Mission Statement

Sitting here in Café Intelligentsia (its aesthetic approaches the pretentions conveyed by its name, but it really is the best fucking coffee in the city of Chicago) on Broadway, attempting to write something of personal value (a short story with turtle’s legs and tsetse’s brain, fueled by a caffeinated and highly distracted letter-tapper).
It’s been quite some time since I’ve written anything I’ve been even minutely proud of; as a point of fact, it’s been close to a month since I last wrote anything at all, save some half-drunk ramblings in a pocket moleskin and on a handful of cocktail napkins, one marked with an ominous, triply-reinforced asterisk (*WORK ON THIS TOMORROW). Well, tomorrow was supposed to be today, and the “this” isn’t working.
I’ve spent so much time with my nose in sample business plans that I may very well have forgotten how to write at all. Now on my second 16 oz. Ethiopian blend and my focus drifting alternately from the open document on my computer, the toe-tapper to the left of me, the throat-clearer to my right, and the incredibly cute, tattooed barista so gracefully foaming milk behind the counter (I swear she’s been making eyes at me), I have decided, logically, to start a blog detailing an obsession that fuels my unchecked ADHD: The Stumble Button.

The idea was conceived while I was vacationing in New Orleans. My buddy Wheaties told me all about the Stumble Button, a procrastinator’s dream. For those of you not in the know, the Stumble Button can be downloaded at www.stumbleupon.com as an add-on to your web-browser. You essentially check off on things in which you’re interested – sports, literature, baking, world music, Scientology, whatever – press the Button and it takes you to a random website that The Internet thinks you might like.

It is crystal meth without the tooth decay.

So ends my advertisement.

But the idea behind the blog is this: I hit the stumble button, it takes me to the page, and I report on it. It’s as simple as that. I sit here, drinking this black water, pressing a button and then pressing more buttons, telling you where the first button took me. There must be a worse way to waste my time.