Oz-bound

This evening I get on a flight from Washington to Canberra, changing planes in Los Angeles and Sydney. From wheels up to touch down in Canberra will take over 25 hours (not counting arriving three hours early at Dulles to make sure I'm not carrying any liquids onto the plane). And I thought it was a long way to Mongolia.

Welcome to Alas, Yorick

I've thought about doing a blog for a long time, and now seems as good a time as any. If you have come here looking for a deep psychological profile of Hamlet, or for cutting intellectual critiques of Shakespeare's plays, or for more on the controversy of whether Shakespeare or Bacon or some English Earl or even Genghis Khan wrote Shakespeare's plays, well bud you're in the wrong place! The name of this blog has no meaning except that I liked Hamlet, the phrase "Alas, poor Yorick" is inherently cool, and I played (well, "read" is more accurate) Hamlet's sidekick Horatio in a minimalist rendering of the play in high school back in the Twentieth Century.

I'm not entirely sure what you will find here, but here's what you WON'T find -- boring blather about the state of American politics or the Middle East or Tony Blair or any of that stuff. You can go to Talking Points Memo or Little Green Footballs or any of the bazillion other political blogs if you want that sort of commentary.

I will probably write a bit about what it is like for an American to live in Australia. I get on a plane soon to go to Canberra, where I will work for three years. Otherwise, I'll write about whatever strikes my fancy, at whatever schedule suits my mood. I suspect at some point I will write something about the Kinks, the neglected Fourth Horseman of the British Invasion (Beatles, Rolling Stones, and the Who are the other three for those of you who consider Kid Rock to be an oldies act).

You can check out my profile if you want to know more about me. If you would like to give me large sums of money, feel free to leave your contact information in a comment and I will quickly get back to you to grovel appropriately!