many have noted the ugliness of the word.

blog

one fellow on a listserv replaces it with "chimichanga"... just because it's more fun to say.

and i can understand that because blog (short for weblog)) is hard to say... doesn't sit well among teeth and tongue... more like something you want to get rid of at the back of your throat. blahg... blawg... blug... and that's funny because we have no trouble with dog or hog or frog... do we?

i have trouble with bog (bawg). and i have trouble with blog (blawg). i pronounce them like that, but i immediately doubt myself. i wonder, is this how the finer folks say it?

(it always comes back to class, don't it? i remember dad's trouble with "drama" (rhymes with "ram a") - never "drahma" - must have sounded affected and effete to him... what the immortal stanley kowalski would call "hoity-toity")

so. blog. a noun and a verb... and, as some might have it, a condition of secular ecstacy... the next revolution... though it's been around for awhile.

i started to blog my blog last saturday. on a whim... not knowing that the big tech news of the week would be the announced purchase of blogger by the friendly folks at google (itself no neophyte to neology). this helped me to feel all warm and comfy with my decision... despite the archive problem...

the archive problem. they make it sound so simple - no problem at all. fill in these forms... it's a sinch... but it ain't. i'll skip the details, but when you write all of this timeless, glorious stuff, you want to save it. somewhere. so i'll be doing it by hand.

timeless? glorious? why blog at all? ain't this journal good enough?

good enough for some things... i guess... like this.

but not so good for cutting loose.

when/if you check out my blog, you won't get it. you'll say to yourself (though you dare not say it to me), "I don't get it." You'll want to say, "tom, i don't get it. please explain."

but you won't say it - certainly not to my face.... because my blog is a place i don't have to explain... and won't. so there. (sticks out his tongue in a rude and impetuous manner)

i have received one positive anonymous comment (don't mind comments - do mind questions), that helped me to decide to archive the stuff by hand... for what it's worth.

finish your phrase

the title comes from waiting for godot. it doesn't mean anything except that my eyes fell there when i opened the book. yes, i've come to handle that play the way some treat the i ching or the bible.... what's the fancy word for that? there is one...

in other news:

this week back from street scenes was kind of... what? confused... i'm out of sync... maybe we all are... finishing huck... starting beloved.... my books aren't all back yet... on the positive side, i did get a chance to dust (and that lifted my spirits some) (ah, cleaning therapy... where does that come from?)

i've had some friendly electronic back and forth with several old voices from texas... with a lovely niece who likes my site and reads my poetry... with some student who seems to want me to comment on the value of my website but won't say whether it's the value for me or the value for some user of the site (kid, get specific)... but i haven't talked to mom in the longest time... soon to be fixed...

other web things to check out:

mike's new music place (i'll pay a buck for one of his tunes any day... soon as i figger out the process)

flash mind reader (a pretty cool trick that's easy to figger out if yr a math wiz, which i ain't... i want magic... seems to work only on explorer, not netscape)

Our Web self - our presence on the Web - is only relational. It is all shell and no chocolate because we have no presence on the Web except insofar as we present ourselves this way or that way. Our Web self expresses a truth about us that we often deny in the real world: we are social and many-selved first.

David Weinberger

 

talk to me

brtom.org