You say it’s your birthday. It’s my birthday too, yeah!

Happy Birthday to me!

Happy Birthday to “the Skepbitch” blog, that is. 

January 9, 2009 marks one year since the day I did an interview where, yet again, I had to play the diplomat, bite my tongue, choose my words carefully, and delicately, and play the professional, formal skeptic. I didn’t say what I really thought, the way I wanted to say it, and I was angry with myself.

Of course, I’d spoken in a manner appropriate for the sociolinguistic enviroment. One doesn’t walk into a pub in Liverpool and speak the Queen’s Received Pronunciation with your mates over a beer, and Father Quimble doesn’t tell “A bishop and a prostitute walk into a bar…” jokes to his congregation during his church sermon. (Unless he’s partaken of the transubstantiation wine…now that’s a church I’ll attend!)

Take it from a linguist. We don’t always say what we think, and we don’t always think what we say. Truth in language gets lost in inarticulation, dishonesty, fear, miscommunication or, inappropriateness.

So, my website, magazine articles, journal papers, emails, and interviews just weren’t appropriate forums to speak my filthy mind; an uninterrupted platform for an Ulyssian lava flow of skepticism; but the Skepbitch blog is… 

I’d say the Skepbitch is my alter-ego, but it’s really me.

Thanks for your emails, comments and readership over the past year. I love hearing from you guys, and I feel close to you all, in that I-don’t-fucking-know-you-at-all-but-you-are-reading-this-so-we-must-have-something-in-common kinda way.

But seriously, my rants seem to have touched some nerves (mmm…that felt good, didn’t it?) and resonated with you.  There are some who’d say that blogs are a waste of time, tossing-off into the ether, without reward. My rewards are emails like this one from reader Israel Walker (self-indulgence alert!!!):

I just wanted to thank you again for the courage you have.  My biggest struggle with atheism was the “indifferent universe” that I would have to believe in if prayer couldn’t bend the rules for me.  It was you who said “Israel, human beings are as much a part of the universe as the trees and the stars.  We have free will, so the universe is only as indifferent as our indifference to others.  We can chose to live in a caring universe by caring for others.”

That’s the most beautifully ethical think I’ve ever heard, and part of my new philosophic core.   Thanks.

My point is, our blogs are important to support our movement, and to provide support for skeptics.

IfI do say so myself, I think the success of this site is evidence that while we don’t subscribe to the simplistic parallel that skepticism is just another religion, we skeptics want to be roused and inspired, we want passionate rhetoric, we want community, we want humor, we want plain speaking, we want honesty, ethics and truth, and we want sincere skepticism…