As Leap Day 2012 draws to a close, I submit, is one day every four years for a little feigned respect too much to ask for?
Obviously, Dr. Sussmann (Elliott Gould) in the 2011 movie Contagion did not feel so generous when he besmirched Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law), a blogger who was attempting to shed light on a shadowy government policy, with,
“A blog is not writing. It’s graffiti with punctuation.”
While I am not really sure what that even means, in the movie, Sussmann made that assertion even though Krumwiede supposedly had 12 million unique visitors, which is very similar to what my blogsite receives daily (minus a few zeros).
When I started down this road towards my imagined vision of what a “real writer” looks like, back in December of 2007 I reported (I report, therefore I am a journalist) that there were 100 million blogs.
After watching the aforementioned movie on Netflix the other day, I Googled the quote on blogging and found a link to a, yes, blog post, which claims that there are now 150 million blogs.
I would dare say that not that many of them are getting 12 million unique visitors.
If that fifty percent increase in the number of blogs is accurate, I find that very interesting given that, to my way of thinking, Twitter is the new texting and Facebook has become the new blogging.
(Does anyone agree with me on that assessment…anyone? Bueller…Bueller?)
For anyone fascinated in the fine art of time poorly spent, I mean, quality writing presented in the form of a blog post, I would encourage you to peruse the thoughts on that website regarding that movie quote.
While they question the basis of that quote in a comparison of blogging to graffiti, they make interesting points regarding the “shelf life” of a typical blog post, the justification of the time it takes to create a post (I started typing this one two days ago!), and discussed the value of blogging in the business realm.
I only wish my blog posts had a smidgen of the quality presented in some of the graffiti out there.
The other side of blogging is the dissing we take from all quarters.
Whether it is Gary Trudeau, via a Doonesbury strip,
"Isn’t blogging basically for angry, semi-employed losers who are too untalented or too lazy to get real jobs in journalism?"
To the wife-person, who—in I assume a lovingly while sarcastic manner—pronounces the term blogging as if clearing her throat of some vile substance she accidentally inhaled,
“What does my husband do with all his spare time?”
“Why he blogggggsss…cough, gag, sputter…”
So, given some of the odd and interesting traditions and history of Leap Year, why not add this once (almost) every four-years event to offer praise for those of us, who if not spending countless hours producing these momentary half-life written accounts, might be off doing even more wasteful activities, or just bugging the wife-person for one thing or, well, just that one thing.
Post Script: just seconds before I was going to press (WordPress, to be specific) with this post, on a whim, I decided to Google what I thought I had just invented, “Happy Blogger Day.”
As if to validate the old adage that every subject has already been written about, lo and behold, I found that someone else, actually, a whole bunch of somebody else’s, has already suggested that Leap Day be anointed “Happy Blogger’s Appreciation Day,” which in turn just proves the fact that much of what is blogged about is just reconstituted from previously written material, hence, not quite the “real writing” which I strive to achieve.
I guess with 150 million blogs out there, some amount of repetition is to be expected.
Thus, not only am I still not a real writer, apparently, I’m just yet another content regurgitater.
Somehow, I no longer feel like celebrating Happy Blogger Day 2012.
Maybe—in the spirit of those real writers—a dram (or three) of a good single malt will ease my misery.
Thank you for linking my post, Frank. I like your writing style and now that you’ve got my attention, I shall look around at your other posts. My husband sounds like your wife, except for when I sell some ads at my blog which enables me to cover some bills, then the derision about me “wasting” so much time on the blog stops for a bit.
Z,
Thanks for the visit and encouraging comments.
After I had finished this blog post late last night, and then discovered your HBAD recognition, I almost woke up the wife-person with a loud exclamation of “OMG!”–except, not as an acronym.