Blogs About Nothing

This week in blogs:

1) Kelly didn't get a tan
2) Mark didn't go skiing
3) Mitchell didn't post anything having to do with a wedding.

So I had to take things into my own hands, and create a new fake blog to blog about.

How did I get my hardworking graduate school friends to stop doing Public Financial Management and pose for the pictures, you ask? Well the long and short of it is, if Mama Caits ain't happy, no one's happy.

A special thanks to Katie Whitehouse, for being generally adorable, and today's Good Example, in Real Life as well as in the Blogosphere.

The Bad Example position went naturally to my infamous yardmate Hot Mary. Convincing her to pose as a bad girl went a little something like this on a Sunday afternoon at 5 pm, as she came back from studying in a half shirt and the shortest jorts ever:

Me: Hey, I need your help posing as the Bad Example for my fake blog
Mary: Ok but make it fast, I'm on my way to the bar
Me: Well good news is you don't have to change clothes

So, finally, readership. The moment you've been waiting for.

Date Farmer Dan Dot Com!

Relax

I have fielded a lot of gchats, texts, and voice-conversations this weekend regarding my blog, the overwhelming consensus of which was “Why has it been 1-36 hours (ranging based on when you each began to panic) since you last posted?!?!?!?!?!?”

The answer, Blogosphere, is that on the weekends, I interact with my Human Friends to research things about which to Blog. This is an inconvenient part of the week in which I must disconnect my Avatar-USB-mind-strings from my laptop and go out unto the world.

This includes such absurdities as going to concerts instead of viewing Daytrotter, drinking double Jamesons on the rocks instead of just being the usual drunk-on-my-own-wit, and using my iPhone 7 to send and receive texts with Trent, which I'll count as quality interaction since they go a little like this:

Trent: I'm shocked Martin Lawrence was available for a Big Momma's House Sequel
Caitlin: Stop vying for a position as my next fake blog
Trent: I don't need a fake blog for me to think people want my pop culture wit

So relax, Audience. I'll return tomorrow to submit, for your consideration, the first in a series of Failed Blogs, or Blogs That Shouldn't Be. In the meantime, a shout-out to Mark Catherall, whose vigilance in translating Robot to English for my $150,000 Liberal Arts brain has led to many of newfangled features of MetaBlogalog. His Blog still sucks, so I can't recognize him as Daily Blog of the Day, but I can create a new category: Daily Blogger of the Day.

Author's Purpose

Let me clear a few things up here. Similar to the scene in Dark Knight in which Christian Bale laments the copycat Batmans ("This is not what I meant when I said I wanted to inspire people"), I feel as though you all might have taken my Blog-a-log a wee bit incorrectly. ("I'm not wearing hockey pads!")

My blog is employing a literary device known as satire, in which I use humor to draw attention to a problem or make a larger statement. So, if this were an 11th grade literature quiz - do you think that statement is

A) start blogging

B) stop blogging

Based on the fact that Tumblr's server was incapacitated this morning, I fear too many of you answered A.

So let me offer a few examples of what I mean.

1) Judith: I have in no way obligated you to create ThatsNotANAme@blogspot.com, despite the fact that as you pointed out last night there are so many families employing objects, verbs, and unknown as names for their children. It is an endemic problem, but it need not be a blog.

2) Siiri: If you were teetering on the fence about whether to start, or stop blogging - the answer should have been B, stop blogging.

3) Wes(z): After listening to my explanation of the literary device "satire" last night, I did not intend for you to start a meta-literary-oppositional blog to my blog (Don'tReadCaitlin'sBlog@blogspot.com) that employs primarily onomatopoeia.

4) Mark: Going and doing attention-seeking things like busting your (other) knee, as well as posting hilarious things I say is NOT the way to earn Daily Blog of the Day. Although if any of this has been worth it, it was to hear Ellen shout "no one reads our blog" at you last night on video chat as you attempted to compete with my hits counter.

5) On that note - Ladies of LBJ, who account for 98% of my astronomical hits: It's a joke, girls. You can stop checking back to see if DateFarmerDan.com has gone live.

6) Lastly to Mike Franco, who got awfully salty over getting ripped on my blog about blogs when he doesn't even like blogging and apparently was sick the day they taught Satire at Stanford: I'm sorry. As an apology, I hereby move for a new nickname: IM. It can stand for either your intramural prowess, or Mike Franco, Idea Man. As long as you're willing to compete with a seventeen year old Mitchell London, Innovator.

Like a regulatory commission - the more you blog, the more I'll be forced to blog.

("What would you have me do, Alfred? Endure, Master Wayne. Endure.")

My Meta Blog-A-Log

Ah, the Internets. You can't swing a cat around here without hitting six of your friend's blogs. And given that most of your friends just sit in a chair doing Excel for Someone all day, 75% of these blogs Never Should Have Been. Unless you're This Guy and you've had YET ANOTHER encounter with a terrifying spider, no one wants to read your blog.

Not to mention that blogs are the 21st century technological realization of the old conversational adage that people “are never really listening to you, they're just waiting for their turn to speak” (if you count Fight Club quotations as adages). I can hear the cheers of Kelly Sharp now, for having finally circumvented that annoying part of a conversation in which someone else gets to talk.

A bit hostile, you might say? Maybe. I could have kept my views to myself, but you all just wouldn't Leave Me Out of It. Just yesterday alone I had no less than 5 conversations (while trying desperately to do my Excel for my Someone) about your blogs. “Name my blog, edit my blog, read my blog, love my blog,” you all respectively pleaded.

No, I will not name, read, edit, or love your blog. No I will not watch yet another music video of you going down hill on sticks. Instead I will create my own Meta Blog-a-Log, in which I blog about the experience of blogging. I will cover Failed Blogs, celebrate Blog of the Day, and be the general Voice of Reason against Mike Franco's Blog Ideas. Because, goddamnit, it's my turn to speak.