Some Kierkegaard for Jeremy
Jeremy Keith’s new book, Bulletproof Ajax, is finished according to Jeremy’s Twitter. I’m just getting around to teaching myself JavaScript properly - mostly using Jeremy’s first book and Christian Heilmann’s book.
As a humorous aside and an introduction to the writing of Denmark’s (only) great philsopher, Søren Kierkegaard (or rather, his satirical pen-name Johannes Climacus), I present a little quote that may illustrate the situation of this somewhat hapless reader:
An author publishes a big book; it has scarecly been out a week before he falls into conversation with a reader. The reader asks politely, sympathetically, and in a very glow of longing, if he does not soon intend to write another book. The author is enchanted: to think of having a reader who so quickly works his way through a big book, and in spite of the labor and the toil preserves his zest undimmed! Alas for the poor deluded author! In the further course of the conversation, the benevolently interested reader, the same who so longingly awaits the new book, admits that he has not read the published book, and that he will probably never find the time to do so.
— Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Introduction, p. 13
Talking of satirical pen-names, I was reading an old thing from Scripting News a few days ago when I came across an entry where Dave said that when he first started putting italics at the end of his posts, he’d get e-mails from people concerned that someone had hacked in and was adding snarky comments to his blog, only for him to explain that it was alternative Dave. Nobody knows where Mr. Italics comes from. It wasn’t a technical fault, but it was a different person.
I wrote up a seriously snarky blog entry earlier and trashed it. Oh, if you guys could read it. Alas, it has gone to the bit bucket. Just writing it made me feel better. Certain actions will be taken to remedy the situation that caused me to write it, but I’m biting my tongue. I’m self-censoring. I’m not sure whether that’s a good or bad thing.
