I think we’ve entered the, um, value era.
I cleaned out an area from behind garage this weekend. Out to the street went a cheap weight bench whose non-metallic components had been consumed by squirrels, the frame for a soccer kickback net, a trampoline and some plastic outdoor chairs that had lost the Mildew Wars. This morning, all that remained were the chairs.
Two doors down a stack of gently used fence panels by the street with a “Free!” sign on them remain unclaimed, so I’m conluding my items were lifted for their scrap metal value. I’ve seen plenty of trucks stalking the streets lately, loaded with discarded metal, and there have been cases of entire outdoor central air units being lifted for the metal they contain.
Obviously the notion of value is heavy on everyone’s mind these days, and it was on mine in a different context even before the economy officially went into a flat spin. Specifically, I was thinking about the value of blogs, which in some cases come off as electronic water cooler talk or worse. Though excellent procrastination tools (and I will admit that quite often doing nothing is better than doing something,) many didn’t seem to have much actual value, including my old one. Part of the problem there, I think, was that I presumed that what interested me interested others. Another problem was that I assigned no value to what I’d created musically, which makes it hard to ask others to do so.
While my plans are still as vague as congressional testimony, I have determined this much. If something doesn’t have value, I’m not going to do it on this blog. There are plenty of outlets for valueless chattering — twitter, facebook, tumblr, other people’s blogs etc. I might wind up keeping the old blog as a registration only area for any trash in my head, or I might make a private area here. But generally I’m aiming to be a little more discriminating. Having ideas isn’t the problem. Making something of them is. Other things that might migrate from the old blog are Aunt Mary Nation and Harry’s contributions (for their value as an anti-depressants.) Meanwhile, I do place value on humor and entertainment, so if I come up with something that meets my rigorous quality control standards, it might show up here, as well.
About this new site:
1) As you can tell, I’m trying to make some sofa change with music. However, if you want a track for personal use or to cobble something non-commercially, just use the contact form to shoot an email.
2) I really dig this theme and the e-shop plugin.
3) And now some photos of fun I wanted to have with the shopping cart, but decided against because of the possibility of error.
