THERE ARE FEW THINGS in this world more preposterous, more ridiculous, more amusingly fatuous than the perpetually adolescent American male facing middle age. He’s a hoot, that one, a walking cliché — the car-buying, hair-plugging, youth-craving fool of song and story. However, as a wise man once pointed out, comedy is when you slip on a banana peel. It’s a goddamn tragedy when I do it. And that particular banana peel — the one that sometimes goes by the name middle-aged crazy — has been sliding around quite a bit recently beneath your graying correspondent’s nearly forty-year-old feet.

It’s not that I’m feeling old, exactly, or sinking into some kind of Prufrockian slough of despond (And I have seen the Eternal Blogger read my post, and snicker, / And in short, I was afraid…). But I am starting to think more seriously about what the dreadfully earnest types like to call life’s most precious resource: time. And, as I do, I’m finding it harder and harder to justify the hours spent producing this blog. You see, the plain, unvarnished truth is that political blogging – and by that I mean good political blogging – is no longer a game for amateurs. It’s the work of professional journalists and full-time online organizers now. The rest of us (with a few notable exceptions, of course) are adding little more than hisses and huzzahs from the cheap seats. Which is probably as it should be. Cream rises to the top and all that. But it does leave one asking the question that Reverend Johnson famously posed to the Almighty in Blazing Saddles: “Oh Lord. Do we have the strength to carry on this mighty task…? Or are we just jerking off?”

For me, for now, the answer seems to be the latter, which is why I’ve been away for the past couple of months, and why I’ll almost certainly stay away for the next couple. But, good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I expect to start posting on a regular basis again at some point in the not-too-distant future. (Remember, I didn’t say that blogging wasn’t worth my time; I said that part-time, half-assed blogging wasn’t.) Until then, best wishes to all – liberal and conservative, Democrat, Republican, and Independent. And, seriously, thanks for stopping by the site. I hope to see you all again soon.