Ok, so now I've thought of that cool web site name, lucked out and the domain wasn't registered yet (wait a minute, maybe the name wasn't so cool after all...), relearned the HTML I once knew, and coded up something that's at least workable. Looking at it, it doesn't look like a slick web-zine, but hey- after the hours I tried to get the frames look I wanted down, and the Java simply didn't work, hey, it doesn't look so bad, does it? Now what?

The intent is clear, to make a website that is me. Me. Artsy, a little off-beat, somewhat self-absorbed, lots of ideas, no time to put them anyplace in particular. Now wait a minute, aren't I defining a mission statement? That term of the 80's learned back when yellow power ties and wavy hair on guys was in style? I laughed then, heck, I still do, but I still need one. Maybe in a wordy document, I can accomplish that.

The web, along with writing in general is always anonymous, publishing to your site from a grungy office in midtown for someone to read in Paraguay at 3am in their underwear. Neither party will ever meet, except in their minds, and not even then. An idea, an image. The thought of it is egotistical, and any more, in a jaded Internet enhanced world, a sophmoric look at things. We're supposed to trounce the thought, that even now, it's still pretty cool to publish yourself for theoretical billions to read. We shouldn't...

So what inspired me to stop just thinking stories in my mind, the Walter Mitty inside being cast aside, to take the time to actually write things down and let the world see them. Naked is a term that's overused, and it certainly applies to anyone who's ever written anything to be seen by others, even if only in the high school paper. If you show the world what you were thinking, simply by writing it down, you've shown your soul to them. Why would someone who would really rather not deal with anyone in general want to do this? I'm sure there are any number of physcological answers for this, no doubt explaining away my very inner self, but they don't know the true answer. I'm really not sure I've pinpointed it yet, or when I will. This site will know when, and you might know when, even before I do.

Not a diary, though in some ways, it is, for in the coure of a day you see or hear things that comprise your thoughts, abstract as they may be. Not a politcal pulpit, though I've learned over the past 10 adult years of mine, that politics, morals and thoughts are integrated, you cannot be apolitcal without being untrue to what you really are. Not a site to crank and rant, that's petty, and really, anyone can complain about traffic, lines, or society in general. So many things it's not, and that I won't let it be, yet in the absence of those, it will speak of what I want.

Stories, short ones, long ones, random thoughts, a paragraph or two on a scene in the world that shouldn't go unnoticed. UltimateVanity, really, is just someplace that forces me to record, capture, replay in words, the view of the world that singularly mine. We all see the world, we all live in it, in whatever capacity we choose, in locales that we choose. This is my view of it.

My Mission statement, I know would invoke the ire of the yellow power-tie wearing guy who taught me the business class, and never get me past the intern working at the venture capital firm, but for me, what I am, what I do, and where I'm going, it works.