be some changes around here. If you check back in a couple of days, I expect that you'll find a series of orange cones with letters spelling, "OFF LIMITS" marking the big open gate that leads to the highway to Dallas.

Now, somebody wake me up when the sloppy joes are ready.