My New Domain

Published 19 Oct 2005

I am once again master of my domain, having picked up a new one this weekend. I thought I’d let the cat out of the bag before Steve explodes.

The inspiration came from Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, which I am about 3/4 of the way through reading, so no spoilers please. The following passage made me go into convulsive giggle fits on the plane. You’ve got to love anyone who can combine biological nerdery with a description of the protagonist lying on the floor after being punched in the face for trying to hit on a girl in a imperfectly understood foreign language. All within the context of information technology nerdery, and with the kind of jaunty tone that I can never get enough of:

Some sort of commotion is happening up in that remote plane of most people’s heads, five to six feet above the floor, where social interaction traditionally takes place. Mary’s date is being hustled off to the side by a large powerful fellow— it is hard to recognize faces at this angle, but a good candidate would be Rod. Rod is shouting in Qwghlmian. Actually, everyone is shouting in Qwghlmian— even the ones who are speaking English— because Waterhouse’s speech-recognition centers have a bad case of jangly ganglia. Best to leave that fancy stuff for later, and concentrate on more basic phylogenesis: it would be nice, for example, to be a vertebrate again. After that, quadrupedal locomotion might come in handy.
A perky Qwghlmian-Australian fellow in an RAAF uniform steps up and grabs his right anterior fin, jerking him up the evolutionary ladder before he’s ready […]

I am now the proud owner of janglyganglia.com. I still can’t even say that out loud without smiling.

What I am going to do at Jangly Ganglia? I have no idea. But I couldn’t resist the delicious ridiculousness of one day introducing myself as “Andrea of Jangly Ganglia dot com.” And with domain names being about nine bucks through GoDaddy, it was a bargain indeed.

So what do you think I should do there? I’m up for ideas. I kind of like the idea of doing something collaborative. I also like the idea of exploring those crazy situations in life that leave your head reeling, and your ganglia jangling. Thoughts?

Filed under Miscellaneous