I am Magic Love Hose! Hi. That’s not my real name but it’s the one I’m giving out.
I first came across Matt’s blog and his social media outposts about a year ago, during the great Gulf Oil Spill. I needed fresh blood in my RSS reader and I noticed BanterWire on both Oliver Willis’ website and Bob Cesca’s joint. I found at Osborneink.com a voice with interests and outlooks similar enough to my own to share a common language, while not being so similar that I had nothing to learn. I followed Matt and began tweeting my usual buffonery at him; he was kind enough to retweet me back, engaging with me and offering counter-buffonery of his own. So, People on Twitter: the secret to amassing a loyal audience is to remember that Twitter is meant to be a conversation, and not to be afraid to strike one up.
I don’t reside in the United States and have only visited a few times, but being a Canadian I find it best to check and see what the neighbors are up to. I’ve been interested in politics since about halfway through high school, where after a brief flirtation with the Progressive Conservative party and a brief swing over into that area of Leftyland defined as “no, fuck you,” I’ve settled where I am, mostly center-left on the international scale (which would make me a mumu-wearing swarthy hippy south of the border.)
I’ve had a lifelong interest in geek stuff, from animation to comics books to role-playing games and computers. So I felt a level of nerd-connection with Barack Obama in 2008, seeing him posed in front of the Metropolis, Illinois Superman statue like it was no thang.
While I resigned myself by the middle of 2008 to the notion that he was going to be a lot more centrist than I was 100% comfortable with, if you forced me to pick a side in the great Obot/firebagger wars I’d probably be on Team Obot – though I reject the artificial binary choice of “love all that he does or despise all that he is.” Life’s more complicated than that, and that’s why we all blog.
While Matt is out, I will be filling in here, ensuring that the ink does not dry. I will try my best not to turn this into my own personal blog, or merely an extension of my Twitter account. I thank Matt in advance for rolling the dice on me and I hope those dice come up 20s. (What’s that, you think dice are only six-sided? Let Matt & I take seven hours to talk to you about D&D, our characters in it, and all the imaginary magic lizards we’ve beaten up for money…)
