Hiatus! And thanks for all the fish.

Dr. Dawg has the right idea -- a month away from the blog. Of course, he has an actual excuse -- academic research.

Me? I'm just tired.

Now I could yammer on endlessly regarding my justification ... hey, why don't I do just that? In a nutshell, I'm tired not so much of blogging but what it's turned into. Used to be it represented some humour, some snark and -- most importantly -- actual, genuine intellectual discourse.

Well, those times are long gone, aren't they? Look around. If you're a Canadian progressive, who exactly are you going to exchange intellectual banter with? Hunter? Dodo? Kate McMillan? Neo Conservative? Ezra Levant? Kathy Shaidle? Sandy Crux? Dr. Jabba the Roy?

And even if you put in some legitimate civil effort (as a number of progressives have done), you know what's coming? "Harharhar, stupid leftards, it sure is easy to upset them, harharhar!" Followed immediately by the inevitable savage and brutal comment moderation and deletion. No intellectual discourse for those folks.

Quite simply, there's no middle ground to even attempt discourse any more. Canada's conservatives aren't just, well, conservative. No, they are, for the most part, screeching, scientifically illiterate bigots, racists and hypocrites. And after a while, simply mocking them gets tedious and repetitive. I mean, how long can I milk the theme of, "Hey, did you see the awesomely stupid thing that [insert random Blogging Tory name here] wrote today!?!?" You start to feel that you might as well just number code the jokes to save time. After all, I need only write "Molecules!" to inform everyone that Sandy Crux just posted something howlingly idiotic.

But, really, in the end, I just have other, more important things I want to do. It's been fun but, after well over 10,000 posts and over one and a quarter million visitors, there's other stuff I'd rather spend my time on -- books to read, technical tutorials to write, courseware to design, people to bounce some business ideas off of, seminars to give, conferences to attend, development kits on which to install Linux ... well, you get the idea. And when I think about it (and it doesn't take much thought), all of the above appeals to me way more than mocking Stephen Taylor for whatever asinine piece of offal he posted yesterday.

Will this stick? Who knows? Perhaps there's an up-and-coming blogger who wants to join the crew at CC HQ and poke stupid right-wingers with a sharp stick. If you're out there and this sounds like you, drop me a note and we'll see. But when I look around, I'm pretty sure the Canadian Progress-o-sphere is in good hands. And if there are any bloggy get-togethers, sure, I might crash it and socialize with my ideological buds.

But for now, at least, I've got a buttload of cool technical projects and people who want more of my time and, in the grand scheme of things, those cool technical projects have a lot more appeal than whatever douchebagitude Steve "The Premature eJankulator" Janke horked up recently.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some work to do for a high-tech European company and I feel like doing a good job of it. And that means starting today. Now.

Well, OK, after a glass of scotch. Then I'll start. And thanks for all the fish.

P.S. Molecules! You had to know that was coming.