Updates...

Before I get started on today's post, I'd like to clear something up.

I re-read yesterday's post and realised it came across as a simple diatribe on "Why I should be able to look at porn."...The surprising thing is that most people actually agreed with me ;-)...perverts, the lot of ye!

I would like to state for the record, however, that porn was a small part of what I was talking about. I was talking about censorship of everything. Yes, aggressive censorship would have good points, such as helping crack down on child porn...but as I stated yesterday, the internet is not an entertainment device (although it is used as such)...the internet is the very definition of free speech.

Censoring the internet is the same as putting a gag order on the press, opening, reading and censoring your private mail, and going to a library and burning books that certain people don't want you to read.

At risk of sounding melodramatic, censoring the internet is like banning the free exchange of ideas, and I don' tknow about you, but I hold my rights to express my ideas, opinions and my right to free speech very dearly.

Anyway, let's draw a line under that topic.

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When I started this blog I had no idea of what I was going to do with it. I've been a writer all my life, getting my first typewriter when I was 3 years old. Unfortunately, I've not had a whole bucket load of success. I think I've been published the grand total of 3 times, twice in my university magazine, and once in a local magazine back in England (those terrible ones that people in the city centre try and sell you for 50p).

Anyway, the actual 'reason' I started this blog is because I was 2/3rds of the way through writing my first novel, and my laptop died. Luckily I had most of it backed up (50,000 words went the way of the dodo). However, the desktop computer I'm writing this on is about as reliable as $5 car and so old it actually appears in the Bible.

Obviously, I put writing my book on hiatus. Who wants to write another 100,000 words, just to lose it when the computer dies?

Unfortunately, writing ability is not like riding a bike, you either use it or lose it...and blogging is an excellent way to flex those writing muscles.

You know how it is when you start a new excercise program? You're fine for the first two weeks...then you take a day off. Then you think "I took yesterday off, what is one more day going to hurt?" Before you know it, you're back on the couch, watching tv and eating pringles (Try the pizza ones...they're good). It's the same with writing. If you don't keep writing, you end up forgetting how. That's my theory on the number of blogs that for some reason WriTe LiKe ThIS....if I want a headache I'll bang my head against the wall.

Anyway, back to my point.

As you've probably guessed from reading some of my posts, I'm one of those awful opinionated people. I have an opinion on just about everything.

I guess I'm just lucky, however, that despite the fact that I have an opinion about everything, I actually enjoy being proven wrong. I'm not one of those people who will have an opinion and continue saying that black is white in the face of overwhelming evidence. I actually like it when someone manages to make me see things in a new way, or opens me up to a new way of thinking.

So what does this mean?...and why should you care?

Well it means that it's very easy for something I write to degenerate into a rant fest. I forget the fact that what I'm writing has to be funny or interesting and hold your interest...and not just be a list of things that happen to really piss me off. Yesterday's post was just that...and after re-reading it I came within a gnat's wing of deleting it. I beleive in everything I wrote, I think it was an important point of view...but I wasn't sure whether it was actually all that much fun to read.

So what I'm asking for...for a change...is your opinion.

What do you actually want from this site? Something to make you laugh? Something to make you think?...or more crazed outpourings of things that piss me off while I froth at the mouth?

I think up to now I've managed a fair balance of these things, some posts have been funny, some screaming rant fests....but I'm worried about becoming a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. I also don't want to alienate a lot of readers. There's no point writing rants when most of you want a quick laugh before getting on with your day. It's kinda like starting a TV show dedicated to crochet and martial arts, they're not exactly a compatible mix meaning neither group will be all that interested and turn to the all martial art or all crochet channel.

So please, leave a comment and tell me what you want.

Many thanks

Paulius.