Last week Tennessee passed some backward-facing legislation that everyone’s calling the “Monkey Bill.”

The carefully-worded purpose of this law is to give public school teachers the freedom to discuss alternative theories to scientific notions like evolution and global warming. So whenever any idea based on scientific evidence spooks someone from their hymnal-induced stupor, the teacher can reassure them that scientific evidence doesn’t discount their leaky old myths from holding water.

Proponents of the law argue that it encourages the kind of critical thinking that is essential to good science. Detractors fret that it encourages the kind of disregard for reason that is essential to good sermonizing. Tennessee Governor William Haslam thinks the bill doesn’t do anything; he refrained from signing it into law or vetoing it.

I imagine Governor William Haslam, after doing such a fine job of bothering no one by doing nothing, wanted to treat himself to a cookie but decided against it because all he had were Keebler and he didn’t want to upset his anti-Elf constituents.

Everyone’s got a stance on the “Monkey Bill” and everyone’s kind of right and everyone’s kind of wrong. The unquestioned idea that everything as it is was thought into existence in less than a week is anathema to critical thinking. It has nothing to do with science; it belongs in the philosophy classroom. But acknowledging that a lot of people would rather believe this idea instead of more complicated ideas based on research and evidence doesn’t throw science under the bus.

These kids are probably aware that the stories they hear in church don’t jibe with ANYTHING else in the world around them. They’re also doped to the gills on hormones and navel-gazing and have little use for what doesn’t affect them RIGHT NOW.

Example: Tennessee also has an abstinence-only sex education policy. They also have one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in the country.

If and when a kid develops the intellectual gumption to actually understand the way the natural world works, science will be there. Religion will welcome all the rest. That’s how it’s always worked.

Politics and the media will still turn on non-issues like this, frittering away time and money, thought and energy. People will still come running like hungry mopes to a dinner bell to hear about non-issues like this, happy to belch out a reactionary point of view then take a nap.

Everyone gets to choose a side, post a comment, feel secure in their position, happy with no change.

That’s how it’s always worked.

I take a lot of notes.

Scribbled into the margins of receipts and the frontandbacks of Post-Its. Crammed within notebooks. Scrawled across the undersides of scrap papers.

It’s a learned habit. There’s a lot of mental downtime when my brain isn’t on some problem-solving trip. Waiting for coffee to get itself made, riding on the subway, the majority of time spent at any job. Left to its own devices the subconscious will start poking around cobwebbed corners of memory and insight. Shake loose those tangled ribbons of thought. Note taking plucks those tidbits free, gives them a once over, and determines if they have any weight.

Mental bookkeeping.

Most of them don’t have anything to do with anything. One of these reads, “sniffing Champagne and nibbling finger sandwiches.” That was my takeaway from a private party in a department store that sold obscenely expensive bags for women to carry things in. I don’t know what this note does for me other than I like the sound of the words “sniffing Champagne.”

Some of them relate back to each other, relaying different narratives in scraps of sentences. Glancing insights into the character of a failed former baseball player, details of the secret machinations of an inter-dimensional underworld beneath New York City, biographical items about a model turned revenge-killer. Strange tales scribbled out one detail at a time, scattered about.

Some jumbled, unending, narrative puzzle in a million pieces.

I recently began collaborating with a friend on a story. His notes, like mine, are everywhere. On the surface of a desk, inside the covers of books. They lay claim to their space like initials carved into the bark of a tree.  They pop up whenever, unmindful of whatever’s being discussed. They’re insistent. They piggyback onto my notes, clambering on top of each other to make some rough beast of an idea.

I wish my notes had more space to live in. Jump from dollar store notebooks to giant sketchpads. Hang swaths of paper sheets from my walls branded with my own hieroglyphics. The murals of a madman.

Here is the first blog post of my new blog.

This new blog was built over the abandoned wreck of my old blog, which in turn had been built over the shaky foundation of an earlier blog. This is how my blogging goes. Start a blog, blog a blog, forget a blog, blog again with renewed fortitude.

I’m a habitual Ineffectual Blogger. I’ve relapsed.

It’s not because blogging is fun. Blogging, like going to the gym, demands too much of my time while offering little to no tangible reward.

Blogging isn’t interesting either. Tell someone you’re a blogger and they’ll approach you with the same placating tone they’d use toward the sufferer of recent brain trauma.

Blogging won’t make you rich or important. The only greater oxymoron than “successful blogger” is “influential blogger.”

There is nothing to be gained by heading out into the Blogosphere. The Blogosphere is flat and empty. Miles of sun-baked hardpan running on forever. Nothing grows there, in the Blogosphere.

So: why blog?

Because I need to write. The idea will be to write something here all the time. Every day, even. For at least a year.