July 24, 2004
Resistance to Blogging
The Revolution is on the Web, and it's Damned Boring

PIGS, I don't mean to alarm you, but my resistance to Blogging is starting to weaken. Despite my stellar Blog-less existence here on the World Wide Web for the past six years or so, I have of late found myself toying with the concept of adding a Blog to this web site. I'm trying to be strong, but it's hard. I sometimes feel like a rock of resistance in the midst of a tsunami of Blogging, a lone man clinging to his rough patch of land, being battered on all sides by the endless nattering of people with nothing better to do and very low journalistic standards. And see, that's where Blogs start to worm their way into my bony, twitching heart: I'm a lazy, lazy man, and Blogs are like the empty calories of web sites.

The fact is, I'm one of the three laziest men in the universe. The other two are so lazy they haven't left their homes in thirty years, leaving them anonymous. If I didn't have a wife who could-and would-and often does-beat me when I displease her, I'd be right there with them on a soiled couch, loudly demanding candy bars and sponge baths from anyone who passed within earshot. Unluckily for me-and for you bubba, if only you knew it-The Duchess doesn't tolerate that kind of laziness, and often chases me about the apartment with a stick until I agree to perform some chore, like showing up for my job, or bathing.

But on The Internet, much like people who play The Sims or, lord help us all, Star Wars Galaxies, I am God. The website for The Inner Swine can get as moldy as I feel like letting it get, and I can trumpet any ridiculously incremental change as an "update". It's my own personal paradise, and The Duchess generally regards it as the last place she wants to find herself, so she doesn't bug me much about it. This means that the web site is generally littered with the digital equivalents of beer cans, half-eaten sandwiches, and unwashed socks.

Still, no matter how lazy I am, or aspire to be, there does always have to be content up there, doesn't there? I'd like to think that no one would notice if I just started re-using, say, volume 6 of The Inner Swine verbatim-living the dream, as they say-but I imagine some smartass somewhere would notice and call me names, and defending myself against name-calling falls squarely under the category of More Shit I Gotta Do. So there must always be new material for your vampires. For a lazy man, new material is a curse.

Thus, the siren call of the Blog.

You see, what I've noticed is that many Blogs have no structure, focus, or, dare I say it, reason to exist. While the Blog can indeed be a useful and creative tool, in the wrong hands it's just a dumping ground for whatever happened to you yesterday, and your lame observational humor concerning the whole thing. In fact, the lame observational humor is pretty much optional. For some people, just iterating what they did yesterday in a stream-of-consciousness, unedited heaping pile of words is what their Blog is. Which makes me think it's what my Blog could be. Here, for example, is a raw brain dump of what happened to me yesterday:

July 23, 2004: A typical day: Woke up at 5AM to the sound of ominous feline growling and knew that our petit chaton, Pierre, was hunting me. If you've ever been hunted by a surprisingly cunning one-foot-long kitten which is convinced that it could possibly eat you if only it was given enough time (and perhaps some relish), then you know the feel of sudden terror-sweat that pops up all over your body when you hear that throaty growling. Our usual battle occurred; I escaped into the bathroom with just a few serious wounds from his talons. The kitten then prowled outside the bathroom door, crying piteously for me to rejoin the fun like an honorable combatant. I dressed my wounds, showered and changed into workclothes and exited down the fire escape.

As usual, my one thought was coffee, its immediate acquisition and consumption. Unfortunately, due to a series of unfortunate misunderstandings, I have been barred from every coffee-producing business in Hoboken, so I can't get any coffee until I take the train into Manhattan. This is actually one of my pet peeves, as the photo the businesses are using behind their counters is not very flattering, though it obviously serves its purpose in letting the minimum-wage register monkeys working there identify me and dial 911. So I troop to the PATH train along with a million other salary monkeys all of whom irritate me with their disapproving stares, pointing, and occasional physical assaults. Everything comes to a head on the train platform when I am barred from boarding the PATH train by a smirking conductor. It is at this moment that I realize I am once again not wearing any pants.

See? Raw brain dumps are not difficult. Why, I had to almost physically stop myself from just rambling on for thousands of words! I could update this web site six times a day if I made it into a Blog. It would pretty much be one uninterrupted block of text, as a matter of fact. I probably wouldn't have time for paragraph breaks. And wouldn't know where to put them, anyway.

So you can see why I'm tempted.

E-mail me your outrage here.

Jeff


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