Blog

Too many blogs spoil the broth?
Noun: blog (plural: blogs)
1. Personal or corporate website in which the author writes, as their reflexion on a given subject evolves, their opinions, impressions, etc., so as to make them public and receive reactions and comments about them.

So there it is, even though my spell check objects vociferously by placing a wiggly red-line under the apparent abomination, it is confirmed: the word ‘blog’ is now officially a part of the English language. The abbreviated form of ‘weblog’ has given its name to this website and in a self-reflexive way I intend to hold up a mirror to all you bloggers out there and show you the black-heads under the make-up, the circuits behind the circuit-board, the blog-consciousness that lies beneath.

One might say that our desire to comment on a rapidly changing televisualnetscaped world has found its vent in the blogosphere. One might also say that we few, we happy few, we band of bloggers, have accumulated our musings here like the scum on a sewage worker’s bath tub after a particularly dirty day down the drains. Yes, maybe that is all we have done. Yes, maybe we are the pigs, maybe we are the swine. We are all typing away at our little masterpieces in our cosy swivel chairs feeling smug about our ability to join our words together into nice neat witty rows of sense, our pearled blogs of wisdom shining out at fellow bloggers, reinforcing our sense of self, bolstering our flagging egos, yes! With the mere insertion of a couple of long words we can conceal our dilletantism and with that too can call ourselves ‘journalists,’ ‘social commentators,’ or ‘intelligentsia.’

One might well say a lot of the things given the time, the freedom and the creativity, one might even end a sentence with the word ‘yes’ if one were so inclined but all of the above things were blogged by a sceptical blogger blogging away alone in the privacy of his own fourteenth century chateau replete with wine cellar, avocado orchard, Yorkshire terrier, snake pit, delivery room (including operating table and stirrups) and fitted kitchen amongst fine red-soiled fields about 30km west (as the crow flies) of Orange in the South of France overlooking a wilting patch of sunflowers at the bottom of which sits a hunchbacked old man sharpening his scythe, a bestubbled, half-blind fellow who lost both his children in a fire and who is rumoured to have the ability to foresee the future, his name muttered in hushed tones by the locals in the village café alongside an ominous portent about the ‘ides of March’ or whether the rains will come early next spring.

I hope I have made my point. The point, dear reader, is that these blogs are anonymous and so you can blog along without shame, without identity: enjoy the freedom of (relative) anonymity but remember, nobody really cares about you, the blogger, (aside from a select few of dedicated friends and ‘mitbloggers’ – by the way the German word for ‘blog’ is, get this, ‘blog’) they rather care about the content of your blog so do not aim to disappoint. As for myself, I can only apologise for wasting your time like this, blogging away like there’s no tomorrow but now you know: blog is officially a word, both a noun and verb, just please somebody, for the love of Blog tell me, what is the third form of the verb ‘to blog’? I have blogged? What about passive? ‘A blog is written’? or ‘a blog is blogged’? What about ‘a blog is blogged by a blogger?’ My brain hurts: probably something to do with looking at my low-definition computer screen, oh roll on the plasma revolution (so long as no-one gets hurt and the technology is free for all)!

I am gradually running out of steam. One might even say I am ‘blogged out’ if one were so inclined. So I’ll leave you with a few more Shakespeare quotes (updated for the new twenty-first century blogging bard):

Once more into the blog dear friends!

My blog, my blog, my kingdom for a blog!

Friends, bloggers, countrymen, lend me your internet cable

To blog or not to blog, that is the question, whether tis nobler on the net to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous power surges or to take up arms against a sea of bloggers and in opposing, blog them.

Et tu Bloge?