18 May 2006

Great Blogging Advice

by Frank Turk

Listen: this is still one of the great blog entries on any blog at any time under any circumstances. And yes, I wrote it -- typos and all -- but it still applies to all kinds of people. It applies to people who are nominated for high office and somehow are bloggers. It applies to the lowly college kid who is bored today because his XBOX is in the shop. It applies to the guy who thinks he's an "artist" but his greatest work of art is his hair.

It's a great post. More people should print it out and read it before they blog each day. If you have never read it, let me tell you: it shows in your blogging. And you don't want it to show in your blogging. Why? Because it says things about you like, "I am so self-absorbed that I have no idea how other people can't see me the way I see me."

Get a grip! It's blogging, not the last address of western civilization to posterity! And you're not Cicero for pete's sake -- you're not even Melito of Sardis. You're a person with a blog, and your red union suit with one missing button is showing.

And if you aren't sure if I mean you personally, I mean you, personally. Especially if you're reading this blog and you ought to know better. And believe it or not, the "usual suspects" did not set me off today.

That's all I'm going to say about that. Carry on.






35 comments:

Brad Williams said...

Look, I blog and I'm just fine. Now, if you don't believe that, you can just go and read my blog. Just because I think I'm good doesn't mean I'm not. Besides, I think that the half dozen people who've stopped at my place over the last 8 months will agree with me. (Thanks mom.)

marc said...

I have nothing to say.

Neil said...

Two pyro posts in a row... Frank, you must really have something you want to say.

Kim said...

Frank, you sound like you need some chocolage.

Kim said...

Er, that would be chocolate....

Anonymous said...

Frank all I have is some fruit of the looms and some ratty BVDs where can I buy a red union suit like you have?

IB Dubbya said...

[Snarky Babdisteses...Pheh!]

¡sbgtfa!

Gordon said...

Man, that takes so much pressure off of me. Somehow I was convinced that my blog was the only thing preventing the demise of Western civilization.

Maybe now I can concentrate on more trivial matters, like how to keep a tsunami from hitting the Pacific northwest. I mean, after all, we wouldn't want Pat Robertson to get the big head about being right now, would we?

Anonymous said...

Ouch, you know Jeremy over at our Horde used the "This where I'm at right now" title about two months ago. I don't know if he was serious or not...

Neil said...

I've used it twice. Got a third one in the cooker.

DaCatster said...

Blog blog blog,

Kay said...

This morning, I woke up and really felt the need for some serious chocolage. I went to the shops and wondered exactly what else Mr Turk would expect in his comment thread for this?....

Kim said...

Libbie:

I'm glad someone else out there likes chocolage. Thought I was the only one.

Chuck said...

Where were you when you typed this?

DJP said...

I just figured it was one of those French... Canadian... things.

Jeremy Weaver said...

This is where I am right now. I'm heading over to the Moor now.

FX Turk said...

If only more threads had meta that yielded things are useful to the future of Western Civ as "chocolage", the blogosphere would be much more worth the time.

Carla Rolfe said...

I'm just going to pretend that the site stats didn't really show people coming to my blog, directly from Frank's article on this at his blog. Ahem...

And then I'm going to melt and eat the chocolage I bought yesterday to make chocolage covered banana chips.

It'll be great, and the kitchen, is where I'll be at. You're all invited, but bring your own spoon.

:o)

Wayne said...

I would like to propose Tuesday, May 23, 2006 as "This Is Where I Am At Right Now" Day. Everybody's blog title that day will be "This Is Where I'm at Right Now" - regardless of what you post on.

Colin Maxwell said...

Where does saying the same thing over again come in your view? I mean, the same thing over again - in your view, where do they come?

Matt Gumm said...

Carla: I'd rather have your pancakes with some real Canadian maple syrup. Mmm.
I can eat chocolage anytime.

Kim said...

Laugh if you will at "chocolage," folks, but with my French ancestry (it is true; my ancestors came from Belgim, via Scotland) I will be well-suited to create the tastiest delicacy imaginable, with le nom: chocolage.

Recipe will follow. It may contain potato chips.

Kim said...

