It Begins

So it seems I’ve started a blog.

It took some time to come to this decision, but as I peered across the internet landscape whilst in my PJs lo that Saturday night (‘bout 2am, so it may have been Sunday), I realized that this Blog thing, this phenomenon, this “craze”, was growing.

It’s been hailed as the newest form of communication. A way by which everyday people could gain notoriety and stake their personal claim on the internet. Any individual’s opinions could be heard worldwide, by people and in places that would be otherwise unreachable. It was a revolution!

I took an instant dislike to it, so here I am.

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Now, don’t get me wrong – I fully appreciate the fact that there are some, I hesitate to say, “good” ones out there. I have, in fact, seen at least one. And in some ways, I can see the good in a Blog.

As a form of short range mass communication, it’s pretty much ideal, and if used in the proper way, can be a useful tool to those of us who may be separated from friends and family. It’s essentially a constantly updated newsletter, keeping us all up to date on the day-to-day, mundane things that keep strong the proverbial “ties that bind”. Great idea. I’m all for it. And it eliminates the need for all of the periodic mass e-mails? Yay, Blogs!

But let’s face it – most of the blogs out there are filled to the brim with derived, self-serving tripe written by some obnoxious blowhard who is soooo filled with his own self-righteousness that he feels obliged to deign the globe the honor of his opinion.

And if it’s not him, it’s the crazies that think someone out there wants to know exactly what they did, minute-by-minute, on their lunch break: “I had a ham sandwich on white bread today. I had to have white bread ‘cause the store was out of wheat. Who runs out of wheat bread!? *sigh* I put pickles in the sandwich even though I normally don’t like them with ham because….”

And then there’s MySpace, home of the teeny-bopper wannabes looking to hook up with the other teeny-bopper wannabes who puts up any one of 4 pictures on their page-
A) a sexy picture of themselves,
B) a stupid picture of themselves
C) a picture of someone else completely
D) a picture of their eye
Oh and LoOk HoW cOoL I Am CaUsE i CaN aLtErNaTe CaPs AnD lOwEr CaSe.

All of this in a vain attempt to proclaim our individualism. I thought the Internet was about being borderless. I thought it was about the global community and bringing people together. And now we all want to stake our own claim and mark off a part of the internet and make it “My Space?” I mean, when did the internet turn into Oklahoma people? And does that make me one of the sad Indians that stood off to the side at the end of Far and Away?

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Drew, I hate to say it, but I think you are the obnoxious blowhard.”

Under most circumstances, I might agree, but this is not one of them, and that brings me back to the point of all this. See, I’m not the blowhard, ‘cause if I was, I couldn’t concede the point that I’m ignorant. I only know the little that I know about the form, and so I can’t very well make an informed decision. Which, again, is what brings me here.

This Blog is my Freefall. It’s my “Meditations on First Philosophy” and “The Grapes of Wrath.” It’s strawberries. It’s “The Game.” It’s “Catcher in the Rye” and “King Lear.” It’s “The Day After Tomorrow” and “Mission to Mars.”

I’ve taken the time to experience all of those things. To get up close and see what they were really about. And in that time, I’ve come to realize – they all pretty much suck as much as I thought they would. And now, I can not only really dislike them, but I can decry them to my heart’s content with the full knowledge that I’m not speaking from ignorance.

And so my friends – Let the Blogging begin.