Saturday, September 25, 2004

Falling at the first hurdle...

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
- Thomas Mann

So... a weblog? Being the self-depreciating kind of fellow that I am, I would wonder what I could bring to the internet that a thousand million other monkeys with typewriters haven't already. Not the complete works of Shakespeare, that's for certain. I suspect - know, in fact - that there are enough badly-written accounts of life in mundania on the tangled web as it is without my adding another, so I'll come right out with it from the start.

This isn't the sort of 'blog that acts as an outlet for teenage angst, even though at twenty-one I've got a lot of it saved up, with interest. Nor is it going to be a hum-drum detailing of the minutae of my existence in a desperate attempt to find some meaning. Hopefully it'll also avoid becoming a catalogue of my woes, though Bagpuss* only knows I can be a self-pitying sod at times. No, simply put this is a place to write about whatever issues concern or interest me from day to day, and principally to keep me writing.

So, you have been warned; expect no consistency in topic or tone, and certainly no high standard of meaningful thought (I am only young after all, and everybody knows the youth of today are ill-educated hoodlums). This 'blog is a method of fending off the writer's block that hangs over my head like the Sword of Damoclese, nothing more. If it amuses or intrigues you, my apologies; 'twas but an accident, and I doubt it'll happen again.



* - For Americans and other strange creatures who aren't aware of Him, Bagpuss is the star of a short-lived TV series from my childhood. A cat made entirely of scrap cloth and curiosity, His busy social schedule involved sleeping, eating, yawning and examining the strange objects brought to Him by his mouse-cult followers. Clearly this is a life to be idolised, I thought; the media seems to hold similar beings in high regard, after all, and who am I to go against their wishes?

His adoption as some sort of personal deity wasn't far behind, and it seems to have worked so far - I'm not dead yet, after all. When I do kick the bucket, however, I'll try and let you all know what the afterlife's like - I've always felt being asked to choose a religion without this knowledge is rather like taking a job without considering the pension plan, and I'd hate to leave potential Bagpussians with their spiritual retirement fund lacking.

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