Somehow I've never gotten around to writing the definitive essay on those "wacky ideas". Here are several messages I've written at various times on the subject of what I call the "inverse varargs problem"; they summarize most of the ideas, and should at least get you started. (There is some overlap, because some of the later ones were written when I didn't have copies of the earlier ones handy.)

article posted to comp.unix.wizards and comp.lang.c 1989-06-04
article posted to comp.lang.c 1992-07-14
mail message sent 1993-03-07 to someone asking about the "wacky ideas"
more recent ideas (1997-06-28)
most recent ideas (2001-05-27)