My name is Sean, and I’m a blogger. Apparently. I’m also a first year law student which you would think would mean that I have no time to tell the internet what I think about movies, books, comics or anything else. You would be right, but I make time anyway. This blog, Semantic Drift is mine. In linguistic terms, semantic drift when words change in meaning over a period of time. Like the word silly used to mean something like holy. Silly originally described purity. From there it came to be associated with innocence, and so children. Children are synonymous with simplicity. Over time the connotation of simplicity gave way to idiocy and we have the current usage. Language and ideas can shift in meaning over time and my ideas do the same. This blog is a way to document them as they do.

I feel sometimes that I’m a sensitive intellectual trapped in the body of a thuggish man-brute. Though my soul yearns for the higher calling of sophisticated pursuits, we all have to make do with the tools we’re given. So I’m stuck down here in the mire with nothing but brave words and bloody knuckles trying to talk about the things that interest me. I like to write, and I started this blog to get back in the habit of putting one word in front of the other in aesthetically pleasing ways. If I write more, I keep my skills with the written word honed to the cutting edge. I don’t know if its working. I also find it helps me discover how I feel about certain issues. Writing is my tool for gaining insight and clarifying my opinions and feelings.

I like to think I’m fairly interesting, but all too often it turns into “Interesting“, with the audible capitalization and air quotes, like I’m trying too hard. Part of this comes from a faux-pompous tone that occasionally creeps into my writing. To be fair, I think I’ve earned a certain amount of pretension since I’ve lived in a few foreign countries – most notably (and for the longest times) South Africa and Ireland. I have itchy feet and am a vagabond at heart.

I’ve never really felt like I was doing enough with my life, even when I was.

I spend most of time thinking and caring about things that ordinary people neither think nor care about. For instance: magicians, samurai, comic books, cartoons, globalization, the history of role playing games (although I don’t play), video games (I do play these), the weather in strange cities I will most likely never set foot in, those warning cartoons you see around industrial equipment, movies, fighting, vacant buildings, recipes for chicken.

I (and this blog) have a few broad interests that I concentrate on:

1. I love to read, and do so constantly. This includes novels, nonfiction, comics, and an increasing emphasis on legal treatises what with the law school and all. I like to review the novels that I read because I was an English major (Creative Writing, but still…) and also graphic novels because I am a huge nerd.
2. I don’t get to read very much non law school curriculum-related books these days so I’m sharing my initiation into the legal world.
3. I love going to the movies. Everything about it, from the popcorn kernels that get stuck in my teeth to the previews all the way through the end credits. I am omnivorous when it comes to film, taking equal if decidedly different pleasure in everything from foreign/indy flicks to big-budget action spectacles (and everything in between). I like to talk about the new movies that come out and give a postmortem on my theater experiences.
4. I’m something of a traveler, and have put some serious miles under my feet. Sometimes I write about travel, but not as much as I would like to.
5. I enjoy drinking, and though I do so but rarely these days it usually becomes quite epic when I do. I’ve got some stories, and I occasionally make reports on new bars that I discover here in San Francisco.
6. I train obsessively in combative sports (MMA, Submission Wrestling, Kickboxing). I enjoy mixed martial arts, and while I don’t follow the UFC or PRIDE as fervently as I once did I still enjoy a bit of the old ultraviolence now and again.

I some times combine these interests, where it makes sense to do so. For instance, I might read a book on Australia while drinking a beer. Or I might travel somewhere and proceed to get drunk. The permutations are many, but you could probably work out for yourself which ones work better than others. I also reserve the right to pop in random posts that have little, if any, overriding theme. This is my playground and I’ll damn well write what I want.

Something else you should know: I’ve never been able to call anyone “Baby.” It’s something I’d like to accomplish before I die. But every time I try it comes off sad and kind of disturbing, like when middle-aged men give each other high-fives.

If any of that makes you more interested to read what I have to say, you might have problems… But welcome to Semantic Drift.

But none of that has prepared me for the psychic and spiritual costs of trying to redesign my blog. Sure, wordpress makes it pretty simple to switch out the themes but the sheer volume of possible choices daunts me. Every time I make up my mind that this will be the layout for me, I spy what might be a better one. Playing around with the widgets is a little more fun, but I’m still having trouble settling down into a final configuration. And the worst part is that while I’m screwing around with this stuff, my readers are missing out on my cogent insights into American life, witty commentary on the world around us, and cultural criticism. But it must be done, and I feel like I am getting closer to the finished product. I have decided, for now, to go black. I’m not sure if this is good design or not, but I like it and it’ll do for now.