So, content.

If we want to look at this experiment from a writerly standpoint I suppose I ought to be considering how to present myself As A Writer to whoever ends up looking at the site. The problem here--and it's not limited to blogging, it's a general issue I have to deal with in real life as well as online--is that I prefer to present [interesting topic] by writing about it, rather than going "look at me write, see my writing, I put words together in sentences of such scintillating brilliance that all must applaud my genius, oh and I happen to be writing about [interesting topic]."

I draw pictures but I don't consider myself An Artist; that implies having A Vision and Conveying that vision Through My Artwork (or just Work, depending on who you're bragging to). I write articles but I don't consider myself A Writer so much as Someone who Writes About Interesting Things.

I think the way to reconcile the fact that I am in fact A Writer of some little capability with my preference to focus on the subject material and not the medium by which I present it is by compartmentalizing. Whatever site I end up creating is most likely going to include a bunch of subsites, one of them offering a selection of articles about disasters (the real motivation behind creating What Went Wrong), another presenting little fiction vignettes, another perhaps poetry, another making fun of hideous retro cookbooks, and so on. I'm not just one sort of writer: I'd feel dishonest, or disingenuous, making a site about only one little aspect of what I do with words.

Oh, and for those who're interested, "theriac" and "mithridate" are ancient compounds of various unpleasant substances thought to offer an antidote to poisonous bites. King Mithridates of Pontus (119-63 BC) is said to have been somewhat of an amateur toxicologist, experimenting on prisoners (and himself) with various poisons, until he came up with a substance he claimed to be a sovereign antidote for all sorts of venomous bites. (See A.E. Housman's Shropshire Lad for a wry take on Mithridates' experiments.) The Greeks then stole his idea and put together a gluey alexipharmic treacle called "theriac" which stayed in the pharmacopoeia until about 1884. I like the words because they're wonderful words and a delight to pronounce, and also because they're perfect examples of how the hell did we as a species survive into the twenty-first century?