Why I Can’t Be Arsed To Come Up With a Witty Headline…

…Because I can’t figure out what to put after it.

I have spent a great deal of time musing over what the heck to do with this blog. Being no great wit, I am wary of attempting a typical personal blog. Not only do I lack a clever way of telling you what I had for breakfast, but there’s also the fact that what I had for breakfast is likely even more dull than whatever you ate. (That is my polite way of saying that my life is not all that interesting. A word of advice: do not take a gap year after graduating college. If you must, do not move back home. Go be poor somewhere else!) Still, a personal blog is essentially all I know how to do, having kept a Livejournal (oh the wangst!) for years.

So what to do? Pick a subject to focus on? OK, I’m game. What subject? I guess I could talk about education, particularly my place of employment the New York City Department of Education? No: others do it better, I’m not that entrenched in the politics and culture (this is a gap-year stopgap), and as I have gotten in trouble for journaling—because for whatever snobbish reason I am drawing a distinction between blogging (here) and journaling (LJ)—about real life in the past, you might say that I am “once bitten, twice shy.” Well, then what about culture and the arts? Nope. Again, other people do it better, though I suspect I will end up not blogging at all if I refuse to write anything that isn’t shiny and perfect. Plus, being the nerdgasming nerd I am, I’m a bit terrified of writing about anything that will cause my ignorance and naïveté to show too glaringly. That knocks religion and politics right out of the running too! In fact, it knocks out just about anything that doesn’t have to do with 17th and 18th Century American history… and you just KNOW that would be fodder for some fascinating blogging! Today’s post: making tobacco barrels in colonial Virginia…

I am going to spare you that post, though you might be interested to know that I once sat through an hour and a half lecture on that very topic. Instead, I am going to throw off the shackles of crippling blog insecurity and just make a darn post already. Coherent subject and theme be damned!

Well, really I just thought that maybe since today is Valentine’s Day I could get a thematic freebie. Last year my Valentine was beer (a very Love You and Leave You Hurting and Broke sort of chap), and this year I am following it up with another inanimate lover (remember when I mentioned that my life isn’t that interesting?): the New York Public Library. I feel this is fittingly nerdy for a blog called Nerdgasms, and as such might even be on theme!

If I could write poetry I would compose a Petrarchan Sonnet unto my love the NYPL. It giveth me unlimited free books, movies, and CDs! It alloweth me to download some of these directly onto my computer! It permiteth me to request exactly what I want and have it delivered to the library nearest me (which in my case is about 3 blocks away…sweet)! It even granteth me access to Rosetta Stone language software for free! …OK that’s getting old.

Basically, unlike beer, the NYPL wants me to save lots of money AND remember things the following day. Instead of renting videos and spending billions of dollars at Barnes and Noble, I can get (almost) everything I want to read or watch for FREE! Or, at least it would be free if I returned things on time. I’m actually pretty awful at that. Also, I get to GROW brain cells instead of killing them! It’s brilliant!

It’s also pretty convenient for someone such as myself who is going through severe college withdrawals. Trust me, the brain does not stay alive all on its own.

And I still love beer. It only hits me because it loves me back.