Wednesday, February 13, 2008

"blog" ... A.K.A. ... nothing

Ok, first off I have to reiterate my love for Dubya, and his confidently discombobulated approach to public speaking communication in general. He just makes it too easy to hate him by giving out, hand over fist, example after example of being wholly unaware of anything that is actually going on in that America place.

From: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/28/bush/index.html

When asked what advice he would give to the average person facing the prospect of gas prices hitting $4 per gallon, Bush stopped the reporter and said, "What did you just say? You're predicting $4 a gallon gas?"

"That's interesting. I hadn't heard that," he said at the Thursday news conference.

Wow. You'd think he'd have more squinty eyes when photographed in public, due to the amount of time his rear must fully envelope his head, in private. I only get 1¾ channels on my TV, one newspaper per week, and glance at the front page of CNN everyday just to kill time... and gas/food prices are all that I have been hearing about. ...And talking about, as I am quite miserly with the little hard-earned moolah the school pays.


Anyway, time to start my main (and yeeaaars long-standing) rant.

"Blogs."

What IS this word? Near as I can figure, some established editorialist who can't let go of his youth must have spent too much time hanging around with the caliber of grade-school idiots who turn in term papers sprinkled with "ur", "h8r", "omg!" , and other witticisms. He thought he would crown his midlife crisis by coining a term that was neither necessary, nor a logical abbreviation.

"Web log."

Was there really anything wrong with "wog"? Seems like that is the American Way of abbreviating those two words. I know "spork" , for example, sounds better and makes more sense than "pork". But that is neither here nor there! The point is that there is no reason to have a term of this type at all!

Web = having to do with web pages
Log = record of some sequential information

Seems to me that you're just describing a web page that is kept updated. And in fact, that is exactly what it is! (If you're not keeping a page updated, then you no longer have interest in the project, or your info is out-of-date and no longer of interest as anything other than historical record.)

If you want to be a stickler about it, and take the meaning of "log" to be "journal", then what you have, dear friend, is a JOURNAL. It's not something new and special because it's on the computer!! Criminy, Doogie Howser was keeping a journal on his computer long before "internet" became a household word. "News" doesn't become "telenews" because it's on TV. It doesn't become "internews" (or, cringe, "ternews") because it's on the internet. It's just NEWS. That's ALL it is.

Or maybe we should call CNN a blog and get it all over with? How is CNN different? It updates regularly with the current news, and also keeps available all of its previous news updates just in case you are wondering what Castro had been up to before he quit. Let's call it "Nnlog".

Fortunately, I am not the only one vexed by this sudden introduction of useless doublespeak. When I googled "the term blog", I found a great quote by another ranter...

From: http://www.edbatista.com/2005/05/blogs_are_obsol.html

Can we all agree that the term "blog" is now meaningless and should be retired? We have a perfectly good word we can use in its place: website. Just what does "blog" signify anymore that's different from most well-managed websites? Frequently updated content? Nope.

Ahh, yes, yes.

I guess we could start calling ALL web pages "blogs" and just get rid of the term "web page", so we at least remove some redundancy. Note the world's first web page, http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html which, evidentially, was a BLOG dedicated to the development of this new project "the web".

Just because no one these days takes 5 minutes to ask/research how to upload their own MS Word-created drivel onto an FTP server, it doesn't mean that getting their drivel onto a web page via an automated website makes it something other than drivel. Rosa rosa rosa est est.

So, in conclusion: if you un-ironically use the term "blog" and dignify its existence by perpetuating its usage, I imagine you will soon begin to (if you don't already) sprinkle your writing with all sorts of new 1-letter words that are not "I". I h8 u 2, u la z bastards.


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