I think it was Oscar Wilde who never said:
'All of us are in the gutter, but some of us are staring at the cows'.

Oscar was an urbane sort of chap, and he rarely saw a cow. His visual field was largely taken up with hansom cabs, fog and flowers. But life is very different for those of us who live in the middle of fields. We know the intense pleasure that is to be attained from furiously contemplating a standing bovine.

Oh. Hang on. There is a voice in my ear.

My apologies. I seem to have been discussing the wrong topic. I thought I was guesting on 'cows_are_wonderful', but that's for tomorrow. Yes. No. Hang on.

My name is Frank O'Connor. Welcome to my world. Today, I am guesting on surly snobby because he is clearly so desperate for content that he will take any old rubbish from anyone, including those of us, who, like myself, are very easily distracted.

At this very moment, I'm supposed to be piloting my nuclear submarine through the Mariana trench. But that's just way too complicated for me to be doing and writing this at the same time. So I've left it on autopilot, and if it hits a rock or something, it will just make a little dent in the hull, probably. Fingers crossed, eh?

So, today's topic is 'Why do I blog'? That's a good question. Up until now, I've never even thought about it. I just thought about it then though, and it is actually quite scary. But, first things first.

Let's get one thing right out of the way right here and now and this minute, now. I really hate the word 'blog'. It is supposed to be a neat compaction of web log, but it ends up trading its soul for only two letters. It sounds like food poisoning and trips off the tongue like a brick. I know this is controversial, but, heck, we all have to live with a bit of controversy, even those people whose bolgs explode.

So, why do I WRITE a WEB LOG? I don't know really. It keeps me off the streets, I suppose. I mean, some big sociology professor would probably tell me that I am compensating for some helpless disjunction between my own world view and the world as it actually is by sending out little cries for help every morning at 2am through the medium of the wondernet. But that's just bollocks.

But really, why do I write a web log? Why don't I do something more practical, like etchasketching, or wobble boarding? Why don't I do something that has the slimmest chance of contributing something to human culture and civilization? Well it's all because of my brain.

I don't know about you, but my brain makes a fizzing sound when I wake up. This sound gets louder and louder throughout the morning. By noon, it is a high pitched whistle, which really annoys all the neighbors. If I don't write something down at this point, and post it off into the ethosphere, my head gets very hot, and that means only one thing: singed pillows. So that's why I do it, see? To avoid singing my pillows.

Next week: The cow, and its role as savior of the earth.