Anticipatory paranoia

I read a story in the paper the other day that got me thinking. Here it is: linky.

It made me think to myself, "Self, that guy is totally ripped. You really should take up body-building". It also made me think, "Hmm, I wonder if a time will come when I will regret putting all this blog stuff up for the world to see?"

Let me give an example to illustrate. Twenty years from now, I am an expert medical practitioner of surprisingly youthful appearance. I have many patients, all of whom love and respect me for the care that I provide to them. All, that is, save one, who I shall refer to as Mr Diddy.

Mr Diddy suffers from a chronic inflammatory condition that I have not been able to help him with. He is unable to work. He is housebound. He is unable to maintain social contacts or engage in hobbies or anything to break the monotony of the day. All he can do is sit on the internet and cyberstalk his doctors.

Eventually, Mr Diddy finds this very blog, long discontinued, archived in a dusty corner of the web. And he finds a post that I wrote, all about inflammation. And when he reads it, he becomes enraged. Clearly I am an idiot. Clearly I do not take medicine seriously. Clearly I am causing him pain and suffering with my attitude. Mr Diddy somehow finds a rapacious lawyer for hire and sets him loose upon me.

How will the story end? Will I be bankrupted and ruined? Will I win the case but lose my reputation as all this foolishness is made public? Or will I eventually triumph and be depicted in a movie dramatization by a freshly thawed Tom Cruise? It worries me. Tom Cruise is a nutbag and is far too short. Ryan Gosling would be more appropriate.

And so I have decided to write a Disclaimer. No harm will come to me whilst I am under its protection, for I shall speak magic words of legalese such as "heretofor", "whereas", and "moreover". It will be an Iron-Clad Disclaimer. It will be the blog equivalent of Ned Kelly's helmet. I'm just praying that Mr Diddy doesn't think of shooting me in the legs.