I suppose, however, since this is a personal web page I should mention a little about myself...and why I'm actually bothering to clog up the World Wide Wank, as I tend to refer to it, with another page. I should mention at this point that I do realise that all, or most personal web pages, are usually just attempts to advertise one's self or one's services to the largest possible audience. Whether this is aimed at future employment or a better sex life makes very little difference, it all basically boils down to attention...much like cats really. The only real difference between any personal web pages are who they belong to and what do those people want.
So who am I and what do I want? Well, my name is Ben McGinnes (which doesn't really answer that first question, but it'll have to do for now) and I want to see myself in print. Now you might call me old-fashioned, but when I say "in print" I mean published (that's hardcopy for you techies, this page does not count). Ultimately I'd like to be able to make a living off my writing alone, so this web page is aimed in a large way at advertising my ability in this field to publishers of many varieties.
My writing is, of course, affected a great deal by my own experiences and education. Which could just as easily be said about my life, but then without writing, which I consider my art, my life would be pretty pitiful indeed.
Other influences, however, come from other writers and artists whom I admire and/or am intrigued by. These include, but are by no means limited to, Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Shea (RIP), J.G. Ballard, William S. Burroughs (RIP), Grant Morrison, Hunter S. Thompson, Warren Ellis, H.R. Giger, Jello Biafra, Ice-T, Barry Andrews, Storm Constantine, Neil Gaiman, Poppy Z. Brite, Iain M. Banks, Frank Herbert, Guy Gavriel Kay, Roger Zelazny, James Ray, J. Michael Straszinski, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, George Gordon Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Edgar Allan Poe, Sylvia Plath, Jack Kerouac, Niccolò Machiavelli, Sun Tzu (Sun Wu), Sun Tzu II (Sun Bin), Miyamoto Musashi and many others.
Aside from writing there are a few other topics which I enjoy enough to babble about here, including such things as politics, roleplaying, chess, various forms of entertainment (much of which stems from being an audiophile) and just about anything else which crosses my path. Including the continuation of my Arts degree at La Trobe University, working at assorted nightclubs and, as necessary, relieving tension with the aid of Quake 2.
This, at least, was the intention - one which has been somewhat curtailed by my entry into the land of the "gainfully employed." The form of my employment being corporate technical support for Connect (a.k.a Connect Internet Solutions, formerly known as Connect.com.au). A number of factors, most of which are work-related, have resulted in this site not being updated since the middle of 2000. Hopefully I will have the opportunity to turn this around.
By the way, while I'm babbling, this site is (as most web sites are) "under construction" and likely to change as I learn nifty things to do to it. For those who care there's also a disclaimer around here somewhere which deals with the legal bits about intellectual property (especially mine) and the obligatory warning to the easily offended.
This site first went (properly) online at about 2-ish(pm) Australian Eastern Standard Time on Monday the 27th of July, 1998 on Alphalink. On Friday the 23rd of April, 1999 the site was moved to Enternet. On Saturday the 16th of November, 2002 the site began to be migrated over to my own small server, but retained an older version on the Enternet server. The Enternet version was last updated on Saturday the 5th of April, 2002, while the Adversary version was last updated on Thursday the 24th of March, 2005.
Copyright © Benjamin D. McGinnes, 1998-2005