If you’re one of the people I know on Facebook, or you follow me on Twitter, or you know me and I’ve pointed you in the direction of this web page, or somehow stumbled onto this site by some sort of weird coincidence, then welcome. This is my webzone, and I’m glad you are reading my garbage. The purpose of this small rented space on the internet is to improve my writing.

I ran another blog for a while, http://illustriousmrcharlton.blogspot.ca/, for a number of years. Posts were sporadic. In the three and a half years writing at blogspot, I totalled twenty eight posts. I have been writing on this website for two weeks now, and I have fourteen posts. By the end of the month, I will be matching the number of posts I did in thirty months. I will then proceed to pat myself on the back.

Writing is easy. You don’t believe me? Painting is also easy, and I’ll prove it.

Unmitigated Genius.

Painting well, on the other hand, takes practice. And the same goes with writing. I’ve been working at becoming a better writer, because I love to write. It’s something that I’ve always been doing in the background.

The quality of these posts might not always be up to snuff. I’m going to post at weird times. I’m trying to figure out how to link this blog to the big social media outlets, so I don’t have to copy and paste a link every time I set something up. I need a logo, a better site layout, and maybe some business cards, so I can give them to people. Once they have my business card, they’ll have no choice but to put them with the other business cards sitting in the miscellaneous drawer of their kitchen. Or they can use my card to pick their teeth with, if the restaurant they ate at ran out of tooth picks.

The goal is to put up a decent post, everyday, for 365 days. Decent doesn’t mean Pulitzer prize winner. It means that I’ll have put something up that has words on it, that you can read with your face eyes. Hopefully, with time and practice, I’ll get better at putting words onto the internet.

It’s not just practice I’m looking for, I’m looking for a distinct voice. The internet is this blaring cacophony of millions of ideas, opinions, discussions, and trash talk. I don’t want the voice of the Illustrious Mr. Charlton to be someone else’s, with a twist of my own. I want it to be one hundred percent, unequivocally  Mr. Charlton. That’s going to take time too.

I’m returning to my roots though. When I started writing on the old blog, it soon turned into my voice countering a bunch of bullshit people were falling for. If there is one gift I have, it’s that there’s the heart of a brutal, cold, robot that lies in my warm fleshy body, a heart whose heart strings are electrified steel razor wire.

So when there’s an article claiming that Cancer has been cured, you can be sure I’ll knock it down when I find out they’ve only killed the Cancer cells it by setting fire to the petri dish. When you post a link to that promises to list the 2o greatest Batman villains of all time, I’ll be sure to write a post about how Batman is a lame super hero. And when you post a TED talk which claims it will change the world, I’ll swoop in to remind people the TED talks are a bit cultish, and years of research and study are impossible to cram into a twenty minute Youtube video.

The internet makes it easier to spread knowledge, wisdom, ideas, and information. It also makes it easier to spread bullshit, snake oil, misinformation, and stupidity. There is an enormous amount of stupidity out there. It’s a vast field of stupidity, just waiting to be harvested. There are rich veins of raw stupid to be mined and processed. Years ago, I worried about running out of material to write about. I can assure you, there’s so many hucksters, confidence men, and charlatans out there, that there’s no way I’ll ever run out of things to shake my head at.

You may not always agree with what I have to say. Good. Feel free to call out my stupidity. A blog without comments is as boring as saltines. And moving forward, I’m working on the comedy angle. With Trump as the republican nominee, the western half of
Canada burning to the ground, and robots coming to take our jobs, we better start laughing. ‘Cause if we’re not laughing, we’ll be crying.

Sincerely,

The Illustrious Mr. Charlton

p.s. Just because science journalism is awful, doesn’t mean we should stop kicking Cancer’s ass. But it seems every other week some one who failed high school biology is claiming the cure for Cancer happened yesterday.