Welcome!

Holy S--t! I'm blogging!

Now, I realize that to those of you who are the cognoscenti, my childish delight at actually participating in the process is going to seem quaint and naive, especially since the good folk here at Blogger make it idiot-proof, but so what? I was blogging before the word blog had been coined! (no, really.)
How, Adam, you ask, could you have presciently participated in a Web phenomenon that had yet to be defined? Why aren't you doing it now? What makes this different? And what does presciently mean?

In order:
I kept an on-line training journal from July 1998 to September 1999, which was published at Rowersworld.com (and is still available in their archives, here)
I was recently re-reading my pieces, or "posts", I should say, and realized that they bore a remarkable similarity to the sort of things I might have written if I had had a blog. There were photos, links to videos, wry commentary, humor, philosophy, you name it. It wasn't bad, eh?

Next, I stopped doing it at the 1999 World Championships for a number of reasons, but essentially because I was going through a very difficult time emotionally, and felt as though it would be a lot easier to handle it if I wasn't under the microscope, as it were. For those of you reading this [Yeah, right, who am I kidding? No one is going to read this.] who do not know me as a rower, this may be hard to believe, but I had a small, yet dedicated following of readers, who (sob!) genuinely cared about what I had to say.
--
(returns after teary breakdown)

Anyway, I just stopped flat out. Pissed a few people off as well. This reminds me, I am going to have to decide whether to use obscenities on this site. I'm not an indiscriminate curser/swearer, but neither do I completely eschew their use. To quote the young Tom Cruise, "Sometimes you just gotta say 'What the F---'". Is this one of those times? Hmmmm. Must ponder more.

As for what is making this different, I don't really know yet, other than that it clearly will not be driven by my rowing. I anticipate eclecticism, links, meta-referential humor, and who knows what else. Certainly everything will be heavily infused with my general disdain for the irrational and stupid. In fact, I wanted to call the site "The Rational Being", but was told that was unavailable. Well, that is to say, rationalbeing.com was not available. Hmmm. Who has that? Bastard.

I suspect that the initial reaction is going to be that "Adam, there are 40 million blogs out there, and more every day, and it sounds like yours is --to put it politely-- not going to stand out in a crowd. Aren't many gentle mouth-breathers out there doing exactly what you describe?"
Perhaps. Perhaps.
But they are not me. NO ONE can match my combination of complete mastery of far-flung esoterica, rapier wit, physical talents, and general freak-hood, to say nothing of jokes that only I will find funny, but that will nevertheless leave you puzzled, yet desperate to understand. I partake of the fruits of many groups, yet belong to none. I am the man who blogs by himself, and all places are the same to me. I look forward to a growing audience.
[Maybe some of you will even give me money, in exchange for services as yet unnamed.]
"I've come for the rent.'

Adam

[If anyone has a suggestion as to how I could have rephrased that borrowing better, I'd love to hear about it.