Originality Is Overrated, Anyway

I see, via the email device, that I have not been terribly original in the naming of this here blog.

Google its name and you wind up with, well, a plethora of pun-loving Grays (and Greys) blogging away on the internet. We've got a guy whose name is Kilian topping the charts; a nominee for "Best Gay Urban Blog"; an award that I doubt this particular "Shades of Gray" will ever contend for; a "moonpointer Buddhist blog"; a blog with insightful American Idol observations, something we could all use more of in these troubled times; a blog that appears to have been abandoned, but not before the author could put up some ROCKIN' satanic images; a blog that appears to do earnestly what this blog only purports to do, namely "blogging between the extremes;" as well as many, many other blogs that have at least "Shades of Gray" as a post title.

The thing that springs to mind, confronted with this veritable cornucopia of Shades of Grays, is the introduction to P.G. Wodehouse's fourth Blandings Castle book, Summer Lightning. As he put it, having conceived of the title in what seemed like a flash of genius, he was nonplussed to find that three books of the same title had been published the very same year.

Being of a philosophical disposition, however, Pelham Grenville didn't slip into the slough of despond, but instead resolved to "hope that this book may one day be accounted one of The Hundred Best Books Called Summer Lightning." And similarly, I will aspire to make this blog one of the Top Fifty Blogs Called Shades Of Gray. It's no Best Gay Urban Blog award, but you take your victories where you find them.