Good Blog

I found another excellent blog on the interwebs. It is called Stuff White People Like.

I Forgot About This Blog

One morning several months ago, I woke up sick, lay in bed all day, and began this blog. Since then I have forgotten about it. What seemed important to me in a feverish delirium has become unimportant.

This leads me to a crucial point of why blogs blow:

Life itself is mostly a feverish delirium. When something is happening to you, or you are experiencing something, or you are doing something, the immediacy of the experience in that moment trumps all that has ever been, or all that will come after. This passionate moment then drives the world's bloggers to their keyboards to tell everyone about it. Quick! Without haste! I have just eaten a delicious plum from the icebox! I must blog about it!

Later, when other supreme moments have in turn trumped the previous moments, what is left on record is a grubby trail of plum pits and electric bills, useful to no one but their owner, if that.

But with enough wind, even the flimsiest kite will sail, and so it is with enthusiasm and blogs.

Generally when people use their real names on blogs, they either:

1) don't care about the political consequences of revealing themselves, or,

2) wish to be famous, yet care very much about the political consequences of revealing themselves, so will tell you no useful information at all about what they have learned from their little sector of the Great Market for fear they will get in trouble.

Enter enthusiasm. For those driven to be recognized but not fired or scorned, enthusiasm is the flagship trait of successful bloggers. If we're all enthusiastic enough about nothing, it will appear as if we're enthusiastic about something, thus content becomes not a matter of quality writing or photos, but of amperage. How excited are you?

To answer my own question, I'm so excited thinking about the year 2095 when blogs will be eighty-sixed permanently that I accidentally bit off my own tongue and swallowed it.

Before I go off to the emergency room to retrieve my tongue from the depths of my colon, I would like to point out that I must add one exceptional blog to my list.

I am completely and utterly addicted to BoingBoing. Sometimes I even look at this blog before I check my email in the morning. Does that mean it's good? Yes. As good as drinking a bottle of wine while my dinner goes cold. Reading BoingBoing is to become inebriated by novelty. I follow most links, I enjoy most links, am amused by most everything, and thirty seconds after I leave my machine I don't remember any of it. Besides their vital reporting on the state of copyright law and digital rights management presently being battled out between the government, corporations, and consumers, the website is a compilation of delightful crap that doesn't make me think at all. Instead, I am amused by people putting bagels in CD racks, or making sofas out of bathtubs, or whatnot, and I love them for it.

Specially Formulated Blog

I haven't mentioned this yet, but this blog right here, though accusatory toward and dismissive of blogs, is specially formulated to be precisely as annoying as other blogs. In the vast spectrum of blogs that exist, it is 100 times better than most blogs, and 100 times worse than most other blogs. This blog is somewhere at a reasonable average. That is its special charm. It is the same charm as receiving a lobotomy. That is the precise definition of a blog.

Blogs Are the Cockroaches of the Internet

There are two reasons blogs are the cockroaches of the internet:

1) You can set up a blog faster than you can brush your teeth
2) Once your blog is set up, it will probably hang around polluting the internet long after its owner has lost interest in it.

In this way blogs choke the fluid flow of important data or pornography that is crucial to keeping our Great Market afloat.

I do not want this blog to stay around beyond its useful life, so I've devised a scheme to make sure it erases itself after I forget my password. The scheme is this: I will include some pornographic photos in these posts, so that when I forget my password and the year 2095 rolls around, the Republocrats will detect pornography in this sector and have every server in the vicinity obliterated with lasers.

Unfortunately, I don't have time to search for pornography right now, so I will merely use placeholders for the photos that I will find at a later date. I have plenty of time before the year 2095 to collect said photos.

I have thought of another acceptable use of the blog, which is this:

1) It is acceptable to incorporate a blog into a larger website, very specifically using the blog to chronicle events of a time-sensitive nature within the larger theme of the website.

That is an entirely redundant point, very similar to a point I made earlier that would logically incorporate the notion that themes are not only important for blogs, but for websites also. Another mistake sitting right there that I'm looking at but I won't change because this is only a blog so it's not worth editing, is that I started a numbered list, but didn't get beyond the number 1, which brings me to my following points:

2) The first item in a numbered list should be labeled 1).
3) The second item in a numbered list should be labeled 2).
4) The 4th point I must clarify is that the third item in a numbered list should be labeled 3).
5) Etc.

[Photo: A man has apparently dropped an ice cream cone inside a woman's vagina and desperately wants to get at it before it melts.]

Why Blogs Blow

The purpose of this blog is to unravel the many mysteries of why blogs blow. There are 27 blogs out there worth reading, but I only know of 6. Actually, I only know of 4, which brings me to the first reason that blogs blow:

1) Generally, people who write blogs either a) lie, or, b) reveal nothing substantial whatsoever, either about themselves or about anything in the world.

In order to discover other reasons, I'm just going to keep typing. Rather than thinking about anything and then writing an essay or, in this case, editing the points so that they are organized sequentially, I'll just type until I understand what I'm trying to say, which brings me to my second point:

2) Generally, bloggers just type until they themselves understand what they're trying to say, then push it out the door.

3) I've dropped the word "generally" because from now on I'll assume we all understand that there are 27 blogs worth reading, and none of these points pertain to them. That's not really a point, but it kind of is, because garbage like this is precisely why blogs blow. Which brings me to my 4th point:

4) Bloggers don't edit. I could have completely done away with points 2 and 3 above, replacing it with this one. Instead, I'm temporarily imagining that the creative process is over and done with once I've understood what I'm trying to say. It's easier for me to just dump it all on the reader rather than edit the text for clarity.

