I have decided to start, here on the precipice of what is being started, to examine those events that are perhaps too complex and subtle to be considered as significant. There are other qualities that need to be taken into account, in fact, and these are unwisely overlooked. This is why I have decided to undertake the examination of such events, and -- more significantly -- to record them for the benefit of the general population.  This is not the result of any misguided notions of altruism: I have little affection for people in general, and considerably less for them in particular. The unadorned truth is simply that the time to undertake this examination is available to me, I feel it is a worthwhile pursuit, and thus I am going to do so and no one has to like it. A vast beachhead of flattened pulp waits expectantly to receive the spent tide of ink and observation: who am I to stand in its way? Or you, for that matter? A need is only present after the means for its satisfaction has been made manifest in some way; therefore a beginning is made, carefully skirting beneath the doorjamb of false grandeur like so many trumpets sounding off in an empty palace. And so it is.