Hello, world!

So I figured it was about time I started one of these things.

Strictly speaking, I do have another blog, Land of Whimsy, and when I originally started it, I envisaged it as something of a catch-all, a repository for anything and everything that took my fancy. Over the years, however, it morphed into something more specifically focused on reviews and opinions on films, DVDs and, more recent, Blu-ray Discs. The latter, in particular, brought quite a lot of traffic my way, particularly in the early days of the format... Which is all well and good, though it did mean that the site became more and more about providing a service as opposed to being what it originally started out as, i.e. a personal blog.

Which is where My Blog Thingummy (working title -- it might change at some point) comes in. The aim is for it to serve as something of a release for me, letting me talk about anything and everything without fear of censure. So you'll probably find that it comes to include personal musings, the odd film, TV or book review, pictures, links to worthwhile causes, and -- if you're very lucky -- a spot of politics. I don't imagine everyone will agree with everything I have to say, but hopefully we can all agree to disagree and get along nicely. That's if anyone ends up reading these ramblings of mine, which at present is still decidedly uncertain.

Anyhoo, I'll not say much about myself at the moment, since I'm guessing you'll get to know me a bit better through the content of my posts. I'm Michael, I'm 30 (as of writing), I live in Glasgow, and most of my spare time revolves around watching movies, reading, computer games, and writing of one variety or another. I'm an unproduced (as yet) screenwriter, with a bunch of projects in the can, in development or otherwise in the pipeline. I also recently finished a PhD on the Italian giallo films of the 1970s, examining their representations of gender as reflections of then-current sociocultural anxieties. My politics are very much to the left of centre, though I'd hesitate to label myself expressly as a socialist, liberal, social democrat or any other formal political designation. (You can see my Political Compass results here, if you're interested. Intriguingly, I've drifted quite a lot further to the left than when I last took the test a number of years ago... which I guess puts paid to the notion that everyone becomes more conservative as they grow older.)

That's about it for now. We'll see how far this blogging experiment goes and how long it lasts. I'm not going to promise to update every day, but I'll try to keep things fresh as much as is reasonably possible. Talk soon!