Friday, October 27, 2006

Metablogging

In recent discussions with various and sundry on the subject of blogging vs. writing, I have found myself stressing over and over that the wonderful thing about blogging is that blog entries can writhe. By this I mean that once you commit something to print in traditional publishing, there is no going back (not counting revised editions). With web log entries, however, one can rewrite a previous post as many times as one wants. I love this.

For example, I recently posted a blog entry about Scotland taking over the U.S. As I was talking to my avuncular friend Don the other day, however, I came up with a line I wanted to add to the entry:

  • Men suffer frequent embarrassment and bladder discomfort over the same symbol on both male and female restroom doors

So Bob's your uncle, I went back and added it to the entry. Let it writhe, I say.

I also recently added a comment to an earlier entry about spanking the monkey. In the original post I was speculating about needing to masturbate 12 times a day every day (read it if you want to know why). I wanted to add that if I ever dated anyone again, I would have to marry them right away so we wouldn't have to have sex.

So the set of Hulles blog entries can mutate over time. I like that. Some entries will become stronger and breed, and some will become weaker and die. Natural selection in the blogosphere.

However, one disadvantage of writhing blog entries is that you can never be sure that you've read the latest and greatest version of my web log. The only two solutions I can see to this problem are:

  1. You'll have to reread all of my previous blog entries every day just to be able to keep up with the congnoscenti (really glad I got to use that word), or

  2. Someone will have to buy all my blog entries and pay me lots of money and publish them in the traditional immutable paper fashion.

I pick (2), but just because it will save you a lot of valuable time every day. See, I'm just looking out for your best interests, my faithful reader....

- Hulles



4 comments:

Dulcinea said...

I'm all for option 2 as well. But you could always add a brief "update alert" post.

anne frasier said...

but if you blog something you later regret it will forever be there in googleland no matter how quickly you hit delete. mention someone by name and the person will find it because people do like to google themselves.

Claire said...

Viva option 2, say I!

Cxx

Hulles said...

Anne, I'm still fascinated by your comment about epithets living forever in googleland. I suspect this is just because the google spiders aren't crawling every site every day. Plus, I love to google myself since I seem to be between dates and I have needs.... Oh, you meant....