Total bummer. I already had you penciled in around January 2007 for a few hours of legal consultations when Pajamas Media goes up in smoke. It's the JKP of blog companies and will collapse in a flurry of recriminations, financial fiascos that look more seedy than they really are and a scramble by opinionated stay-at-home dads to find their uberblog post about Ted Kennedy's dandruff that the National Review Online linked to before the servers get ripped out of the wall and locked in judge's chambers.

Luke (and I notice you're going by "Luke" on lukeisback.com these days), I wish you'd get it already. I know you're desperate for a community, hence your desire to penetrate one of the most sterile, insular and ritualized subcultures in the world through Judaic conversion. It's not you. You are temperamentally a pariah and an outlaw and it's absurd to bother trying to fit in with these navel-gazing dorks.

Think of anyone worth anything who has ever praised your writing. Have they ever said "You do an outstanding service for the community?" You don't. When you're playing the moralist, it's as an ethicist that only deals with other peoples' ethics. Maybe you misread something: Hell is other people, not a place where only other people live.

What I'm saying is you don't need to be Dennis Prager, Dennis Hastert or even the man that beat Dennis Conner. You're not speaking for anyone but yourself, and people find that interesting enough to read through, daily. Screw these geeks leaching off one public dole or another for the funds to organize their precious thoughts on why the Saracen needs the redemptive power of an American toothbrush. That's not you, and it's ridiculous to still aspire for that kind of social redemption and validation.