happy birthday, blag

About five years ago we were just about to start our second year of college. That spring semester we had taken a humanities class that spanned from Ancient Greece to the Renaissance. The theme of the class was terrorism and the professor had us look at all the primary texts and interpret them through the lens of the state and terrorism. This class fundamentally changed how we think about the world and set us on a course to becoming more and more left-wing in our political beliefs. Also, Kevoh started this blag and asked us to write on it with him and some other AHOLs.

Unlike leftist party leaders, we (I) never had a plan for what this blag would be like in five years, what we (I), want to use it for, and how y'all will interact with it. Nor did it even occur to us that we might still be updating this blag five years later. The layout is more or less the same, we still write in first person plural, try to keep images about 500 pixels wide, and think that our opinions matter enough to share them with y'all. As we said a while ago, we're not really sure why we care anymore and if y'all care that we care (yes, college made us not only into a socialist, but also a nihilist), or even if we still like playing with our legos.

Most kids go away from home when they go to college, which often results in those who played with legos to to stop doing so, at least until later in life when they are lucky enough to land well paying jobs that enable them to get back into the hobby. We were one of the exceptions who stayed at home with their parents (and are still doing so because bachelors of arts in German and Linguistics are nearly useless except for when you need to correct someone who claims that all languages descend from Latin or for when you need to tell someone that Gesundheit actually just means "health"). This afforded us the luxury of still playing with our legos but, ironically, our interest in playing with legos has decreased dramatically over the past two to three years, despite having a pile of legos four feet from where we sleep every night. It may also be that our collection remains largely unsorted in large bins that make it nearly impossible to find parts and that we actively avoid researching prototypes and finding inspiration.

What do you do to find inspiration? How do you motivate yourself to build? To sort? Post a valued opinion below on what you do to play with legos. Post a valued opinion below so that I know that you care.