A more formal introduction

So now it's done. The move into the wider world of internet bloggery. Just one more person making that mad leap out into a world filled with Warhol's fifteen minuters.

This is not my first such foray though - merely my most public and least restricting. And as such, I hope also my most open, honest and wide ranging.

A question I have sometimes asked myself when writing in various online fora is, "Why am I writing this online and not in a private journal?"

The answer doesn't always come quickly, but it is usually involves a mixture of reasons and rationales. I like the challenge of writing for an audience. I like to share my thoughts, experiences and ideas with others. I like the opportunity to hear the thoughts and critiques from others on my thoughts, experiences and ideas - and hear theirs in turn. I like to learn and understand and hunt down the core of a thought as I explore it in the written word.

And, as so many of us do, I like to be heard.

Sometimes for as wide an audience as possible, sometimes for a very select few, sometimes just for an audience of one, but I like to be heard. To be known.

So who am I? Who is this "PiraticalPenguin"?

The best answer for that will (hopefully) come out in the writing I share here, but for now I'll give a thinly lined sketch and leave the colour and shading for later.

I'm some five months under forty years on this ball of mud - all of it in the Southern half of it. Australia more specifically, with most of my formative years moving regularly about the Eastern states and for the majority of my adult life in the even more Southern island state of Tasmania.

As a minor aside, my own small contribution to essential Tasmanian trivia (if I were ever asked to contibute to a Tourism Tasmania brochure) would be:

The best view of the Aurora Australis is to be found in the Cradle Mountain National Park whilst lying on the snow-covered top of a 1964 Holden panel-van, drinking Stones Green Ginger Wine.

Awash with liquid fire inside, the sky awash with waves of green fire above.

I share my home with an incredibly bright, handsome, fun ten year old and a rat. The ten year old is Monsterman (AKA Ruggie, Slugger, Ratbag, Sludgeguts, Handsomeman, Mate, Cobber, Mr.Man, Stop-That-Now, and Grrr depending on the mood and the situation) and the rat is Rappy (AKA Rapstar).

Monsterman is, without question, the most important person in my life.

I am also fortunate in that there is a stunningly witty, smart, funny, caring, giving and incredibly sexy woman curently on the other side of the planet in a land I never in all my life dreamed I would visit, who is also very important to me. Whilst she may have been able to steadfastly resist my obvious urbane charms, wit and devastating good looks (I jest), she was unable to resist my ultimate ploy and secret weapon: I introduced her to the waddling delight known as the Common Wombat. It was the wombats that convinced her that the best of futures lay in far off Tasmania. In a desperate act of retaliation, she introduced Monsterman to Elvis and claimed my sofa as an outpost of the United States of America - complete with diplomatic immunity.

I still maintain I get the better of that deal.

What other lines can I add to this sketch?

I am a voracious reader and self-confessed knowledge junkie who is borderline pathologically curious about pretty near everything. I can strum out a tune or two on a guitar and at times can even add my singing to the cacophany. At different times I've been a humble labourer, done the management schtick, self-employed, a university student, a teacher and a natural therapist. Sometimes two or three of those overlapped. I've done my time with Amnesty International and Greenpeace, seriously studied biology, genetics, education, philosophy and casually studied pretty much everything else - with history, politics, current affairs and cosmology being the big favourites. I'm a long term, big picture sorta fella that likes to reflect and act on the effects of those in the short term, small picture world.

Those things too, will probably become evident in what I choose to write in this little corner of the internet.

Mostly though, I hope to write about my life. As it is now for myself - in the immediate and personal sense, and how I view the world and events and people within it - and also my life as it was with small stories and vignettes that stand out as thought markers and metaphors. And of course, my hopes for the future - both the practical and personal, and the idealistic and broadly encompassing.

For the last part of this sketch, I'll give the reason for my name here.

First off, it is important to state that penguins are cool.

I have a soft spot for animals that have a hidden grace. Penguins fit that bill extremely well. Birds that waddle instead of fly, that show a sense of play bellysliding over the ice and incredible grace and speed in the water. Then too, there is the parental role of the male penguins - going without and withstanding the earthly hell of Antarctic winters to protect and nurture their offspring.

And they have their own tux.

Like I say, penguins are cool (so are wombats, but that's an altogether different matter).

Piratical? Well let's just say I liked the comic juxtaposition of an outlaw-ish penguin - and alliteration, like penguins, is cool too.

That's it for the introductory sketch.

The first few entries after this will most likely be resurections of older pieces of writing, and I daresay some more of those will pop up from time to time if they feel relevant to what my life and thoughts are doing at the time.As for the new writing to come: some might be of, shall we say, adult nature, most won't, most will be up for public scrutiny and comment, some won't. There will be pondering and philosophising and political waffling, introspection and reflection, directionless pontification and just plain old story-telling.

Welcome aboard.