Grazie

When it rains it pours. The unstoppable force has been unleashed, and it is going to have a big coming out party (read: a lot of gobbledygook accompanied headed by nonsensical words and phrases). It is a veritable outpouring of verbiage the likes of which have never been seen before. Life is too short and I have way too much free time on my hands to stifle the outflow, so all I can say is let 'er rip!

Which brings me to the title of this latest offering. Grazie, meaning 'Thanks' in Italian. Thank you, hapless reader, for making it this far. The preceding bilge should have put you off by now, but you stuck it out like the brave upstanding man-child that you are. For that I am eternally in your debt. I am also thankful to your understanding girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse who let you stay in front of the computer screen for such long hours. Only someone who has exhausted the infinite delights of the world wide web can even think of perusing this idiotic blog of mine. I only hope that it is out of love and not other designs that your partner has let you be for so long. Then again, you might not be afflicted by such a person in your life, in which case either you are a pubescent teenager trawling the net for porno sites while your parents are asleep, or you are a lonely middle-aged balding man with a beer belly who is trawling the net for porno sites and is thoroughly and absolutely disgusting. Either way, I'm grateful for your attention and urge you to keep you hands where I can see them.

I would also like to thank my generous benefactors at Sony, who deemed fit to make an overpriced, albeit cool-looking laptop on which I could spend my parents' hard-earned money. This contraption has been my companion of joy, sorrow, ennui and constipation, and will continue to be so for a long time still (i.e. until I earn enough money to buy a Mac). Its bruised keypad has borne witness to many a frenzied composition, be it a project submission or an intimate chat. If it had a voice, it would enthrall you with spell-binding tales of passion, rejection, triumph and tribulation. It is my Sancho Panza, bearing mute witness to my tilting at the windmills; the scribe who documents all my frivolities down to the letter; the sidekick who knows its place in the background and sticks to it. I will always be fond of this unassuming little black box and can't wait to upgrade to the latest in thing in the market.

Finally, I'd like to thank God for making me in his image. It makes me feel very very powerful to think that I resemble the Creator of this mind-bogglingly humongous and immensely complicated universe. Just like the duplicate of a famous movie star, I too can pretend to be him and strut on stage as a side-show in some dingy theatre. I too can lose my own insignificant little identity and pretend to be a bigger person, someone who actually matters to the multitude around me. I feel emancipated, empowered, elevated even. The world is my oyster, and mine for the taking. That is the ideal I strive for and the Big Man/Woman probably can't wait to stick out a leg and trip me over.

So I'm done with all the formalities and other dictates of polite civilized behaviour. Thank you once again for your kind attention and support. I promise not to disappoint too much.