The stuff on Thor’s Short Cuts blog has been accumulating in written form since 1988, and on a website, most recently http://thormay.net, for the best part of fifteen years. An elixir of instant fame? Maybe not.
The two paths to a quiet life are to say nothing to anybody about anything, or to say everything that comes into your head. The second way is easily the most effective. Sooner or later the absolutely discrete person will be blackmailed or persecuted for something they didn’t say. However, the purveyor of utter candour is regarded with mute horror by all dignified persons, and given a wide berth. Thus, like much else in his life, the Aphorisms have done a great deal to guarantee Thor perfect social obscurity ….
A writer’s nemesis is that in the end he has no hiding place. The more he scribbles, the more mud he scrapes off his back. What’s underneath had better be pretty. Thus these Short Cuts also have their revenge on the scribe. Gradually they have become a kind of self-definition while posing self-importantly as a fountain of universal truths. Looking back over some of the repeating themes, the whole of it may say things about the writer that he doesn’t always want to hear. Anyway, that’s Thor’s problem. Take what you want and run.
It will take an months (years?) to transfer the stuff already on my Passionate Skeptic website at http://thormay.net to this and related blogs. If you really want to see the whole of Thor’s Short Cuts in all their present ramshackle glory, this address will get you there: http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/aphorism.html. In the even less likely event that you want to know who Thor May really is, the following link will tell you more than you want to know: http://thormay.net/docsite/aboutthor.html .