X-Ray Blues

Hi there.

My name is Matt Lineberger, and this is my second attempted foray into the Blogosphere. The first attempt was a Livejournal page to which I diligently posted for three whole days (and ended on a cliffhanger, at that). I was a big fish in a very small pond on the Stardestroyer.net boards until I went on a voluntary three month hiatus. I am known there as RedImperator, as I tend to be most places I go online.

Two half-assed theories led me to creating this blog. The first is that writing a blog post every day will get me into, and keep me in, the habit of writing every day, making it easier to diligently edit my novel-in-being The Humanist Inheritance (heretofore known as "HI"). That's a working title, by the way--I'm pretty sure I'm going to change it. The other half-assed theory is that people might actually want to listen to my ill-conceived ramblings on politics, science fiction, and the like.

(Actually, that was a little bit of false humility. As my wonderful, loving, warm, brilliant, funny, beautiful, well-endowed, and oversexed girlfriend could tell you, I'm a spectacular egotist. I am convinced people want to hear my ill-conceived ramblings, and I am further convinced that they are actually very well conceived and don't ramble very much at all.)

At any rate, I think that will serve as an introduction to this blog; I really just wanted to have something besides the spamcatcher (again, thanks to driftglass for the idea) up on the first night. I suppose a note on the blog's title is in order: there is a chapter of HI entitled "X-Ray Blues", and it happens to be my favorite. The name is from a little known but apparently real phenomenon: if you shoot X-rays directly into your eyeballs, you'll see a blue glow. I read it originally on Wikipedia, and so I assumed it was the Colbert Nation or somesuch having fun with me, but it turns out to have a real source. I'd love to actually do this, and I would, were it not for the fact I'd have to shoot deadly ionizing radiation directly into my eyeball.