It Was Supposed To Be "Ramblings of a Madman"

Famous First Words:

I never intended to start writing a blog.






Bla, Bla, Blog: Wherein I Express My Dislike of Blogging, and the Abrupt Inclusion of a Disturbing Mental Image

Let's set this straight. I have nothing against bloggers. Some of my best friends are bloggers! However, I've always held a rather dim view of blogging itself (on my list, it hovers just above fanfic and right below pop culture studies).

Now that I've alienated the dedicated bloggers of my audience, allow me to explain. I've always held to the view that blogging is a severe form of cyber-narcissism. You write something, and you post it on an online site that is dedicated to the stuff that you write. I have nothing against writing - I love writing, it's at the very least therapeutic, and possibly holds numerous health benefits - but why post it on the world wide web if you don't expect other people to read it? And the stuff people blog about - dear God. Yes, yes, you lead an interesting life (don't we all?). What makes you think people will actually be interested in reading about every. single. minutiae of your life? Is it not the highest form of narcissism to write about yourself and then to put it somewhere EVERYONE can read it?

(As a digression, I give exception to celebrities and other such people who can blog and have every reason to expect that people will want to read it. The fact that descriptions of the minutiae of their lives will be read by their fans is a reflection of the emptiness of their fans' lives, not their own.)

But of course, people don't just blog about themselves. There are some cool blogs out there that give excellent book reviews (and the bloggers get advance reader copies, the lucky buggers). A cuz of mine has a blog in which he pretends to be a Scottish expatriate living in Malaysia (no, I am not kidding). Theoretically, you could blog about pretty much anything, and the world is a richly diverse enough place that any number of topics could be rewarding to explore. There are blogs out there - the few and far in between - in which some pretty cool and thoughtful people post their pretty cool thoughts on miscellaneous stuff, and those are fun to read and learn from.

In the end, though, you can't escape the essential me-ness nature of blogging.

It's this dual nature of blogging: of being personal, yet public at the same time, that's always put me off. The real issue, when you get right down to it, is that writing is an intensely private and personal experience for me. Terry Pratchett, that imminent scholar and sage (and sometime fantasy novelist), once said that writing is the most enjoyable thing a person can do by himself, and I tend to agree. I've always written for MYSELF, to be read by MYSELF. Writing is like cracking open my skull and allowing the thoughts bouncing around in there to spill across the page. Do you really want other people to know what you're thinking? The very thought of other people reading the stuff I write leads to paroxysms of nervousness, which explains why I've never been published (okay, I have, but research abstracts don't count, dammit).

And so I stand here before you, having written, and having blogged. I... I... I feel so naked!




And A Blogger Am I: In Which I Make Really Weak Justifications

So why am I blogging now? The truth of the matter is... I miss writing. I used to write helluva lot, especially during my matriculation & undergraduate days, when I was going through a rough patch in my life. The writing helped me, back then (or perhaps the adolescent angst helped the writing, you can never be sure). For whatever reason, I've fallen out of the habit. And I miss it. There is this certain... buzz that you get from writing, a particular mental state that you go to, when your fingers are flying across the keyboard and the ideas are sizzling in your brain and the words are flowing like water (but not the editing; never the editing - oh God I hate the editing). It's like a high. It's like falling in love, and flying.

So why not keep a personal journal, you ask? Because I am horribly undisciplined. I have attempted to keep personal journals before. They inevitably collapse into incoherent single sentence stream of consciousness ramblings. They make me lazy, indolent and self-indulgent. A blog, methinks, would discipline me. The guilty thought of disappointing those (completely non-existent) hordes of eager readers would hopefully keep me posting on a regular basis, and the shame of publicly using horrid grammar or exposing my blandly insipid thoughts would hopefully ensure I maintain a modicum of quality in my writing.

And there is, too, the fact that I recently deleted my Friendster profile out of chronic disinterest, and no longer have an outlet for self-expression on the internet. Yes, yes, I know, there's that thing called Facebook. To be frank, the very idea of getting involved in another online social networking site fills me with lethargic dread (as in: dread that makes me lethargic, not dread that is itself lethargic). Plus, Facebook seems to be the "hip" and "in" thing now, and that tends to turn me off. Blogging has been around for so long that it's on the cusp of being old-fashioned...

And the very instant I publish this post, it will be. Ta-dah!




Ultimately, though, I really am a narcissistic asshole, and the thought of inflicting my deranged thoughts upon the unsuspecting blogosphere fills me with sadistic glee (or maybe I'm a masochist, and the thought of nobody noticing and nobody caring fills me with sadistic glee as well).

The Process of Naming, or; What's In A Name?, or; How This Blog Came to be Named, or; I Have No Idea What To Call This Damn Thing


I initially wanted to call my blog "Ramblings of a Madman". No, let me be more precise: even before I've even wanted to start a blog, I've wanted to name my hitherto unconceived blog "Ramblings of a Madman". It just fits me too well. I like to ramble. The aim of my blog would be to ramble. I am mad, and, despite refutations to the contrary, a man (I can prove it! With science!). As a madman, I would ramble, and my ramblings would unmistakably be that of a madman.

Unfortunately I sorely underestimated the number of rambling madmen blogs out there. I discovered, to my strangely uplifting humility, that I was not alone. I am, as the saying goes, unique, just like everybody else. There are scores of "Ramblings of a Madman" blogs out there! My dreams were dashed. That name, that beautiful name, could not belong to me.

I considered others. "A Stranger and A Wayfarer" encapsulated so much about me and my position in life, but it seemed too weighty and serious. Besides, I couldn't rightly say it was "mine". I briefly considered "Decoherence", which would be apt considering the subject matter, but it seemed too quantum physicky, and not being a quantum physicist I felt I could not do it justice. Plus, the damn thing was taken.

Finally I settled on this. The Observer Affection. Firstly, being an "observer" is an excellent way to describe myself: throughout my life I have felt that I am nothing but an observer. Not a participant or a member, but a watcher, on the outside looking in. Secondly, it is a play on the observer effect (a phenomenon in both social and hard sciences wherein the act of observation changes what is being observed), to reflect that the act of observation also changes the observer (yes, yes, Terry Pratchett said it first, but he didn't coin the phrase!). Affection, I believe, works very well because it carries a multitude of meanings. It has the literal sense of affecting the observer. It can also refer to fond attachment or devotion - the fondness of the observer, perhaps. It can even mean a particular propensity: the disposition to observe; or perhaps even an affliction: the affliction of the observer.

I am reminded of the time back in high school, when I accidentally coined the term "sitoflow" to describe the movement of organelles in a cell's cytoplasm. I instantly seized upon the term and used it for my e-mail. Yes, it's a dumb term. It's essentially meaningless gibberish and has no value to anyone but me. But it's mine, you see. I came up with it.

Ultimately, that's why I'm sticking to the name of this blog. It's mine. It's corny and weird and dumb and not catchy in the least, but it's mine.

The End of the Beginning, but the Beginning of the Beginning

So that's it. The rather long-winded story of how this blog came to be. Thank you for taking the time to actually read through the damn thing, invisible audience, and welcome, one and all, to the launch of my very own blog!

*crickets*

Hello? Anyone out there? Anybody? Hello?



*sigh...*