What I wanted to be

I’m starting to get this blog into shape again. The transition to hugo was never fully complete, and I didn’t fully get the publishing workflow setup. The Blogger-to-jekyll script did scrape the comments into their own posts, but they didn’t actually get segregated and so many of my posts with comments just became the comments posts.

I still don’t fully have the hang of the << ref >> syntax, but I’m getting there. Zed has been a joy thus far. I’m fully off of VS Code and I don’t see compelling reasons to go back as it has MCP integrations of its own.

But now, the mechanics are out of the way: What to write? Do I even write?

Honestly, it doesn’t feel like a choice–some sing, some write poor poetry, some make viral videos. I write.

It’s been a melancholy journey getting this blog organized. It’s 21 years of my life. There was an earlier incarnation that was either NSFW or NSFL, depending on how you viewed it. In any case that one’s gone. (Thank God). I did manage to find my wife’s old blog on internet archive and it’s heartwrenching. She loved me so much. She was so open. How did I manage to screw that up so much?

In any case, what I actually wanted to be when I grew up: I wanted to be Brock Yates, and irascible staple of Car & Driver whose prose lit-up that august magazine each month. I’d check the mail EVERY DAY and look for that new issue. I’d smell it, feel the quality in the paper, leaf through the Tire Rack ad, and the Pirelli ad that always had some woman in a ridiculous racing suit draped over a sideview car.

What mattered were the words. They described what it was like to drive a new 1994 Impala SS (“Mr. Vader, your car has arrived”), championed the nascent sport compacts like the B13 Nissan Sentra SE-R, and of course touted Honda and BMW until the cows came home. Any shootout featuring a Honda or BMW was over before it began.

It didn’t matter–I wanted that writer’s life, to let my literal car mania loose, combined with my on-the-spectrum ability to memorize and bench-race. I styled that I’d be able to keep up with Pat Bedard (um…no), or Don Schroeder (God rest his soul), or Csaba Csere.

In reality, I might as well have tried out for Vogue with Anna Wintour herself. It wasn’t gonna happen, and like many I consoled myself with great car boards in the 2000s like VWVortex, or The Truth About Cars. At least it was methadone to my addiction. I’d never drive or own these cars, but at least I could be next to the blowhards who’d own a VW Phaeton or a BMW 7-series or a Lambo Gallardo.

Then things changed. Video appeared. Insufferable blowhards like Doug DeMuro and Tyler Hoovie got the clicks and the eyeballs, and that’s what every new person wanted to be: A Youtube car reviewer. Instead of days/weeks of carefully crafted prose capturing le mot juste, we’d see extemporaneous ravings from “personalities”.

David E. Davis was a “personality”. He also didn’t suffer fools and he’d find this state of affairs disgusting.

Print media is dead. Publisher’s Clearinghouse declared bankruptcy this week. Every online “car site” is a eyeball-rending clickbait hub of ads just to stay solvent. The simple cleanliness of TTAC is long gone.

But, I still like words. So here they go. Shouted into the void, where no one cares, living safe in an Amazon S3 bucket until my credit card goes dormant.