Three Hundred

Three hundred Quirky Muffins will have been displayed for all the world to see with the advent of this post. Every one hundred posts it becomes time to stop and think about what the meaning of this silly project is. Or even if it really needs to have a meaning. Not everything needs a meaning or a purpose.

What began as a regular blog became a bizarre challenge. How could it be possible to keep on writing when in essence everything is rather boring? Could it be possible to lift whole posts and structure them around random word definitions? Would a mostly impersonal and non-biographical blog be maintained through occasional bouts of authorial apathy and mania? Would the occasional impingement of actual readers cancel some of the undoubtedly therapeutic effect of writing the Muffin?

Over time new challenges crept in, as books and movies and other media were dissected, but not for critical worth but rather for their enjoyability. (Critical worth is often one of the most tedious things to be found anywhere.) We should aspire to be more positive about things ("Say yes more!"), not negative, and that is the target that is occasionally hit with the full force of a meringue falling from ten thousand metres here. Stories crept in too, of dubious merit, but occasionally with what I would like to think of as originality and novelty value. 'Wordspace' must surely be one of a kind, if only in its original conceit!

So, three hundred posts in, where next? It's undoubtedly harder than it used to be, overloaded as the author is with Mathematical nonsense most of the time, which clogs up the wells of creativity just as creativity negates research. The Quirky Muffin will go on, picking up foibles along the way, and then casting them about for none to see. At the top of the page the Muffin retains its original mandate: "The mental meanderings of a maths researcher with far too little to do, and a penchant for baking." Apart from the baking that has always been true, although time for meandering has been short of late, and those meanderings are the lifeblood of remaining sane. Baking went away a long time ago, alas.

Boggle and blarney, the word `sane' reared its ugly head! There can be no sanity as long as Kirk lives! The Quirky Muffin is undoubtedly one more thing: Genre-based. From Star Trek to Doctor Who, from Superman to the Sensational She-Hulk, and from Roger Zelazny to Patrick O'Brian this is a place to be special. We don't wallow in conventional dramas or the random vicissitudes of domestic life. This is a place and a time that was forged in the final emergence of the 'Eternal Man resplendent in the aura of his full power', the feel of the cobbles under Sam Vimes' cheap boots, and the 'long banked fires visibly reigniting in Kirk's eyes'. The origins lie with Mother's Winnebago with its big waterbed and kitchen, Bond watching Dr No slip into the superheated water and Claude Rains cracking up as Jimmy Stewart's filibuster crumples into its traumatic and overwrought conclusion. New things (to me) and old all mixed together as William straps a lance to his arm to charge his nemesis and Atom the Sparring Robot steps up one last time, while Alex Rogan takes a trip to the stars. Everything comes from somewhere and it's not all nostalgic reverie.

The Quirky Muffin comes from me, Oliver Bain, Doctorate at Large. There are still a few things left to write about, so be ready, and expect the totally expected.

O.

PS Points available for every reference.