Some people cannot leave well enough alone, and find themselves driven to dissect, analyze and cannibalize the world around them. And, yes, these are attempts to change that world.
The site’s name is derived from an old, and possibly heretical, conception of hell as a place not of eternal punishment but as a place where the chaff is burned off– a metaphor which well describes the way I felt for a good decade of my life as reason and reflection burned off the mythology laid down in layers throughout my childhood.
Similar burning is precisely my intent with this site– to burn up the junk with an intellectual fire– or, if you prefer, to “burn up the chaff in unquenchable fire” as John the Baptist proclaimed in Matthew 3:12. The goal betrays a wee bit of arrogance, but I can live with that.
I probably could have chosen something less abrasive for a title. “Hell’s Handmaiden” probably turns a few head. If those heads turn to take a look, then fine. But I imagine that a few heads just turn away. However that may be, though, it is too late now. I chose the name years ago when the site’s point was as much to give me an excuse to learn HTML as it was to be a venue for my thoughts. And now the name is “branded” as they say in advertising.
The author… who is the author?
Right now, the site boasts only one author, though I am not in theory opposed to adding to the list.
I’ve long avoided posting much of a personal nature, though a fair bit can be culled from those posts tagged autohagiographical. I suppose, though, it is time to come out of the closet… a little.
I grew up in the Pine Forests of East Texas. Yes, the trees are pretty. I am severely allergic to them all. I did nonetheless spend enormous amount of time in the woods as a kid, doing what boys do– sword fighting with sticks, digging holes, playing soldier, trying to ride a wheelie on a dirt bike, and such like.
Puberty hit. I discovered the Sex Pistols, hard-core (hard-core punk you naughty things), David Bowie, Iggy and the Stooges, and Alice Cooper– all of which, except for the hard-core and two little know Cooper albums, hit a peak some ten years before I found it. Ahh… tragically behind the times.
I dropped out of high school at sixteen, I think, spent a year more or less as a zombie, then went to college. After a first semester under the influence of Everclear and of a girl I’ll never forget, I did quite well and graduated with a BA in Anthropology and one in Philosophy.
I put my degrees to good use, and became a carpenter– like Jesus, as a friend pointed out with a smirk. I did that for too many years, then chucked it all and went back to school– time in mathematics, linguistics, and history– but I am now back to my first love– Philosophy.
I start graduate school in August of 2007, and I have a teaching assistantship as well. All is good.
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