Friday, November 20, 2009

Blog or bog? Grime will tell

MENTION YOU HAVE A PERSONAL BLOG and you’ll find most peoples’ eyes will begin to water as their brains slowly begin to implode. Let this awkward moment roll for about ten seconds—the average length of time their soon-to-be concave brain takes to play montage reel of their experiences with personal blogs: boring daily recounts, spiritual awakenings, life epiphanies, failed attempts at poetry, and Amy Adams in a bad synthetic wig playing the aggravating Julie Powell in Julie & Julia.

Personal blogs, it would seem, get a pretty bad wrap. The once applauded gateway to casual self-publishing now holds the stigma of a seemingly mindless practice for the self-absorbed. This stigma makes it hard on some of us novice and soon-to-be bloggers. Hell, I chickened out a bazillion times before signing up with Blogspot. Why? Because admitting to yourself that you want to be a blogger is like admitting you secretly enjoy listening to 90s love songs on your iPod: you have to accept the fact that some people will never look at you the same way. Quite literally, as when their brains implode, their eyes may resemble a half-dead pair of sea urchins or a smouldering set of charcoal beads.

So what can I tell you that will make you want to read my blog? How can I ensure your brains and eyes remain in tact and functioning? How can I prove to you that this won’t be a piece of crap bog – I mean – blog?
I can’t promise you that you will enjoy everything I write, but I can pledge to you that I will not write: boring daily recounts, corny spiritual awakenings, lame life epiphanies or failed attempts at poetry*. However, I’m not going to rule out wearing a bad synthetic wig and imitating Julie Powell after a few Merlots...

And so I bring you Urban Victionary – the wonder of the world expressed through the wonder of words. Blog or bog? Only time or grime will tell.


*Conditions apply: failure may be subject to the reader; tongue-in-cheek poetry excluded