Why indeed?  And why not?

Firstly, the technology exists and we have come a long way from beating out our messages on bongos or telling Lassie to go get help.  In my case, having been away from "home" for nearly 30 years and being always a writer of letters and postcards, I thought it might be a way for people who have lost touch with me to find me again.

People with computers, that is.

I am sober enough (for the moment anyway) to remember when there were no computers and, since they came into common usage, for the longest time I resisted them, as everyone I knew who had one used it for playing video games.   I don't, as a rule, watch television, so I wasn't inclined to fritter away my time on video games when it could be better spent gargling Guinness on the bathroom floor.

Let me set the record straight here about my constant references to alcohol, and in particular the Guinness pipeline.  Very few of the people who know me in person have seen me "in my cups", and most who have known me in my wilder days were too drunk at the time to give evidence against me.

No, with maturity, of which I have recently gained a smattering, comes the knowledge of what works for you and what doesn't, and setting World vomiting records is now a thing of the past.  I don't even keep my trophies on the mantlepiece anymore.

I do, however, like a drink with friends during a dinner get-together and, more often than not, find my way back to the correct table on the way back from the men's room.

If a man has indeed interrupted your dinner party by asking you to help him dislodge his tie from his fly then, yes, it was probably me and thanks for not starting up your own Web site and blabbing to the world about it.  Our little secret!

The Guinness pipeline didn't happen overnight, but was the result of long negotiations with the Guinness family.  As I tend to stay in the same tried and tested hotels when I travel, Guinness have been kind enough to install a narrow gauge pipeline from the hotel bar to my room, and the "outlets" are discrete in that they are usually found running up from a plant pot and camouflaged to look like a stem.  This way I can sit by a potted palm, listening to one of my friends drone on and on about how Mozart isn't so deadly dull as I imagine, the meanwhile I have the discrete nozzle in the side of my mouth, supping on the delicious nectar from a few floors below in the Cap'n's Cabin or whatever the bar is called.  The more I drink, the more my head nods, apparently in approval at the points being driven home, and the friend believes they are at last making a breakthrough in my conversion.  Mercifully sleep usually overtakes me, as it does during Mozart opera performances.

The only place I ever wrote, before this, was Opera Oasis, which is a fine shady glade where folks talk, in the main, about opera.  Opera is indeed a fine thing, and on that board there are many fine folks who speak eloquently and knowledgeably on the subject, and of course there are drones and bores as in every other random group of Earthlings.

We are not actively searching for a cure for cancer on this site and (speaking for myself) have no lofty aims other than to offer another web site where one can read a little about Opera, learn something about a recording you don't have, or attend vicariously a performance that you can't get to.

Two years ago, the people who work day and night to bring this site into your homes were unaware of each other's existence, but their love of Opera brought them together and bonded them in a MANLY way.  They seek only to brighten your day with their merry talk of Music Drama and ask of you nothing in return, except that you log into this site weekly with a warm and fuzzy feeling in your hearts and offer each of them your love and maybe a warm bed for the night.

--Norris