You're lookin' at an idiot...

Yeah so I'm an idiot. Like you haven't accidently ordered the wrong drink and drank it anyway only to find yourself worshipping the porcelain toilet for two hours. Like you've never stepped into a wastepaper basket or found toilet paper wrapped around your leg as you leave the public restroom. Like you haven't been at a party and let a word like "niggerlipping" slip out of your mouth cuz your best friend just licked the filter of your cigarette, and then you turn around and this big massive looking black man looks back at you like you're already dead.

Okay. Maybe you're perfect. Me? I goof all the time.

I hadn't been paying any attention to Michael Bywater or the column he's been so busy working on. I think I noticed it when he first started, but I get sidetracked easily. Short attention span and all that. Hell, I was raised on MTV and Atari. What do you want from me?

So anyway, Mark Moxon asked me about it the other day. What do I think? Well I hadn't thought anything. I read one or two of them, but his words necessitated I actually think in order to understand them, so I must admit I just clicked on by.

But after Mark asked me, I decided to look again, and after a series of general brainburps where I couldn't get past his acerbic wit and creative use of words (I mean I was doing donuts in the parking lot of my head trying to grok it) one thought actually crystalized in my mind.

And that thought was this: Who does he think he is? I mean who is this guy? And why does he get attention on the front page of h2g2.com when we SubEditors are still trying to catch up with the massive backlog of Field Researcher submitted guide entries? I mean it started getting my goat. We're trying to help spotlight you guys, you thousands of Field Researchers, and here comes this guy out of the blue, with his own column!

I didn't even know you could have a column in h2g2.com.

Freud once said there were like, three different basic parts to any human psyche. There's the superego, which I imagine to be kinda like Jerry Falwell. That part of your brain that tells you anything that's fun has got to be bad for you. Then there's the ego, which in my mind is kinda like Woody Allen. Woody Allen the early years, before people started picturing him as a pervert. The ego's job is to operate as a negotiator between the high and mighty superego and the low feral instincts of the childlike and spiteful id.

But what did Freud know? He was a pervert.

Anyway, and then another primitive, feral thought emerged from the depths of the dark pitch that suddenly appeared in my soul: What is this guy actually doing? And what makes whatever it is he's doing more or less important than any other Field Researcher? I mean basically he's talking about whatever's on his mind. He's just opening his head and spitting out a bit on a guide page and there you have it: instant column.

Anybody can do that can't they? I mean, I could do that. Can't you? Of course you could do that. And this brought back that other thought. Who does he think he is? And my brain was stuck in this self-defeating loop of thought. What is this guy actually doing?Who does he think he is? On and on and on until I got a headache.

And then someone told me. Michael Bywater is real big in England. Naturally that would completely slip past me cuz I've never been any farther east than Niagra Falls, New York. Well okay, he's not BIG exactly. He's moderately large. He has a weekly column in an english newspaper, and perhaps more importantly to me he was involved in the making of Starship Titanic.

Well. All the sudden I felt like an idiot. I've played Starship Titanic twice. This guy helped make that PC CD-Rom game happen, and here I don't even know the guy's name.

So all those feral and primitive hateful thoughts suddenly gave way to horrendous grief. I'm such a schmuck. Michael Bywater's a nice guy. Just cuz I'm too stupid to get his british style of humor, that's no reason to hate him.

But I put all these thoughts together. I guess my ego had a meeting with the superego and the id and this is what they came up with.

Just cuz Michael Bywater is so cool, doesn't mean he should be the only guy to have a column. I mean you should be able to have one too. I could have my own column on h2g2.com. And I told Mark that. And I talked to the other SubEditors. I was like, why can't we set it up so anyone can have their own column in h2g2.com?

And y'know what they said? Basically, in as nice and kind and polite a way as they could so as not to remind me I'm such an idiot, their basic response was this: it's already set up that way.

YOUR User page, that place you go to when you click on the goo where it says ''my home,'' is where you can opt to put your column.

You don't have to put just something there and never update it again. You don't have to come up with some cute little phrase that people will giggle at when they come by and then they come by a couple more times and see you haven't changed anything and then they just stop coming by after awhile.

You have the ability to compose and publish your own online column, right here in h2g2.com. Thanks to the Powers That Be and this really snazzy web-based community-oriented software.

Isn't technology wonderful?

And so I'm gonna start trying to regularly update this section of my h2g2.com User page, and each time I update it, I'll try to remember to take whatever I put here before and copy it and move it to a guide page, and then I'll link all those "past columns" below this, so people can go back and read my old stuff.

And you can come by whenever you like and read the new stuff and then write me back and tell me how wrong I was about one thing or another and we'll have a gay old time. Just like the Flintstones.

And you can do this too. Nothing's stopping you. I can imagine someday a veritable sea of h2g2.com columnists, sharing the latest exploits of their lives, talking about events that have happened in their local community, reminding one another to not drink and drive, or give blood, or practice safe sex. Not only are we all Field Researchers. We're all columnists too! It's a brave new day for the H2G2 Community!

...Uh oh. For some reason the id part of my psyche has just crawled over into a corner and is whimpering in a fetal position. I think he's afraid of something all the sudden. I wonder what could possibly be wrong with him?