This is it. Oh my God this is it.

So I decided to start a blog, about two years after it stopped being the cool thing to do, because I am not cool, apparently.

I intend to use this blog to share things I think.  I almost said “musings,” but seriously, I have read a ton of these blogs over the years, and everyone shares their musings.  I have decided not to muse, but rather to try to think, and think well, and occasionally think wrong, and hope that those occasions are ones wherein whoever ends up reading this blog tells me that I am thinking wrong.

A few things.  First, I will probably end up commenting on a wide variety of things, because I’m interested in lots of things.  But as for me, I am a student in Divinity School at the University of Chicago.  I am a committed leftist who probably identifies more with some form of idealistic anarchy than any other social project, yet also identifies with some Niebuhrian-or-otherwise tendencies to view attempts to achieve such anarchy with some suspicion.  I believe in fantasy literature.  I really do.  I construe that term broadly too — I include science fiction under the umbrella, and think some of the best fantasy today is being written by science fiction writers.

I am a Christian.  If you are not, you’re cool with me.  If there is a Hell then I’ve been misinformed as to the nature of the God I worship and so I’ll enjoy eternal torment with the rest of my heathen friends.  But I tend to think that the end of time will wash away everything in perfect eschatological glory and my heathen friends and I will have a real party with each other.  Yes, I am aware this belief is fundamentally irrational and cannot be proven by natural science.  Yes, I believe in evolution.  No, I am not interested in your theories as to how I am deluded and in need of Richard Dawkins.  Yes, you may air those theories in my comments section.

Speaking of comments, since I will touch on, well, touchy subjects, I have a few rules.  First, I don’t really intend to police my comments.  But if I see or am informed of the following:

1. Spam or Advertising
2. “Triggering” comments (see Wikipedia: Trauma trigger)
3. Being a rude person.  I will decide what constitutes rude, and if it means I sometimes let my friends or people I know act rudely but not some random person who comes in and starts insulting people for being “angry asexual feminists” or whatever dumbass trope is on the Rush Limbaugh show these days, well, then, tough shit.
4. Attacking someone based on a category into which they fall, whether chosen or innate: you may question someone’s faith, for instance, but you cannot attack them for holding it.  I will try to be very careful about this one, more careful than the being rude rule, and if you honestly think I’ve made an error in deleting a comment or leaving a comment standing, I appreciate honest e-mails.  I do not, however, appreciate dishonest whining.  Search yourself, and know that you are right in the sense that only something like God could agree with you, before bothering me about it.
5. Other reasons yet to be encountered.  If I encounter new reasons, however, I will update this post to reflect the growing list of things that bother me and will not be permitted in the comments.

Please note that I may occasionally allow comments that should be deleted (though not trauma triggers) as object lessons for others in what annoying commentary looks like.  Rest assured, this will only happen once other commenters have completely excoriated you.

And finally, I love you all.  Love should be a rule of life, shouldn’t it?  Feel free to e-mail me at any time: tolkienista at gmail dot com.  Welcome to Marry Me Moses!