Happy Birthday to Buffoonia!

I realized this morning that Bouphonia's first anniversary rolled around back on October 12th. It'd be easy enough to commemorate this millstone - I mean, milestone - by describing the astonishing changes I've wrought in the world over the last year. I could reel off the names of corrupt officials who are rotting in jail thanks to my efforts, and enumerate the social evils that I mitigated or exterminated through my judicious use of irony. I could mention some of the many heartsick wanderers in the burning sands of Deserta Americana, whose lives have been saved and sustained by this inexhaustible oasis of cultural and moral wisdom. I could even make known to you a few eminent persons for whom I am a tutelary spirit along the lines of the midget who inhabited Baron von Kempelen's chess-playing Turk.

But modesty is perhaps the most effulgent jewel in my soul's diadem, so I won't - nay, cannot - allow myself to go that route.

Nor can I explain the private agonies involved in the creation of each empty-headed, repetitive, and confused post on this site. Suffice it to say that like so many artistes, I'm now helped, now hindered by Saturn, whose burdensome gifts Giordano Bruno cataloged so studiously in his De Imaginum, Signorum, & Idearum Compositione:

Impediment, Intricacy, Chains, Detention, Separation, Enmeshing, Involvement, Meddling, Oppression, Surfeiting, Satiety, COncealment, Robing, Circumvention, Hindrance, Restriction, Getting even, Anguish, Bitter biting, disturbed Pallor, restless Bother, Tooth Biting; gnawing, ripping, braying, chewing, eating torturing, wearying, tormenting, destroying Cloud of Proposals; Bubble of Worries, Blaze of Doubly Boiled Anxieties.

Enough. I've already said too much! The spagyric art by which my leaden thoughts are transmuted into fool's gold must not be revealed, not even through the darkest of allegories.

Laborious gags aside, I do want to thank everyone who's tolerated my ramblings on this site. Blogging doesn't come naturally to me by any means, and there have been many times when it didn't seem worthwhile - or posssible - to keep it up. But now that I've elbowed my way into this wonderful community, I find it impossible to tear myself away, even if I don't necessarily feel worthy of membership.

Honestly, I owe all of you - friends and foes alike - a huge debt. Thanks to you, I've gained a much clearer sense of my strengths, and a much, much more realistic picture of my inadequacies. And needless to say, I've learned countless things of which I had not the faintest inkling a year ago (or even a month ago), and am a better and humbler person for it.

No gifts are necessary; what do you give the man who has everything, and appreciates nothing sufficiently? But please do drop in and say hello, especially if you're a lurker!