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It seems like only the other day…no, it was only the other day…that I was busy nodding along to a friend’s comment that this whole blogging thing seemed, well, a bit pointless. After all, there’s quite enough garbage floating around in cyberspace already without people dumping their ten-a-penny ruminations on (shock!) how awful George Bush is, or (did-they-really?) ‘celebrity’ gossip online. And the fact that you are reading this at all is rendered doubly improbable by virtue of that fact that I’m also somewhat disinclined to put my views on the printed page. Three years of undergraduate philosophy taught me early on that most of my beliefs are entirely wrong, and the others merely superficial – so it usually pays to change topic before anyone notices. What cruel twist of fate, then, has unleashed this blog upon a prone and unsuspecting world?

The main reason is wrapped up in the blog’s title in much the way that, er, Cleopatra was wrapped up in a rug. Frankly, life is often strange and frequently whimsical. It is also, for white, middle-class, well-educated westerners in the 21st century, so spectacularly privileged and remote from the experiences of the ‘long tail’ of humanity that it could only be considered ‘normal’ by other white middle-class, well-educated westerners in the 21st century. i.e. quite probably you.

Unravelling this state of affairs turns out to be trickier than one might imagine. After all, it’s not easy to live in a state of social, environmental and spiritual harmony when having to face such modern day quandaries as “Why won’t my ipod play when it’s charging?” and “How can I meet a funny, dynamic, emotionally mature single girl who’s into travel, the arts and history with a really hot body?” But face them we must.

This adventure will take you and I (you, of course, might be me – depending on who’s ever going to read this) at the very least to the other side of my bedroom and back, quite possibly as far as the kitchen (wireless network connectivity notwithstanding). In so doing it will (conceivably) take in topics as diverse as GIS, The monarchy, rugs, the fairer sex, the Pantheon, international economics, the unfairer sex, bad movies, The joys of coding, various ways of spelling Nietszche, worse movies, George Bush and celebrity gossip.

In summary, it is an attempt to document the aforementioned weirdness in the hope that, like a latter day Dante, I might ultimately emerge, blinking, into a state of enlightenment. OK, so maybe I’ll hang out in the inferno for a while longer where some of the more, well, er, recreational activities happen, but you folks should feel free to go right on ahead and I’ll catch up. In…a while.