The Illuminated Donkey

Testing, testing…hello, is this thing on? HELLO?

Greetings, and welcome to the world’s one-billionth blog. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to start this thing, especially since it’s existed for about 30 seconds and there’s no audience out there to direct these comments to. But I guess you gotta start somewhere, so let’s get this party started right:

The Illuminated Donkey FAQ (assuming there was some question-asking audience with enough inquiries to be able to rank certain questions as being more frequent than others):

1. Okay, what the hell does that mean? The Illuminated Donkey is both a delightful object (specifically, a white, plastic, hollow, light-up donkey from a outdoor Christmas display that brightened the dark streets of Capitol Hill, Seattle for four years) and a less-delightful state of mind (illuminated donkey = smart ass; pun eventually intended).

2. And you are? My name is Ken Goldstein. I guess I’ll get more into this as this progresses, but I suppose the thing most on my mind now is that on Friday, September 7, I turned 30. The event was celebrated with a wonderful surprise dinner (organized by my wonderfully sweet girlfriend Rachel) held at Ruby Foo’s in Times Square. This turned out to be the last time I saw New York before September 11, the events and aftermath of which have dominated my thoughts ever since.

I live in New Jersey, where I’ve lived for 25 of my 30 years, and am currently working as a copywriter for an electronic goods and toys company, and am also doing some marketing and technical writing work for a shipping company. My favorite authors are Tom Wolfe, Joseph Conrad, Stanley Elkin, and an obscure but highly regarded experimental author included here merely to impress passers-by. I like baseball a lot. I’m deceptively quick.

3. Anything else? Just to reiterate that part about Rachel being wonderful and sweet, as well as quite the looker. Trust me, I don’t deserve her.

4. So what the heck is this thing? I’m not planning to reinvent the form here. I’ll be posting my thoughts on the day, stuff that’s happening to me, and links that I find interesting.

And just to get things off on the right foot: the first link is, of course....MONKEYS!!!!!