Initial Public Offering

A friend suggests that I should start by telling you something about this book, and I guess he's right. So what is this book? This book is a small selection from a big stock of brief essays that I have written every day (one a day) over the course of what has come to be many years now. (Funny how remembering a standing date can make you forget the passing of the years during which you keep it.) I write and disseminate these essays on Facebook, using its little noticed " Notes " option. I also revise them there. And revise them. And revise them. And revise them. (One of the many charms of the notes function on Facebook is how it allows you to revise what you've already virtually published to your heart's content. I am put in mind of a remark a friend made about an advertisement for a Sunday brunch, which included all the Chablis you care to enjoy: " and then some, " my friend waggishly added. My point being that the notes option on Facebook allows you to perform all the revisions you care to enjoy—and then some. (Many is the day I have mostly spent making small and large changes in the brief meditation pertaining thereto.) I return now to the task at hand. What are these brief essays? Well probably, the easiest way to find out is to stop reading this introduction right now and go straight to the essays themselves. (After all, there is always something at least a little asinine and asymmetrical about even the most necessary introductions. At least so it has always seemed to me.)