A Statement of Purposelessness

I am unfashionably late to this party.  By now there are a billion of these things out here and while the Internet always has room for one more, do the people who browse it?  Serious doubts aside, I've got room for this thing (and a couple more blogs) and will set to writing for it for a couple of reasons:

• An exercise: whenever somebody says something particularly stupid, at drinks perhaps, pretend you're hard of hearing.  They'll repeat themselves over and over again until you let in, such that they are.  The point isn't to annoy or to let you hear them but to give them a chance to hear themselves?  This blog then is a chance to hear myself.  More people should put their thoughts down on paper or paper-substitutes.  For one, the world would be a cozier place with all the added thinking cluttering up the place.  For two, people would come to realize where their true thoughts lie (as opposed to regurgitation from the day's newspapers or, worse, believing those thoughts are your own), what they take for granted and as fact, and just how complex and gray things are.  That said...
• I believe there are yes and no answers to aesthetic questions.  I don't want to pull from science into the humanities (cultural theory and continental philosophy are the worst and falsest examples of this feeling of inferiority; read Clive James for better ideas on this) but I do think we can agree that Last Tango in Paris is better (certainly more worthwhile) than, say, Sex and the City.
• Blogs, TV, and much modern media can become a bit thoughtless in their need (audiences? advertisers? traffic?) to remain current and constant.  I can't make any promises on how regularly I'll update this thingy, but I will try to avoid the cynicism and snark (ugh) that has become common because it is easy to write, thoughtless, and occasionally enjoyable to read.  Still, I hate to have to face it every day and would hate writing it any more.  
• I'm trying to avoid promises here, but it's safe to say that I will rarely stay on topic or a particular tack.  That said, things I'm particularly interested include: movies, language and bogus language, music, meaninglessness, higher education, and design that uses the environment and environmentalism as its governing aesthetic.
• Space.  It's free here.  I want to give complex ideas their complexity.  I won't try and confuse with insidery jargon (I only know a few terms and try to avoid them for fear of misuse and because they bog things down where the best things should be simple) and I will err on the side of honest indecision rather than a quotable-but-false definite.  

That list might have been more for me than you.  If you do manage to slog through it and anything else on the site, thank you, thank you, thank you.  I do do it for you, you.  And so, with this delay behind us, we're off.