So, Claire, why this blog?

Fact: I am a veteran, inveterate blogger. I started long ago--an idealistic, moody, sardonic teenager with a penchant for Victor Hugo and theatre. Since that initial blog--which has some truly funny posts, but ended in a slow, maudlin manner characteristic of bad independent movies--I've started several.

There was my Myspace blog for my Myspace friends.

There was my Xanga for my Xanga friends.

There was my Livejournal for my lj friends.

I quickly got tired of it. Writing three blogs for three different audiences slowly zapped my creative energy as I attempted to tailor my posts to the different brackets. And deep down I knew that this was no way to blog--it was becoming a set of inside jokes. And before I knew it, I was hooked--I depended on these various and sundry sites to network with people I didn't want to lose. And the various and sundry sites became less and less about the content of the writing and more and more about news, which of course made personal contact with others less and less necessary.

Well, now I'm being deliciously daring. I am forcing myself out of the loop. I am forcing myself to write letters, to make telephone calls, to show up at the front doors of near-strangers.

And, I hope, I will eventually return to online publications I feel okay about sharing with the world. I hope these New Posts will be less moody, even a little less sardonic, but still original and quirky. I want them to be accessible and fun.

So, that is the reason for this latest incarnation.

As for the title, it comes from Crime and Punishment. Fyodor Dostoevsky is one of my favorite authors. I don't know--I guess I just admire cranky old Russians with intimidating beards. I didn't know this for a long time, because it's completely lost in translation, but the names of many of the characters are derived from common Russian words. Razhumikin is one of those characters. His name is derived from a word meaning "reason" or "intelligence." I am not the most brilliant person on earth, but reason and logic matter to me. As I get further and further away from my high school years, which were trademarked by a sense of melancholy (it's the Hugo, I'm telling you...) and become more and more phlegmatic, I spend an increasing amount of time evaluating whether or not things make sense anymore.

(By the way, I do not know how to pronounce Razhumikin, so don't ask me.)

(By the way, I almost named this blog "Not-so-grand-Inquisitor," which was inspired by The Brothers Karamazov, but I didn't want to leave the wrong impression. Not only have I never led an inquisition, but I'm also not antagonistic towards Christianity, by any means.)

The "razzmatazz" part of the title is just sort of a balderdash word that goes with Razhumikin.