Listen...

Welcome to the Ugly Blog.

If you've read Chris Abani's The Virgin of Flames you're familiar with the kind of "ugly" I meant when I named this blog. But the story if its name starts in September, in a class called "Water and Security in the Middle East." The professor, one of my favorites at the University of Washington, opened the class by talking about young people and our cynicism, sitting at home writing our "ugly blogs" saying the sky is falling.

As I was, at that time, 9 months into my Dear Mr President project, I couldn't help but take this comment a little personally. I would write my ugly blog, I thought, and the ugly blogs of my generation would change the world in ways this newspaper-worshipping dinosaur couldn't imagine.

Oh, youthful anger. *head pat*

Long after deciding on this name, long after taking a break from blogging at the end of 2010, I was assigned The Virgin of Flames for another class. In Abani's LA, the misfits and circus freaks of the city find community in a psychic tatto parlor/bar/coffee shop/music venue where scars are required for admission. It is called "The Ugly Store" and my professor (rather affectionately, I like to think) pointed to me and said I'd feel right at home there.

And so this shall be the Ugly Blog. I don't know if the sky is falling, but most days I think it might be. It might be because I write from Seattle, or because cynicism is my default expression. Most days I try to challenge that. If you read this because you read Dear Mr. President, please be warned, this will likely be a stranger, more emotional, less political place. That being said I am a person who believes all politics are personal, so I'm not going to drop the leftist bent of my ranting, even if those rants occur in something that isn't always straightforward prose.

So, as I was saying, welcome. This is the Ugly Blog.