Currently, you’re probably mostly thinking about other things: what to have for lunch, when that guy I don’t like will get voted off that show I love, why the cat  has been staring at that corner for forty-five minutes, and so on. But the phrase ‘halfwit scholar’ is also bouncing around in there somewhere. Perhaps you’ve considered what it means. Perhaps not. I shall explain.

The meaning is simple. I have no qualification more than the fingers to type and, at the very least, half a brain to think. I have something to say, and you have arrived just in time to hear it.

So there you sit, wondering what I could possibly have to say. Well, there’s basically three elements: ponderings and thoughts, idiotic opinions, and the glorious world of food. I’ll get to what those mean specifically in a moment, but first we’ll talk about the ‘why’ of it.

I love writing, with a particular emphasis on words and their aesthetics, and have a lot of strange and perhaps interesting things to talk about. So I figured this would be good practice and hey, someone might actually enjoy themselves in the process. I apologize in advance if that person is me. So, see this as an experiment, entertainment or simply education, though let’s not kid ourselves about that last one. If you’d like more of a reason than that, I might also suggest the ever classy ‘because I can’, or that I’m finally responding to a challenge long since issued and forgotten. Either way, I aim to amuse, and if we all learn something, then I’ll consider this project a success.

Anyway, 3 things.

Ponderings. Thoughts and the like. This is always going to be a tiny bit vague, and may also blur partially into the second thing, but essentially it’s just ideas or news or other thoughts that I find interesting and want to talk about. There will probably be an element of processing involved and will most likely lead to some serious rambling, but who doesn’t love a good ramble? Sometimes I find them absolutely necessary. Future subjects may include something I call perceptual invisibility, the elimination of choice as a factor in many aspects of life, what we expect to get from reading fiction, particularly interesting ideas that come from my fiction related projects (world building, yay!), and other such oddities. I hate to admit that this may get a little philosophical, but alas, I too have been prone to wonder the miasmic annals of hypothetical, introspective, piffle philosophy on occasion.

An idiot’s opinions. I’ve often found that people are far more receptive of things they disagree with, fundamentally or otherwise, when presented with a certain humility. What could be more humble, intellectually, than the idiot? Blissfully unaware and possessing not the burden of great intelligence, the idiot surely is the humblest of beasts. Or perhaps it’s a cynical pocket sand, thrown in the eyes of my readers to distract them when I deliver contentious opinions with sanctimonious abandon. We’ll never know…. I may or may not be planning to talk about such things as equality and what I think people actually want from it or understand it to be, why I’m certain reality television will eventually cause the apocalypse, or my appraisal of this season’s jandal range.

Food. This should be reasonably self-explanatory. I like food. Chances are, you do as well. I like to talk about it sometimes too. From my favourite places to get a burger in town, to a student’s guide to avoiding scurvy in Auckland city, to the latest theories on the congealment of cheese and why it’s better after it has been cooked and re-solidified (the idiot and his opinions may cross over into other subject areas, but I’ll try to keep him leashed when possible), this particular avenue promises to provide a veritable smorgasbord of amusing and possibly even informative subjects.

The secret fourth thing is that I may also include short stories or excerpts from longer ones that I’m working on in parallel. This isn’t guaranteed and is largely dependent on me actually writing such things, but we’ll see what happens there. I may also talk about art or writing that I’m finding particularly riveting at any given time, but I don’t intend that to be a great focus.

So. That’s what I’m here to talk about. I’m not sure precisely with what regularity I’m going to be writing things here, but it should be at least once or twice a week, the constraints of student life notwithstanding. Anyway, welcome to Halfwit Scholar and feel free to stumble through the complexities of our odd little world with me; it promises to be strange.

Paddy out.