| The official web site of Paul S Cilwa, author, programmer, musician, songwriter, traveler, photographer, blogger and all-around Internet sensation! |
Welcome!
You may browse my site by Timeline
(the entries that include dates, will appear in chronological order); you can
view it hierarchically ("Contents"),
by Locations
(seriously, check that out as it presents my essays on a world map showing where
they're about), by Topics
(keywords) and even a simple alphabetical listing by
Titles.
What's New on This Site
We're almost back in business!
Yes, I mean this web site.
As of today (8/17/2024), The site is effectively back up. There are still
some minor issues (I hope they're all minor!) to be addressed but, as fas as
I know, the Contents page allows access to all (published) pages in the site.
As for other issues, here's a progress chart:
| Date Fixed | Issue |
|---|
| 8/21 | Fixed navigation subsystem bug (I hope!) |
| 8/20 | Implement compressed years feature (for About_Me and Coronovirus sections) |
| 8/17 | Update database with the page's Extract field (if different). |
| 8/17 | Changed internal links from the old names "index.asp" to the new "Default.aspx". |
| |
| |
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How This Site Got Its Name
When I first created this website in 1997, its title
was the same as its URL:
PaulCilwa.com. There were only a little over a million websites
that year, though more than three times as many as the year before. But,
by 2005, most websites had site names that were distinct from their URLs (web addresses).
For example, the site ONA.org was actually titled
Ontario Nurses Association
.
Since I was, by then, developing this site as a blog, I decided to give it a bloggy-sort
of name. But what?
I wanted to title it something that would express the range of which I hoped to write.
A rejected title was As Far As The I Can C
('C' being the first letter of my last name,
and yes, this would have been a ghastly title, which is why I didn't use it.)
But then, in 2003, there was a memoir by a guy named James Frey, A Million Little Pieces,
that became a bestseller after Oprah Winfrey selected it for her book club in 2005.
I wasn't a watcher of her show, but clips were everywhere, and the show itself
was on public TV sets in doctor's offices, airports, and even bars. So I heard the
title somewhere, and in a moment of inspired
malaphor, put it together with a piece of my mind
and voilà! the title for my the title for my website was born.
But the story doesn't stop there. It was later revealed that Frey had fabricated or
exaggerated many of the events and details in his book, such as his criminal record,
his injuries, and his relationships. In other words, basically the whole book.
Had it been labeled fiction, there'd have been no problem. But, as a memoir, it was manure.
Frey faced a backlash from the public, the media,
and Winfrey herself, who confronted him on her show and accused him of lying to her
and her viewers. Frey’s publisher dropped him and settled a lawsuit with the readers
who felt deceived by his book. Frey’s reputation as a writer was severely damaged by
the controversy, and he was widely criticized for exploiting the genre of memoir and
betraying the trust of his readers.
(Here's the fuller
version of this story.)
So…should I have changed the name?
Ultimately I decided in favor of my title. To begin with, Frey did not invent the phrase
a million little pieces
. Secondly, the malaphor (an informal term for
a phrase that combines two aphorisms, idioms, or clichés, such as let's
burn that bridge when we come to it
) continued to be utterly apt, so I opted
to retain it.
So, welcome to A Million Little Pieces Of My Mind!
Contents
| Browse the site, organized by subject. |
Here I've organized the pages by general interests, such as music or politics. I've also
taken your interests in mind, dear reader; so here you'll also find an entry into specific
series, like my Truck Driving Journal or my
Alien Abduction diary.
Timeline
| Browse the site in chronological order. |
Many (although not all) pages on this site include a date and possibly time at
which the event described occurred, the page was posted, or the page was updated. Here you can narrow
a search down to as narrow a period as you like; or, alternatively, broaden it to all of time,
set the Maximum Retrievals Per Page to 3000 and browse every page here!
Titles
| Browse the site by page popularity. |
Topics, keywords, hashtags…they are called by many names. If the list below has
a keyword in it, clicking Search
will list every page in this site with that keyword/topic/hashtag.
Map
| Search the site by geographical location of the subject. |
Click on a marked location to see what happened to me there.
Titles
| Browse the site by page title. |
If you can remember the title of a page you think is somewhere on this site, you can find it by browsing through every title of every page on this site.
Popular
| My ten most popular posts. |
Below are links to my ten most popular postings, starting with my all-time most-read posts.
Contact Me
| How to contact Paul S Cilwa. |
The best way to contact me is…