I'm tired of coming up with points now, so I'm going to address something else, which is this: If I hate blogs so much, why am I writing a blog? Which brings me to my 5th point:

5) Blogs are too easily accessible. It is easy for me to start a blog, and it requires virtually no resources, so a blog is obviously the best format for my project.

Now I'm really tired of coming up with points. Let's talk about me. (That's a point, actually, but I'll save it for later.) I am not a Luddite. I am not anti-technology. I love the internet. Wikipedia is very useful. Email, online banking, e-tickets, and all that are supremely useful. I just hate blogs. I hate blogs more than I hate email spam. Do you know why? Because people around the globe don't rave about how useful, great, and informative spam is. People don't interchange the word "spam" with "website" or "newscast" or "journalist's report" like they do with the word "blog". In fact, people hate spam. Everyone hates spam. People don't remark to each other how great it is that there's more spam in their inbox each day, and newspapers don't write about spam as if Christ has arisen and become a reporter. People do say this about blogs, however.

Here is why blogs are worse than spam:

At least when spam shows up, you just delete it. But let's say you're doing some research and you need to discover how many naked crackheads are eaten by alligators each year. You search for: "naked crackhead gator" and begin to peruse the results. Rather than finding the Institute for Gator/Crackhead Relations, which might actually be useful to you, you instead find blogs, thousands of them. You click on a link because it looks promising. It turns out to be a blog. But there's lots of text so you figure you might as well look through it to see if it tells you anything useful. Before you know it, you are knee deep in pictures of someone's trip to Sweden, where there are neither alligators or crackheads, and you have wasted several minutes of time and learned nothing whatsoever about anything in the world except that sometimes people take trips to Sweden, which you had already surmised. Potentially, this very blog will one day show up on a naked crackhead gator search and drive someone up the fucking wall. But I don't care, which brings me to my 6th point:

6) Bloggers don't care about the reader. Bloggers are selfish and only want to tell you about themselves and what they like or don't like.

In my case, I don't care whether I pollute search engines with false leads that disrupt the trail of naked alligator researchers on crack, because I want to push my agenda, which is to eliminate the blog as a legitimate form of communication by the year 2095. The year 2095 is the year that the Republocrats will take power and we will live under martial law. I know this, but I don't need to say how I know this because this is a blog. The Republocrat Party will be adamantly anti-blog, so I'm trying to establish my seat of power in the party before then.



Now I'll tell you some examples of good blogs, what makes a good blog, and when it is okay to make a blog. An example of a good blog is Robert Greene's PowerSeductionAndWar.com. Some of the blog's function is to sell his books, but otherwise each blog entry is a well-crafted, informal, mini-essay about power, seduction, or war.

I'm going to go off topic here and talk about Robert Greene's book "The 48 Laws of Power", which is one of the most important books of whatever decade it was written in. The book is literally within arms reach of me right now, but I'd have to move another book to get to it, so I won't even bother to determine when it was written and will instead just keep typing. Anyway, if you haven't read "The 48 Laws of Power", here's the kind of stuff it will teach you.

Pretend we meet each other, you and I. The first order of business is to crush each other like weevils. However, we can't just do that. If we do that we will not gain Power and we will be no better off than retarded dogs. What we must do is be indirect about it. For example, we might pretend we don't know each other, and then when I ask you the time and you look at your watch is when I will suddenly crush you like a weevil. And one of the laws of Power says that you might consider surrendering, so that you can regroup and crush me like a weevil at a later date. That's how one attains Power.

My point is that there are 3 types of people who should be tortured and hung:

1) Violent criminals
2) Business people who subvert the market, like the Enron guys
3) Bloggers
oh, and
4) Witches

My other point is that I am not too dogmatic and there ARE actually some good blogs out there. There are 27 of them. I will continue to do this blog until I have sufficient evidence to prove that there are indeed actually 27 blogs worth reading in the English language. The matter is entirely subjective. For example, I don't like to eat garden fertilizer. Perhaps you do. But we will never agree on what is good to eat. It is the same for blogs, but I'm convinced that eventually we will see eye to eye on what is a good blog, otherwise we must indirectly attempt to crush each other like weevils, for that is how one attains Power.

Here's what constitutes a good blog. The blog must be:
1) entertaining
2) informative

That's it! There are only two rules! It's simple!

Or is it? If it's so simple, then why are there no blogs that meet both these criteria? And actually, in a pinch, I'd even say that if the blog possesses only one of these traits in the most outstanding manner, then it would be a good blog. But it doesn't matter if you have 1 rule or 500 rules. The medium is the message, and the message is that blogs blow.

A blog that is informative in no way whatsoever, but makes me almost piss myself with laughter is Stereolabrat. It's entertaining and that's good enough.

The reason most blogs are neither entertaining nor informative is because there is no focus. There is no theme. A blog about Antarctica has photos and posts from Fiji, or a blog about Fiji has record reviews. The proper method of satisfying these various interests is to make one blog about Antarctica, another about Fiji, and yet another solely for reviews of products. Any other use of blogs should be punishable by death, as will happen for certain by the year 2095, if not before then.

So when is it okay to make a blog? It is okay to make a blog only in one of these circumstances:

1) When the blog is focused on one unifying theme or category
2) When the blog is good

Here you will notice that just because a blog actually focuses on one theme, that doesn't mean it will be good. And it can still be good without focusing on one theme, though that is unlikely, and very rare.

But some people will likely say: I want to make a blog so my friends and family can keep up with me and I can write on my blog instead of sending separate emails.

That is acceptable until the year 2095, when all human rights will cease. After then you must send letters carved in bone. And even until the year 2095, you may keep your blog, but that does not mean you should push it on anyone who is not your friend or a loved one. If you push it on anyone, you may be crushed like a weevil. For that is the way one attains Power.