Why We're Asking Your Support

by Douglas Milburn

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
                                          --Oscar Wilde.

Our Pitch in a Nutshell:
What will you buy this week that has a fraction the value
of what you will find in Magellan's Log?

1. What Magellan's Log Is
Compulsive web explorers that we are, we haven't found another online magazine with such a combination of provocative ideas, insightful commentary, unusual book reviews, off-the-beaten-path midi's, beautiful graphics, and (not to forget) some of the best contemporary satire around these days.

Who's reading us? A global audience, currently running around 300,000 hits per months.

All that and no advertising. None. Not a banner ad, not a pop-up in sight.

Starting our third year, our entire 2,500 pages are instantly available. No archives here. Every word, every image we've published is right there for the clicking.

How do we do it? Are we just another overblown dot-com, another day older and deeper in debt, waiting for the ax to fall, now desperately seeking funding from our readers?

Nope. Not at all.

Magellan's Log will continue with or without your support. But it will be better because of your support.

How can we do it?

The author, at ease with his drugs of choice (nicotine and caffeine),
indulges in a bit of copse-contemplating, his Texas version
of wall-examining learned from the wraith of Bodhidharma..

2. What Magellan's Log Isn't
We can do it because Magellan's Log is NOT just another online magazine, however much it may seem to be.

Magellan's Log is in fact a massive, on-going piece
of performance art done daily in real-time
in full view of the global Internet audience.

In a way, Magellan's Log represents a revival of the old 19th century tradition of serial publication, harking back to those days when Dickens and friends were writing novels piecemeal, working on a week-to-week deadline.

If you take a look at our staff in the masthead, you'll see a fairly long list of, well, fairly unusual names. Those names, my friends, are in fact "characters" in this large, growing piece of experimental art called "Magellan's Log."

How so?

As writers, and as "characters," they are my own creation. Each has a personality, a certain way of looking at and writing about the world.

If I want to do a piece on "high" culture, out comes Mr. Diebold Essen, just slightly over-educated, a bit arrogant perhaps, but with some pretty good insights into the more complex workings of society. Or for a more down-home take on a current political event, I'll trot out Ms. Lulu Dilworth. Occasionally here comes Cassandra with her biting satirical take on things as allegedly perceived by beings on a higher plane. Or for hard-edged left-of-center political commentary, Mr. Doc Cuddy will sharpen his mouse and attack the keyboard. And so on.

The collection of staff names is one of the features of which I'm proudest. Vintage stuff there. When I travel, I have a page in my notebook to record unusual personal, business, and place names that I run across. That list, compiled on four continents and several decades, is now pretty long. Whenever I need a new staffer, I consult it and choose names which seem resonant with the persona I imagine for the in-coming writer. For example, a new person has just joined the staff, Ms. Ora Shay (pretty good, huh?), listed as "Token Republican," to provide much-needed balance in our left-tilting political analysis.

You get the idea.

Magellan's Log can be seen as a kind of continuing cyber-novel, with only one author.

So when I ask for your support, you are not funneling money into yet another dot-com black pit. You are supporting and encouraging exactly one writer.** Just as when you go into a book store and purchase the latest work of a favorite writer. Except there, of course, you get an object, and here, alas, all you get is a lot of pixels, but such is the nature of 21st century publication.

Those pixels, arranged properly, can after all communicate valuable information.

In my decades of pre-Internet print-writing, I've done books, magazines, and newspaper reportage. As the Internet unfolded its multimedia, hyperlinked wings, I knew I'd found my medium. Whether what I'm doing here is as good as I want it to be, only you, and time, can decide. For now, I, my morale, and my aging Pentium 166 thank you for your support and encouragement.

                                                                         --Douglas Milburn***

**A few pages are the product of other, real hands, listed in the Masthead at the bottom in the category, "Special Guest Appearances."

***The really curious reader may click here for other keys to Magellan's Log.

END

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