"Bad At Small Talk" is mostly Joshua P. James.
Joshua P. James is me. The "P" stands for Paul. I am notoriously bad at small talk. I can do alright at parties with a drink in my hand, but rest assured I am mostly uncomfortable in group settings otherwise. It's not that I despise the convention of small talk wishing instead to go straight to the merits of Sartre vs. Nietzsche as a better role model for our next generation of succubi. I don't really want to talk about that around the water cooler either. I'm just bad at the introductory, howzits and whozits of get-to-know-ya time-passing. Quick question before we proceed - As you read this, are you imagining someone else's voice, ostensibly a voice you've ascribed to me, conveying the words - OR - is your head-voice, just your own moving through the words on the screen? Just curious...
...This site is a bulletin board for my ruminations, mind wanderings, rambles of any sort. I am a lover of many things, but I am analytical in my love. I prize empathy. I prefer it tempered by rationalism, but too much empathy is better than too little. That being said, I rarely let my heart bleed onto the floor. Someone might slip on the puddle. I am, in philosophy, a liberal person. I would actually say, in general, I am fairly apolitical, but I claim proudly a universal social liberalism. I am a secularist and a material humanist if you find more labels necessary. I believe that human beings should all enjoy equality, and that is something as a society we should strive towards, but I am not an idealist. I know it's complicated. Even as staunch as I feel I am in my core tenets, if you could say one thing to sum me up, it's that I rarely feel just one way about anything. I think it's all grey. Some shades are much closer to the poles, but rarely is anything of true importance black and white. I do know for certain that we have a lot of ground to cover to make things better. That, I do know, with 99.99% certainty.
Most of the information conveyed through this site will be my opinion and there are several idioms that involve the ubiquity of opinions, and I think they all apply. I think you absolutely have a right to your opinion, always, just as I hold fast to the right to dismiss your relevance by the pungency of your opinions.
Mostly I want to inspire critical thought. I hope to be a small tooth on a small cog shifting the paradigm toward the philosophical "why?". I think there is a lack of open communication underwritten by critical thought. I think there is a lack of resources for stimulating that critical thought. Moreover, there seems to be a swelling de-emphasis of the legitimacy of truth-seeking and many are turning dumb to the ability to even question what is going on around them. It's a muscle needing flexed, and a turn toward an existence proved out by the ticker-tape of views, likes, hearts, retweets, bumper sticker rhetoric, and 24-hr news chyrons is atrophying that muscle. The B@ST blog is here to be the ankle weight to one's mall-walking workout.
B@ST the Podcast (COMING SOMEDAY!) - produced by William Mount (Sounds of Bustown, Sitting w/Cy and others).
Other JPJ-related endeavors:
Yellow Paper Planes - rock n roll band in which I sing and play guitar
?????? - forthcoming indolent, indie-folk solo project
I have also written an historical-fiction-memoir-of-sorts (yes, all of those words are meant to appear together in that hyphenate) titled "Drum Tobacco, Suicide and a Nicked Keychain" which I'm hoping will soon be available for download in readable and audio formats. Know anyone in publishing?
ClawHammer Designs - In between times, my pops and I have a furniture and home furnishings side hustle. Need a table?