What is Up?

I hope this first post finds you all well. By “you all” I mean my roommates, immediate family, and everyone else that I can force to look at my blog through nagging, guilt trips or threats of physical violence. We all launch these things thinking that it’ll rival Daily Kos or Instapundit in 2 months, but in reality the only people who look at it are people that you would talk to anyway. You can tell I have lots of blog ambition now, considering that I hyper-linked two things in the previous sentence. Two weeks from now I’ll spend a maximum of 30 seconds a day on this thing.

Anyway, why did I call my blog ‘The Mechanical Turk?’ Well, you can read the long version of the story here, but the short version is that 250 years ago a German man named Wolfgang von Kempelen designed a chess-playing mannequin called “the Turk,” all decked out with a fatty moustache and turban. However, it all turned out to be a collosal hoax; a chess master actually fit himself inside the mannequin, making the loser believe he was beaten by a sophisticated piece of machinery.

AS far as my blog goes, there is no deeper meaning behind naming it “The Mechanical Turk”; I chose the name because it was the best cultural reference I could think of that involved Turkey, besides all the gimmes, like “Turkish Delight,” or “Istanbul, not Constantinople.” Later on I’ll find some deeper meaning and retroactively apply it to my blog, as if it were there from day one.
Enjoy.