Frank:

Western Civilization will not be preserved with chocolage; poutine, that's the ticket.

Carla Rolfe said...

I like Wayne's idea. :o)

Matty, you and your lovely wife and all 52 of your kids would be welcome for pancakes any time.

Kim knows me too well! Anything with chocolate (no matter how you spell it) and potato chips, count me IN!

candy said...

Kim...poutine should be outlawed!

Matt Gumm said...

Oh, speaking of that, I've decided that remembering names is too hard, so I've just started calling them by the number of their birth.

For instance, right now 4 is throwing a fit on the floor, so I have to go.

Solameanie said...

Frank, who do you think we are? Alfred E. Newman wannabes? :)

I personally believe blogdom has been set up by a dark cabal within the government to round us all up at a future date. Big Brother, Big Sister, Big Uncle and Big Aunt are all watching us, drooling much like your metallic leviathan depicted in your post.

Tongue-in-cheek humor aside, I didn't know that metallic creatures could drool. Do they need Altoids on a regular basis?

HeavyDluxe said...

Keith G:

Uh... Nice blog.

Gryphonette said...

Blogs can be a wonderful resource, however, depending upon what's going on in someone's life.

A friend recentle blogged through the last days of her husband's life, as he died of cancer. We knew what to pray for, could give support that was available to her when she had time to read it, and reread it when necessary.

After I'd begun blogging several years ago my husband and I adopted a teenage boy from Russia, so that provided a lot of blog material. Later on I found out other people who were going through the process or were considering it, had been following along the ups and downs of Dmitry's adoption.

A couple of our sons have joined the Navy and I've blogged through that, which also led to inquiries from others.

Can a blog be a self-indulgent waste of time? Well, sure. Of course.

But are they necessarily so? Not a bit.

One of the best parts of blogging is that I've never been able to keep a holographic journal, but I can and do blog. Archiving it occasionally and either printing it out or burning it on a CD means in the future I'll be able to go back and easily relive important events.

Considering my abysmal memory, this is not an insignificant benefit. ;^)

Anne

Nephos said...

Seinfeld would be so proud of you all.

Dave said...

Frank, this hurt my feelings DEEPLY. I'm gonna run home and BLOG about how this post makes me FEEL!!!!!11!!!1!

heh.

but really? guilty as charged.

something I'm trying to teach myself--if your title is "This is Where I Am Right Now," there had better be some vacation pictures involved. otherwise, there's no excuse for it.

Scott Roche said...

This makes me want to write a blog entry called, "Where do you think I am right now?".

Chris Ross said...

cEntuRiOn (can't remember which letters you capitalize -- sorry), you've hit the proverbial nail on its huge unsightly bulbous head.

Someone should start a blog promoting the idea that 99.9997% of Christians have better things to do than read blogs and argue with one another about whether Jesus (or next to him, John Calvin) would approve of having drama in Sunday morning services.

Of course then there would need to be another blog to point out the hypocrisy inherent in that other blog's existence. This second blog could also advertise stuff like choir robes and home-made soap, to make $ on the side.

It's all about THE LAW OF DIMINISHING RETURNS. With every word written in the blogosphere, and with every new blogger that tries his/her hand at it, everything you or I post becomes less important and less likely to be read or cared about by anyone.

When blogs are good they educate or edify, either the blogger or his/her readers (as in the case with Anne 'The Clinging Vine" above.) At their worst they feed our deluded sense of self-importance by allowing us to view our own pontifications 'made all pretty-like' in attractive textual arrangements (talk about deluded self-importance: look at this longish comment by yours truly).

FX Turk said...

h.c. ross:

God bless you for you opinion. It is nothing at all about my point.

This post, this post, and this post are the kinds of things I'm talking about. When a blog becomes a confessional, it smell like someone's fogotten laudry pile.

Chris Ross said...

centuri0n,

You're right, I wasn't really staying on task ... with your post. I simply held my nose and leapt into the stream-of-consciousness sequence of comments that had been left hitherto. That was just WHERE I WAS at the moment. How dare you question my right to emote! You're such a modern sometimes. Emerge a little, will ya?

:-}

PS Would you like to buy a choir robe?