The First 100 Blogs

…And they said we’d never reach our 100th post.

Actually, they didn’t say anything, but that’s not going to stop me from triumphantly celebrating the big one-double-oh. For all of one more sentence.

Making 100 posts is like bragging about jerking off to the century mark; it’s an unimpressive feat. Nix the bragging, it’s just plain ol’ jerking off - when you consider it would have taken the same amount of days to reach that number, is highly self indulgent, and was done primarily sitting while in front of the computer. Yet here we are, making praise for my pants around my ankles and you spectating.

But after eight dozen or so thefts of your time in minute increments, I’ve learned a very valuable lesson: blogs are pretty goddamn useless.

Ten years ago I published a ‘zine, and as mein Quarterly graced toilet reservoirs across this great land, it was merely a low tech version of the same bravado and snarky perversion of wit and wisdom that now magically wanders in from the wasteland of the internet almost daily. It’s still a one man operation, still not profitable, and still the organ and outlet for the things I ignore which the voices in my head are yelling. Plus ce change, plus ce la meme chose!

I guess we’re fortunate to be living in a era where not only do we have such vast disposable income that we can own enough different mp3 players to keep the one for the car separate from the one we take to the gym, but that we have an equally abundant narcissism to think that our own thoughts and opinions are important enough that they be posted for any and all to see.

As far as I can tell, there are six different types of blogs out there – and I say six because I just picked an arbitrary number, so now let me see if I can come up with that many. They are diary, gossip, humor, opinion, pornographic, hybrid. There are jokers in their basements cracking wise and posting their stolen nudie pictures, housewives detailing their afternoons and liberals looking for more right wing conspiracies. If it’s not about what type of sandwich some starlet ate at a nightclub, well, then you’re looking at some schmuck like me doing a hybrid of all the others. And again, I ask why it matters.

Like any artist, one has to be critical of what they do, because creation without questioning robs the process of its final validation. Not that any art need be accepted, appreciated, or even exposed to others, but that moment of valuation is the difference between endless labor and completion. I would hardly consider crapping out posts anywhere near even the lowest art, but having wasted many a day pretending to be both musician and liter-auteur, it is that process that defines the drive to do such. In that respect it is very much like a piece of art, to be enjoyed and to have an impact viscerally or emotionally…even though most art is garbage and the value is subjective.

So with 100 down and countless more to go, I guess there’s not much else to say except thanks to anybody who’s felt like goofing off at work and read the site, and to myself for being amazingly generous to help you waste your employer’s money. I wish us both many, many more lost hours of productivity.