By Billy Lee Heywood
Blogging is for idiots. And it can kill you. So be careful. I write this more as a public service announcement than to any commitment at all to blogging, or to the people who read blogs (my beloved target audience, I suppose).
One has to wonder, how did we ever get by without blogging, and who in THE HELL thought up the name “BLOG”. Ok, I’m paid to be a tech geek and know that a blog is a “weblog” without the “we”. I’m embarrassed that I know that. Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe I looked it up on Wikipedia, another huge waste of cosmic energy. Aside: great quote about Wikipedia from The Office - Michael Scott (the boss) says he loves Wikipedia because “it’s a place on the internet where anyone, anywhere can add content … so you know it’s accurate.” But I digress.
I’m 42 years old. When I was a kid, my dad would leave for work at 6:30 in the morning, take a 30 minute bus ride from NJ to NYC, and come home from work everyday at 5:20. For 30 years. Never had to work late. Except one time, I think in 1979, when all the lights went out in NYC, in some huge power outage. He only got out early for my baseball games, lacrosse games, or my sister’s dance class. Not a lot. Every day, we’d eat dinner at 5:30. We’d clean up at 6:00. Then he’d go outside if the weather permitted, rake something, trim something, cut something, build something, or throw something away. And our property was only 50 X 100 feet. That’s not big; go ahead and measure it. And I don’t mean go to GoogleEarth and extrapolate a satellite image to figure out scale and so forth. I mean go and get a 12 inch wooden ruler with a steel edge, and flip it end over end fifty times to understand the frontage of our property. Double it, and that’s the depth. So that’s the size of the property. Not big at all. But plenty to keep him busy. In bad weather, he’d go to the basement, smoke a pipe (Captain Black tobacco), and work on a craft, or fix something that was broken, usually by me. Either inside or outside for the evening, he’d end up in the kitchen around 8:00 cutting up some fruit. He’d eat the fruit while reading the paper on the couch. He’d watch discovery channel, history channel, or a cop show. No sitcoms. Not down with the sitcoms. Up for a quick shower and to bed sometime before 11:00. Next day, repeat process. Weekends were for kids. This is how it was, and it wasn’t bad.
So what’s my point? Oh, right. My point. How could blogging have made this any better? It couldn’t. How could it have made it worse? Well, he was reading the NY Times, which has well-respected journalists who write coherent, well-researched, thought-provoking articles. High-end highly-educated editors review the work before it hits the presses. As for a blog? Not so much. I could be (and probably am) an idiot. There’s a good chance that if anyone takes the time to edit this, they can very likely be an even bigger idiot. Which supports my first argument: blogging is for idiots.
What’s my other point? What if dad didn’t spend all of that time outside in the fresh air, exercising his hands and body with physical labor? Clearing his head of the stresses of the day (mechanical engineers need to do that). He would not have been in nearly as good of physical shape as he was. He was strong enough to work full-time, take care of a house, raise two kids, and live long enough to see all four grandchildren. If he had spent his time blogging, one has to wonder how his health would have turned out. It may be a leap to say that blogging could actually kill you, but I can say with complete certainty that sitting around excessively blogging will make you obese, foul-smelling, and eventually diabetic (I have no actual references, but I’m sure it’s true).
Ok, so I’m manic. I’m writing my first blog and I use wikipedia and I occasionally use a cell phone, but I truly think they’re all stupid. I’m a paradox. An enigma. I’m inconsistent and ambiguous. But I remain steadfast that blogging is for idiots. iPods too. Don’t get me started on iPods.
