A 2014 update to a 2006 reconstruction of the introduction to "Musings of a Madman"
Life's Like That
Like what, exactly?
Many personal web sites contain sub-sections for the author's online diary or journal. Now I'm not much of a diarist. My mother once tried to encourage me when I was quite young, but the idea never caught on. In one of my earliest expressions of my innermost horror of regimentation or regular order - a trifle odd for one of a technical bent - I just couldn't keep up with the task. But a diary is usually more than just a log of dates and events. It is often the medium of expression for one's own observations about the world, and that is where this comes in.
Anyone who's ever skimmed a copy of Readers' Digest, or any number of lifestyle magazines will have at some time or other have stumbled over the little section, normally about a third of the way from the back, comprised of amusing anecdotes and thought-provoking vignettes. They such sections are usually small, and entitled imaginatively "Life's Like That", or "You Wouldn't Believe It", or even "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum". (Ah, no. That's Zero Mostel...) "Musings of a Madman" started out as my own personal foray into such realms, intending to use the stranger anecdotes as the vehicle for a little pontification. Although short on articles, I've noticed that it has already turned from the odd to the earnest. Any measure, this is the closest I'm going to come to an online diary or journal. The title was conceived independently but, not surprisingly, it turns out not to be unique. When I first wrote this introduction and the first article, there were four other competing sites with the same title. Now there appear to be over a hundred. Naturally, I consider myself to be the most authentic musing madman. After all, I was told by someone else.
So who's the madman, and what's with the "musings"?
In short the madman is me, as coined by the party instrumental in the events that inspired this idea. The musings because although convinced that I should, I spent a long time thinking about it, before finally convincing myself to write about that particular blip in my own personal history. It was, in itself a trifling little thing, but it left me thinking for days after.
So in a nutshell, this is all about those events in my life that have caused me to take a step back and examine not just the events themselves, but what they say about us as indivuduals, society around us, and life in general. Put that way, it seems pretentious. It probably is...
Back in mid-2005, I came to the realisation that, although articles are few and slow to emerge, this amounts to a kind of blog. Furthermore I've been writing fitfully - to the best of my knowledge - since before the term was even coined. I had profiles at a handful of sites, including Technorati but they have changed so much in character as to be practically useless, and there is also an RSS feed automatically linked to all articles.
