Many people, myself included, have wondered why I have chosen to name this blog "The Shrike," instead of something more conventional, like "the writing blog," or the "John Stamos fan club blog." The Shrike is a rather odd name, as it sounds most like a mix of "shriek," and "reich," two words that I would not like associated with the blog on which I spend my down time. The name "The Shrike" is actually, as many of you guessed from the title image of this blog, a reference to a type of bird. Shrikes are large songbirds, and rather uninteresting at first glance; they have no bright colors or fancy frills, and have inspired no children's songs of which I am yet aware. A Shrike is a bird found in many areas of the world, although all sub-species of Shrike have one particular attribute in common: a very unique method of food preservation. While most of us humans choose to preserve food by "popping it in the refrigerator," Shrikes save the odd mouse or amphibian for later by impaling its body on a sharp thorn or barbed wire.
The first and only time I had the pleasure of observing this brutish behavior was in the humid swamps of southern Georgia. While working on an outdoor project with the student conservation association, a friend of mine pointed to a bird she thought was a mockingbird, and remarked that the mockingbird was her favorite because of the symbolic role for peace and innocence the bird played in her favorite novel. The large black and white bird then dropped swiftly out of the tree in which it had been sitting, snatched a lizard off the ground, and impaled it unceremoniously on the tines of a pitchfork that had been resting leaned up against a wall.
The scene was obviously very surprising to us, particularly because of the inconspicuous nature of the black-and-white bird sitting in the tree. Therein lies what I believe to be the purpose of good writing and social commentary: to be inconspicuously vicious. Writing has had an inconspicuously vicious impact on the world as we know it: writers like Spinoza and Marx were fundamentally able to change society through writing, while others such as Orwell and Voltaire were able to change forever how we regard establishment. Countless authors have changed our lives and the ways we interact; in being inconspicuously vicious, writing has the ability to change the world.
That, however, is not the purpose or ambition of this particular blog. This blog is merely the side-project of an often bored teenager. If in attempting the inconspicuously vicious I make you laugh or entice you to share a post with a friend, I have achieved my goal. Please don't think I am comparing myself with Voltaire.
