and

The hardest part of making anything is not falling into cliché. I also fear the self-indulgent, the pithy, and the pseudo-intellectual. That being said, I embark upon a rant, an art form that can so easily be all of those things.

I was talking to Karie Buss the other night about blogging and the whole phenomenon of Internet culture (facebook, myspace, etc.) Our conversation, like all of our conversations, included both childish mocking of people we know who do blog and deep-seated criticisms of the aforementioned services. She brought up many points that I have known for a long time, but often times elided in favor of fitting in to see what it's like.

That tendency might be included in my videos here.

But back to my point about her point--a blog, at it's very best, is simply a form letter, a Christmas card for those who don't see you and you can't seem to find the time to contact and update about your life appropriately. This, we both agreed, is one of the lowest forms of communication and is inherently offensive. At a blog's worst, it is simply a public airing of dirty laundry, replete with a very distinct type of psycho-reacharound by commenter. Boo to that, we said. Ultimately, these services are deceptively personal, and produce a Rear Window-type voyeurism that allows you to see only the most oblique views of a person, usually the most embarrassing. One becomes Miss Lonely-hearts and nothing more. These virtual close-ups do provide a window into a life, but there is so much distance and misinterpretation to be had.

And exactly because I am unhappy with what I see that I begin. Although I know that there are a plethora of insightful political and news blogs (boingboing, wonkette), the personal is an inherent component of my art. (Or at least I think I want it to be...I haven't done a whole lot of work period, let alone been entirely proud of what I've done so far.) It is from the personal that I can expand into the larger.

Inductive reasoning.

I might make a video about that.

Critical yet personal epistemology. That's my bag. But it's a big bag, so I'm just going to limit my subjects to those that begin with the letters r, s, t, and v. Hence the name. Hopefully there'll be humor. There'll be lots of words, but I hope to try to show more than I write. There'll be plenty of reactions and rebuttals, some of which I'm sure I'll regret. I may very well regret this grandiose statement of intent. But it will be here for you to see, and I hope that, if nothing else, it makes sense.