Lift-off

This is the inaugural post of the Jonathan Franzia blog, and also my debut into the world of blogging and cyber-self-publishing. I have the disadvantage of starting a blog relatively late in the game, after the territory has been well-charted (and even landscaped: the beasts have been killed and stuffed, the native assimilated, the trails paved). People have told me what to expect (not much), and reading around has given me some idea of how, in a tame land, dullness can proliferate at an improbable pace, like so many suburbs.

And yet I step into this once-dark continent not content just to take the air and exercise my legs.  I hope to make discoveries, even if what I discover is only "what kind of blogger I am," or something as utterly and uninterestingly self-reflexive as that. Nevertheless, the ideal is that I will return from this blogging excursion with wealth and fame. To mix metaphors for a second: I know this is blog will not be a lone resounding voice that shatters the silence. But if everywhere you go people have been screaming about nothing, and, after a few years, you finally give in and join them, though you don't know why, then you might as well scream the loudest.

The title of this blog might be an indicator of its subject matter. Or it might just be a pun. Expect, however, polemics and puff pieces on fiction and music.

The above photo shows Apollo 11 lifting off. The Apollo 11 mission was a mixed metaphor about human progress, a search for origins, man's pride, national glory, extraterrestrial supremacy, a hatred of the Russians, and phallic objects. May this blog stand for all the same things.