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Blogs aren't new. They've been around for, oh I dunno, probably a couple hundred years or so. It's only been because of the emergence of the "computer" that it's really taken off, allowing people of all ilks to babble, uninterrupted, to their hearts' and arthritic joints' content. Case in point: the following and totally verifiable - don't look into it though - blog excerpt was pulled from Benjamin Franklin's personal blog, The Daily Benji:

"After several failed attempts to make a key illuminate in the dark by harnessing the power of lightning, a rousing success came forth this day! Though my hands are suffering from second degree burns as a direct result, this has been the first step towards preserving long-term 'glowing' characteristics in metallurgy for rapid key recognition in these dark climates (future investigation: why is it always so drab around here?), particularly useful when bringing home a lady friend and trying not to give her enough time to change her mind about going upstairs.

In future experiments I will ensure the use of heat-absorbing gloves. However, I will try to deceive my new intern into trying it bare-handed first for a lark."

Ol' Benji would then fix his daily written accounts against the inside of his office window in the hopes that someone would read these postings regularly, and thus feel like a companion and co-conspirator to the scientific progress at hand. But seeing how it was always cold and bleak over there, few people felt like going out, let alone gaze into shop windows, so blogging never caught on until people could do it in the comfort of their own homes, via laptop or desktop, leaning back in their über-plush Lay-Z-Boy™ recliners sipping away at 900 calorie mocha-latte-coconut-parfait-foam-caramel-macchiato "coffees".

Oh that sounds good. I'll be right back.
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*sluuuurp* Hmmm, oh yeah that's the stuff. Sorry, should have offered to get ya one. I'm certainly not sharing this one.

Anyway...

Many bloggers (that's what people who post blogs are referred to as, try to keep up now) are reasonably good at it and keep it up more or less as a kind of public service for devout fans of their main line of work, be it writing, acting, or taxidermy. Others are quite ingenious in the craft, creating entertaining missives for anybody to read - and hopefully enjoy - about regular lives encountering daily challenges that many people can relate to, or at the very least appreciate in a sympathetic I'm-sure-glad-that's-not-me sort of way.

Me? Well, last week, the Canadian Internet Association (CIA) was in a tight pickle, right on the verge of losing its cushy data-byte budget allotted to it by the World Internet Fund (WIF), basically for lack of producing enough useless internet material to justify its high byte budget. So, like any growing corporation or professional entity, the CIA needs to fill its budget quota annually so it can justify to WIF its desire to increase its over-bloated budget even more next year ( and so on for the next hundred foreseeable decades), ultimately taking over all available future webspace like a computer virus run amuck. It's a Canadian thing. Small population, but we want to hoard all the real-estate space we can, because we can.

In short: This blog is internet filler. You have been warned.

This all started because wonderful people in my life have suggested to me on numerous occasions that I should start my own blog, that they find my writing to be "good" (people tend to cough for some reason every time they say this, though; must be a bug going around). They would like something thoughtful, enlightening and entertaining to read. Something that really makes them think, while at the same time leaving them with a sense of personal satisfaction at having grown through the literary experience. So I stepped up. I worked hard to provide my would-be fans with entertaining anecdotal and insightful essays of things that affect us all. Topics that would make us laugh, love and cry. Current issues that would re-light our passion in all things fair and ensnare our hearts with tales of unheard heroism. And so my people shall have it! After laborious digging in the internet trenches for inspiration I have found...

... a wonderful link to iliketowastemytime.com/articles! Lotsa neat stuff there, boy. At least from what I could tell off the Google search summary page.

But for the rest of the masses who have entertainment standards almost as low as my own and find the printing on the back of cereal boxes to be a literary coup-de-grâce, have I got a treat for you! Approximately whenever the inspiration strikes me, or whenever my dear wife has a seemingly endless to-do list of things for me to accomplish around the house, I will log into this here blog account and wrecklessly attempt to get my grubby little mitts on some of your already limited personal time.

So prepare yourselves! Entertainment will be headed your way (keep in mind, this is free and you get what you pay for)! New liner for your hamster cage will soon be at hand! Your mouse button will stop working from overuse at having to click "back" every time you accidentally click on my page!

All kidding aside though, I've really enjoyed writing this start to my blog. And if even a couple people can get some enjoyment out of reading this and not send me anonymous hate-mail asking for the five minutes of their lives back, well shucks, that would just be dandy.

Thanks for reading,

Dano