From soup to nuts

Perhaps some of you are wondering how these entries are created. In today's post I will take you behind the scenes of web-logging on the Internet.

Each post of course starts with an idea. Typically, this involves a three-hour "brainstorming" session with cigarillos, black coffee, and a thick pad of graph paper. Many times, I find it inspirational to head out-of-doors, into the realm of the of the great unwashed, as people-watching (and people-confronting) can be an incredible stimulus for a writer. And because of my grotesque appearance, I am able to work quietly almost anywhere without being disturbed. I find coffee shops, churches, the bus, the subway, phone booths, cell phone kiosks, record shops, ATMs, window ledges, courtyards, dentist offices and go-kart tracks excellent places to get started.

Did I mention I always have a hip-flask of Black Label at the ready at these brainstorming sessions? Well, I do.

Next, using my Smith Corona portable typewriter, I start writing copy. This is an arduous task. Depending on the length of the piece, this process can take weeks, or even months to complete. Unlike some other sites, my posts take about five months from inception before they are published. Case in point: is late July as I write this, but you probably won't see it until early next year. It is for this reason that these posts typically avoid mention of current events or the prices of commodities.

Next, the typed up first draft is given to my assistant Marianne for editing and proof-reading. To date, she has not found a single spelling or grammar mistake. (Though, she has been instructed that she will lose her job should she point one out to me.)

When a piece is completed and ready for publishing, Marianne hands the finished copy to the technical director, Charles, who places it on the Internet web-page of this site. It's a technical process I'm not entirely familiar with, but Charles has taken the time to explain it to me.

As you may know, anything you would like to placed on the Internet has to be sent to Internet Headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. There it is reviewed by a team of twenty experts from around the world who decide whether the work is worthy of publishing.

If the post is approved (and I'm happy to say that all I mine have been), the Internet begins the painstaking process of transferring each letter of text on to a punch card. It takes hundreds of workers to feed these cards, one-by-one, into a mega computer the length of three school buses. Charles says that once all the text is entered, it takes only forty-eight hours for the mega computer to publish the text to my web-site. That's a fast computer!

But of course, it doesn't end there. Once the post has made it on to the Internet, it is reviewed by myself and a selected panel of trusted confidants and sycophants for final approval. Believe it or not, most of my written material makes it through this highly rigorous and critical process. The posts are graded on clarity, creativity, tone, timbre, lustre and a general category we call "shine". It's the certain je ne sais quoi possessed by a good piece of writing. The panel finds that it is absent from approximately 90% of my writing. Fortunately, final say in the panel comes from myself, as I have been alloted triple voting power.

And there you have it. That is the process of how this web-log is made. Though the process is expensive, and lengthy, and largely injurious to my liver, it is a labour of love.

Please send money. Or booze.