|
My Blog or Yours?
It
used to be you would proposition someone in a dank,
smoke-filled bar. Using sly side glances and a wiggly walk,
you might even score a date for the
evening
with your wily ways.
Today,
married with children, we interact socially on a completely
different level. We are no longer as concerned about the shade
of our lipstick or the color of our hair. We are content to
eat popcorn and watch
our
favorite movie while sitting on the sidelines of our social
lives, grateful for a quiet moment to sit and breathe.
It
is no wonder, then, that parent weblogs, or blogs for short,
have become a popular avenue with which to interact with
anyone who is like-minded. Parents huddle together on the
information superhighway, comparing copious notes about diaper
rash and the
latest
visit to the suburban mall with their triplets in tow.
A
blog, or online diary, is a calling card of sorts. Want to
know about a person? Simply Google them (my 11th
edition of the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate
Dictionary
does not, in fact, recognize “google” as a verb, or any
other grammatical part of speech). Chances are there is a blog
with the person’s name attached to it. If you find
that a person does not indeed have a blog, you can bet your
sweet bippy
that
he or she is related to someone who does.
Blogs
are impersonal on some levels. You essentially hold a
monologue, hoping someone will stop by and listen, leave a
comment, and move on. It is reminiscent of the soap-box
talkers and rhetoriticians in Ralph Ellison’s “The
Invisible Man”. People would stream by, sometimes
listen in, and then wander off to get their shopping done
before night fell on the city streets.
I
do so much writing both online and off that I tend to forget
to whom I have said what. It is truly practical to keep a blog,
enter your life story and refer
everyone
who asks how you are to the url of the day.
It
is preposterous, really. Some people complain I only send them
news about my professional life. They are right! I almost want
to refer them to my blog as
a
way of telling them how my personal life is running along. But
that would be too rude. And so I fill them in on the latest
athletic or intellectual feat of my children, as a good
friend is likely to do.
Since
the blogosphere is a massive maze of people’s attitudes,
opinions and news, it might make sense to organize it by
astrological signs. We could do an alphabetical, astrological
listing of all 9 million plus blogs in the world. All Libras
are here, all Geminis here, and so on. It would create an
easier
opportunity
to connect with the ones we truly want to meet. That dank bar
of long ago would then be recalled for the best pick-up line
ever, “What’s
your
sign?” But for now, we’ll have to settle for “What’s
your url?”
|
