From out of the strong came forth sweetness

In the beginning, there was nothing. Eric said, "let there be blog", and it was so. And from out of nothing came something; what was first void became substance. What was shapeless became form....

By virtue of its proximity to the top (or bottom) of the page and the feeble attempt at a Genesis-like opening, I have no doubt you have already guessed this is my first entry. Truth be told, I had prepared a rather lengthy inaugural manifesto but after considering most people's attention spans, I thought I'd try to be terse. I also have no doubt that at this point you observed the esoteric vocabulary I write with, and perhaps made less-than-flattering speculations as to why. If you will give me a few more minutes, I'll get to that shortly.

I think its best that I lay out a few of the reasons why an average person such as myself would choose to spend his time and effort into convoluted entries on a web page that I imagine would have the same amount of effect as throwing a bucket of water to a lake. And by, "few" what I mean to say is "one".

Astronauts, upon returning to earth from space, become susceptible to a variety of health problems due to their exposure to a zero-gravity environment. And so to combat these effects, the average astronaut devotes a remarkable amount of time to physical exercise while on board the space craft ( I read it was as much as 4 hours in a 16-hour period).

The continual use of a tip-of-the-iceberg amount of English places me in what I would consider a zero-English-gravity environment and I find myself from time to time suffering from a linguistic form of the muscle atrophy astronauts experience. For anyone who has read Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, I imagine my situation is not unlike Charlie in the latter half of the book. So I decided that writing in a blog would be part of a concerted effort on my part to keep the razors sharp.

So what comes in the following months will be the thoughts, opinions, and feelings transcribed from my too-big-for-one-size-fits-all head to this page as part of my commitment to staying sharp, a sort of linguistic running machine, if you will.

This and the fact that my friends no longer talk to me.

I will close by leaving you with some words from Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D, a man(?) whose existence is a continuous reminder to avoid LSD:

Jeremy:"If I spoke prose you'd all find out

I don't know what I talk about."

Ringo: Jeremy! Can it be you?

Jeremy: Can it be me? I think you'd better inquire of the guard,

For when I was captured, they took all my cards.

George: Do you speak English?

Jeremy: Old English, Middle, a dialect pure ...

Paul: Well, do you speak English?

Jeremy: You know, I'm not sure!