Real Live Preacher, courtesy of Population: One, is one hell of a blog.
I periodically feel vaguely guilty that my journal is just a journal, and not political or sociological or any other sort of -al. It’s sort of curious to feel that way, as I never had any intention of it *being* an -al blog. Most of the purpose of starting the online journal was because people kept saying to me, “What’ve you been doing?” and I had no idea what the answer to that question was. “Uhhh… not much, really. Just kind of living.” I’ve been keeping a paper journal since I was fourteen (incidentally: if you do this, when you are 19 or so, and you sit down and have a discussion with yourself about whether you want to keep the journals? Keep them. I knew I’d regret it if I threw them away but I threw them away anyway. Bad move. I don’t regret it as much as I might’ve if I hadn’t thought about it and consciously said, “Yeah, I’m going to regret this,” but I regret it and advise you not to do it. Anyway.), but the paper journal is for me. The online journal is for people to keep up with my life.
Of course, when I started this thing — as I was just saying to Garrett — blogging wasn’t hip. It’s been very interesting to watch the online community move from journals to blogs, and the whole thing makes me wonder where the hell we’d be if the Net hadn’t sprung up. We weren’t prepared, generally speaking, for the Net. Marith says that H.G. Wells predicted computers, and I know Larry Niven predicted flash crowds, but I don’t think anybody saw the potential of blogs bringing down Trent Lott. Now, I don’t know that blogging is 100% responsible for that, but it seems like it’s at least partially responsible.
There are a hell of a lot of good political blogs out there. There are a lot of bad ones, too. I just think it’s a little weird that I feel like my journal ought to be one of them. That’s not where it started out, and I perhaps feel like I should have evolved a bit. OTOH, politics these days just piss me off pretty much across the board, and there’s only so much point in working myself into a froth. Usually I can get worked into a froth by other people’s blogs, and evidently that will have to do.