I turn on the radio and someone is mentioning something they read about music on someone else's blog. I amble down the street and overhear a couple talking in their car about some or the other blog they were surfing before breakfast. I flip on the television and the anchorman is referencing bloggers as reliable sources of information on some important issue or the other.
So it's time for some definitions (cue the Definition Music -- something with a lot of drums, a cymbal or two, and maybe a wind chime):
Blog: a blog (an abridgment of the term "web log") is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning "to maintain or add content to a blog." [Long, boring definition copy-and-pasted from the Website-of-All-Potentially-Informative-Information: Wikipedia].
Blogger: One who blogs [Short, exciting definition provided by the author].
Before this glut of blog-related references attracted the attention of my limited attention span, I hadn't bothered to browse the thousands of blogs available online. This was mostly because I didn't think it was very interesting to find out what someone's goldfish was doing that day. But with blogs being mentioned everywhere, I decided that as a person who thinks he should be a well-rounded, adequately informed citizen of the New Millennium (i.e.: one ruled by the all-powerful Internet -- motto: Soylent Green is People), I should see what there was to see.
I went to my computer and did some clicking. "Breaking News and Opinion on the Huffington Post" was the #1 blog listed on one website. It had a bunch of news and was incredibly boring, so I scrolled down to find something else. I like gadgets, so I clicked on "Gizmodo the Gadget Blog" and found out about a bathtub bookshelf and a $40,000 watch.
After that I went to a backpacking blog to see if they had any recommendations on what backpack would be best to replace the duffel I've been using for my travels the last eight years. Since I was on the subject, I popped over to my friend Chris' blog to see how preparations were going for his Summer '08 Appalachian Trail hike and documentary. Pretty well, apparently.
Moving on, I stumbled onto a blog about tribal art around the world, a half dozen about the messages that had been left on people's answering machines, and the 2008 Bloggies winner of the Best Australian or New Zealand blog award, "Reasons You Will Hate Me," which was just … strange.
Elsewhere on the web was a sex blog that was actually about politics and a basketball blog that was actually about basketball. There were food blogs, car blogs, travel blogs, humor blogs, horse blogs, a blog that posted a new entry from a 17th Century diarist's diary every day, blogs about science, blogs about issues in the news, and blogs about darned near everything. No, I take that back … blogs about EVERYTHING.
Seventeen hundred hours later, I pushed away from my computer, my mind reeling from the sheer amount of useful and useless information bouncing around in my head. I stood up, staggered, fell against a wall, stepped on the cat, realized that I didn't have a cat and so must be hallucinating, and then did the only thing I could to save my sanity … I sat back down at my computer and found a blog that just showed pictures of what some guy's goldfish was doing all day.
There was a moment of concern one day when the goldfish, Alby, had some black smudges on his fins (a disease called, suspiciously, "Black Smudge Disease"), but it cleared up. And now Alby has a new goldfish buddy, Spot.
Ah, sweet goldfish-blog-induced peace.
Back issues of the author's columns can be found at his blog at www.goblinbrook.net. He can't, in good conscience, recommend that you read them, as there may be adverse side effects. Readers who would like to sue may also contact him there.