Raise your hand if you read random blogs. You do? Really? How... strange. Pursuing the random scribblings of one of the few billion other humanoids on this planet instead of doing something noble? Odd, I think. And the worst part is that the thought that there might be someone out there who will stumble across this peculiar bit of doggerel prevents me from saying what I really mean. There might be a trail. The cadence of the words might seem familiar to some. The cat might have distinctive markings.

What a shock it would be to go out in the morning for the paper and encounter someone who was in a position to respond to one of these thoughts! How utterly anti-Internet that would be! The beauty of the system is that the writer of these words might be a septuagenarian or a teenager in underwear; a housewife or a househusband; a murderer or a philanthropist. You never know.

But what you can assume is that the intent of this writer is the same as that of most writers. I aim to provoke you to thought, to anger, to laughter, to tears, to outrage or pity. It doesn't matter to me. These are the things, I'm told, that separate us from the beasts, so these are the things I seek.