Some people have One Big Idea. It grabs them by the throat and shakes them, sometimes for the rest of their life. (Big Ideas are like that. Take Ted Nelson, for example. Back around 1965, he had this idea he called "hypertext", and look where we are now! He can still talk your ear off about it, too. It were definitely a good 'un.)

I don't seem to be like that. I have about a hundred thousand ideas, a fair number of which are good ones, but they aren't big. They don't grab entire eras by the "creat" button. (Snotty UNIX reference. Sorry. Hadda do it.) On the other hand, various of them do seem to be of at least passing interest.

Sometimes I think I should put an ad in The Wall Street Journal (I'm sure that name is trademarked, so put a "tm" symbol after it), saying something like this:

Factotum and catalyst, desiring to become a remittance man, seeks open-minded patron. No reasonable offers refused. Applications to box P-22, or finger me at my mailto location if you want to make an anonymous donation.

If you think I'm kidding, well, yeah, to some extent I am; but there is serious intention underneath it all. (As to P-22, it's a nice ultradwarfing apple rootstock that was developed fairly recently. Can't resist, y'know.) As it turns out, some friends seem to agree with me on this, and have basically offered me room and board for a while. I will probably be moving to Santa Cruz, California, early in 1999, to pursue my various researches.

I'm still having some "I can't believe this," but it does appear to be the real thing. I pinch myself from time to time, to make sure I'm not dreaming. We Shall See how it works out...

Not Quite a Mailto: jon (at) bazilians (dot) org.