The Nuclear Porcupine

Redux:

A note on the origins and title of this blog--

As a simple Google search demonstrates, there are several genuine Gern Blanstons out there--

I plucked the name from an obscure Steve Martin routine off the vinyl issue of Comedy is Not Pretty. Despite my apparent misspelling and a possibly fictitious controversy over Martin's use of the name, I used it simply to send a veiled signal that I hail from a sarcastic segment of what was once termed "The Nowhere Generation".

We are too old to be Xers and too young to be Boomers or to have participated in the sixties, unless our parents dragged us to a demonstration--or our government dragged an older brother to Vietnam. We grew up in the seventies and watched the hippies morph a genuine revolution into a coke-addled nihilistic nightmare, resulting in Reagan's election in 1980...and we've seen how that worked out. 

Of course, that is a lot of detail that matters not at all, so long as the writing holds up.

I will call this blog The Nuclear Porcupine, because that's how my hypertrophied misanthropy frequently makes me feel...toxic and unhuggable.  Other options included Bring Rotten Fruit, The Hippie Speedball, and Never at Dusk.  But choices have to be made, and The Nuclear Porcupine it is.

Enough Whining.