Winston's Diary

As I said a few weeks ago, Winston's Diary will be making some changes in the weeks to come. One of those changes is the incorporation of new blood, in the form of a poster who will be going by the name of "Syme," a character from Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four who works as a philologist on the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. If you've read the novel, you may remember Syme and Winston having conversations about Newspeak over gin in the lunch room, and that Syme is eradicated for reasons unknown. Like Winston, perhaps he knows too much.

I think you'll like Syme, and I'm hoping that his ability to speak his mind without worrying about losing his job--Syme isn't an academic--will bring some fresh air into this blog and perhaps get people reading it again. Like me, Syme has lost patience with the political left, but unlike me, he has to deal with them in the real world, instead of the ivory tower. I think that makes him a little more sensible than I am.

Julia and I will still be posting here, and we'll both be making a sincere effort to post at least a few times a week. I do have some stories to tell, and I will be making the effort to tell them while still hiding enough information to avoid outing myself.

Also, Winston has a new email address, and Julia will soon be following suit: 6079.Winston@gmail.com. I've changed the email address in my profile.

I'm not sure when we'll be getting our first post from Syme. He's reading around on the blog, and looking over some of the blogs and sites I've linked to, to get an idea of the greater conversation we're all taking part in.

So, if you like what you see in weeks to come, pass the word. We had a pretty good conversation going here for awhile, and my own inattentiveness allowed it to deteriorate. I'm going to try to rectify that.