My blog
A series of posts on a website that I frequent on a regular basis got me thinking about my blog. See, there was a thread posted, where the contributor mused on why most bloggers were straight, white men. (Go visit Misbehaving.net for the skinny — I don’t play the TrackBack popularity game). But in her post, she excluded the ‘journal’ forms of blogs and only counted what I call the serious blogs.
You may have stumbled across the serious blogs. They feature links to stories about tech, or the war in Iraq, or why GWB is an idiot. They offer their serious and biased commentary on the stories. Lather, rinse, repeat. Most of them use the same links as each other. The authors want to be seen as smart and well-heeled.
The thread continued, with most of the responses posing the question, “Why exclude journalers?” And with the exception of the sentiment that “Journaling is about getting support and blogging is about conversing about ideas” (a ghastly assumption) no concrete reasons were given.
All of a sudden, it was posted today that there’s going to be a discussion about categorizing blogs at eTech! (a conference coming up in Feb in CA where it costs over $1000 to fully participate) Well, hey! There’s nice diversified sample of people — not. The ones who attend those conferences make me (with my pc, laptop, pda, and lust for stylesheets) look like Luddites. In any case, I’m guessing that most of those attendees will be of the ‘serious blog’ mindset.
All of this rambling brings me to the subject of my own blog. I don’t offer up many news links — if you think Bush is an idiot, I’m not ever going to change your mind, no matter how many links I post. I try to balance my posts between work and home; between rational thinking and my insane tangents. I’m not even trying to look intelligent. I’m just being me. Typing in my own voice. Becoming accustomed to speaking my mind, even if it is on a personal website. The more I speak in my own voice, about things I’m familiar with, the more confident I become.
And I guess that’s why I feel so passionately about the dismissal of ‘journal’ blogs as unimportant. I’ve learned more about the lifestyles of others from the journal-type blogs than I could ever learn from a serious blog. You can post dozens of links about gay marriage, and I may read one or two. But by visiting a blog written by someone with a ‘domestic partner,’ I feel closer to the issue at hand.
Tools like Blogger and LiveJournal allow people to publish their own thoughts without knowing much about websites, or HTML. Even if you find it difficult to string two words together without a dictionary, a grammarian, and a roll of duct tape by your side, by blogging on a daily basis, you will improve. And you will discover your own voice.
That is a much more respectable accomplishment, in my opinion, than being able to cut and paste a link to a news story.
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With that out of the way, I can safely say that at the end of “My Big, Fat, Obnoxious Fiance,” I hope Steve tells Randi that she’s a self-centered shallow little b!tch who deserves neither money nor a loving partner until she grows up a bit. Thor had it on TV tonight — and I found Steve funny. Where do they find these prima donna women who bawl about situations that they create for themselves? Now I remember why I don’t like watching TV. 🙂
