The 700 Club

My first post for 2017, A Future Life, was also my 700th published post on this blog. It would be remiss of me to let the occasion pass without a little fanfare. The last time I took time out to observe a milestone was when I passed my 500th post in 2013.

Looking back at my last 200 posts makes me feel a bit like David (a little bit, anyway), patriotic Hebrew, who is reported to have uttered, upon seeing the corpse of King Saul: "How have the mighty fallen." While my posts prior to 2013 revealed, I think, more conviction, they were also better composed. There is a reason for this. Prior to 2013, I published my blog posts after carefully writing them down in notebooks and, only when I considered them complete down to the last word, going to an internet cafe to copy them down in my favorite font (for personal reasons, Georgia) and attaching an appropriate picture, clicking on the "Publish" button.

The acquisition of an Android tablet, courtesy of my brother in Colorado (now residing in Arizona (because he got sick of the snow) in early 2013 gave me word processing capabilities, as well as a wifi internet connection, at home. Oddly enough, this has led to a falling off of both the number of my posts and, at least from an editorial point of view, their quality. Something - I don't know exactly what - knocked alot of the wind out of my creative sails. (I don't think it was Typhoon Haiyan, which came ashore close to my location on November 8, 2013.)

One of the problems I have faced on this blog has been trying to balance my professional posts (film or book reviews and political writings) and my personal posts, dealing somewhat obsessively with my struggles to survive on my Philippine island. Whatever interest the former might have earned me was mitigated, I should think, by the momentary perplexities of the latter. Living in a place not even most Filipinos could place on has been fraught with too many unforseeable - by me - hazards, such as the neverending onslaught of the insect kingdom (or, to be accurate, queendom), the aggravatingly routine power outtages, and the day to day imbecilities of living in a society beyond anyone's control.

All provisos aside, I am presenting to you over the next few weeks some of what I think are the best posts of the last three years. As always, I read them and descant on mine own deformity.