Why Do I Do This?     A difficult question that.  It depends, of course, on what part of 'this' you mean.  Why do I run the WWW and mail servers, why do I run the DNS servers, why do I have a page, why do I post writings and, er, other stuff?
    I run the WWW servers because I can and because it gives me absolute administrative control over both content and functionality.  It allows me to permit Cher to do whatever she wants, and likewise for myself.  It is also providing valuable experience to me as regards administering these things, and the above mentioned control is allowing me to do as I please with CGI, JavaScript, et cetera.
    I run the DNS servers for several reasons, all having to do with my control freak nature (which is interesting for a zen buddhist with some understanding of chaos).  But it seems perfectly reasonable considering the control others would assert on me if I didn't control myself.  InterNIC cost me my original domain name because I didn't jump through the right hoops at the right time, ARIN then came along and robbed me of my network number for similar administrivial reasons, and while I will borrow an address block from an ISP and have them secondary my DNS just in case, I will never again allow all of my network functionality to rely on others.
    It is more difficult to explain why I have a page.  Because I can, because it gives me experience in all kinds of html, cgi, java, javascript, shtml and other functions I use to pull this off, and because it's the venue for the content.  The page started back in 1994 at Pima Community College.  Then it was simply because I could.  I was using ftp, telnet, the web, wais, archie, gopher and whatever else I could get to research, and I codified the places I found myself revisiting into a home page.  I didn't see a graphical browser until 1995 (this may explain some of my disdain for the desktop publishing view of html).  That was Mosaic, of course.  And despite the pretty pictures, I still preferred lynx for speed and reliability.  So my own page was not heavy on images, and still isn't.  But browsers have changed and so has the network, so I'll be catching up sometime here.  Then the short answer is that I started the page because I could and it was a convenience, and the long answer involves an infinity of little reasons of no general interest.
    It is even harder to explain the content.  I create because I create.  I put it up here because it's better than throwing it in the trash.  I continue to assimilate information, I can write and I've had some interesting experiences.  I don't know of any other songwriter doing what I am doing.  Although I am happy to cede that there are many, many fine songwriters, they're just not doing what I'm doing as far as I can tell, nor poet, nor essayist.
   It is a good thing for these creations that I am afflicted of such a powerful egoism (thank you Joyce), since if I had hoped for some sort of validation from this venue I would be disappointed.  I think that must not be a large part of why I put these up here, although I certainly fantasize about it.  While some of my dearest friends do actually visit and watch the painfully slow progress, owning the server allows me to see just how little wide interest my work has generated.  Of course, part of this situation might be due to sharing the server with Cher's free fetish site, but actually, from what I can tell I'm getting more hits from her fans than from the poetry and music rings combined.  Unfortunately for me, the sorts of people who like a free fetish site seem generally not to be the sort who delve deeply into poetry or music.  Ah well, I continue to create because I have to.  And I continue to post because I hope someone somewhere will be interested and because it's an incredibly effective way to back my work up very quickly on many machines.  If you're not thinking about the coming knowledge vacuum you should be, and if you are trusting any single thing to preserve what you hold dear, don't.  My internal struggle largely revolves around whether I am creating for you, or whether I am creating for myself.  I don't know.  Here it is.  If you read it and get something out of it, I created it for you.
    However, I'm just trying to get these questions answered for myself.  I'm still not sure exactly why I do this, but it's getting a little clearer.  I suppose I should also mention my inability or unwillingness to work with any publisher I know of.  And the phenomenon of people baring a bit of their souls on the web is not at all unique.  So maybe you already understand why I do this.
 
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