The Umpteenth in a Series of Endless Beginnings

Hi, my name is Nathan and I hope this is a convenient introductory post for you! <-- This will be the last time that I ever use an exclamation point, hopefully.

I've been meaning to get back into the blogging game and perhaps branch out further. Barring a Livejournal account or two, I formerly had a blog I called Sacks Files, which really was a terrible name for a blog the more I thought about it over this last 2+ years. I decided to jump ship and start anew for that reason, plus I have graduated from college and now use a proper gmail account (and changing my former blog's email address is too hard for me). So, this is it.

In the past, I had the tendency to write more long-winded articles about whatever seemed interesting. They were more intermittent, and I wasn't quite satisfied with the amount of content I put up (this was not helped by knowing that no one else really cared). So I may try to write some shorter, punchier things. And I hope to be updating this more than once a week or even once a day.

I will probably not write about music very much here because I already have a joint music blog with my friend Aaron M. called Rockaliser. I do consider it fair game, as do I consider subjects like film, literature, cognitive neuroscience, comic books, history, advertising, domestic politics, living in DC, trying to be a writer, etc.

I also hope to accumulate an audience this time around. Please, please just forward this around to anyone who has the potential to be even remotely interested in what I am saying.

In case you are wondering, "Phineas P." refers not only to Phineas P. Gage, the railroad construction worker who in 1848 miraculously survived a steel rod through his brain, destroying what his physician John Harlow called "the equilibrium or balance,so to speak, between his intellectual faculty and animal propensities" and generally just becoming horrendous company to be around. It also refers to a fake character I created in high school, Phineas Pifferman (long before I ever knew about Gage, I think), who I introduced as a cruel, abusive editor-in-chief of my school newspaper The Web in a joke-themed April Fools issue. Is there a connection? I'm trying to develop some overarching philosophy about the necessity of being incorrigible and unpleasant...it will manifest itself in time.

In the meantime, I guess I will be more, what's it called...pleasant?