The Grand Plan

Here's the plan: I'm starting a new NBA blog with a friend - a rather smart fellow, I might add - slated for the beginning of October, and being that he is quite literally a statistician out east and I am trained mostly in mathematics, it will be more statistically-inclined and prone to player descriptions and my (actually quite competent) book reviews. We've been wanting to do this for a long time: even *shudder* devoting an entire blog to his alma mater's sports, Duke, as a longform test run.

What does this mean for your old pals at Pearls of Mystery? Statistically, nothing, unless you are me. What does this mean for Pearls of Mystery? Well, to put it bluntly it will probably skew towards the longer end of character sketches, like before, but more so. About two-fifths of what I write about basketball receives the intensive editing of a post I really develop, and three-fourths of that actually ends up being reworked and posted here. So you're getting 30% of what I write now; in the future you might be getting 20%: the longer two-thirds of what remains. The good news - from my perspective - is that I have an extra 20% (in addition to the 30% I post here) which really doesn't belong here in general - basketball book reviews belong so much more on this other site that I have deliberately held back on them. Links posts on Pearls of Mystery, you ask? Don't make me laugh. Because this suggestion itself has done it to me.

On the other hand, good writing tends to create an egocentric hegemony with the writer at the center. And I promise that if this writing I do is good I will make sure this hegemony swallows Pearls of Mystery, reader, like some such membrane engorgement.

So what's the beginning of the end (or the end of the beginning)? Well, I was thinking it would leave a good taste in everyone's mouth if I started a series on here that I'll continue on the new blog. This will be more or less a infinite-part series describing the first round of Spurs-Grizzlies series in absolutely exhaustive, possession-by-possession detail, and I'll do the 10-or-so-part 1 in the lead-up to the launch.

Bless you, incidental readers.