Neo Home Pagination
Remember when the internet was new and everybody got onto their Amigas and put up “home pages”? Pictures of the kids and the cats, what I did on my summer vacation narratives, updated on a descending scale of frequency from daily to weekly to monthly to every now and then to once a year to never this is just too much bother and nobody’s following it anyway I might as well just send out one of those photocopied family letters at Christmas summarizing what happened (usually post-divorce or some other such disaster). Whew. Thank goodness that’s over. Except for ‘blogs. (Which I’m the only one spelling correctly, pedant that I am.)

The media has a love-hate relationship with weblogs (see, “’blog” is an abbreviation; it needs an apostrophe, just like ‘net. Web, on the other hand is a shorthand derivative, so no punctuation is required), most recently and egregiously exhibited in the NY Times “Mommie (and Me)” article, in which they hurl soft-boiled eggs and porridge from their high chairs while dissecting a niche in the weblogging world.

Why bother? This “phenomenon” is old news. The technology has certainly improved, and there’s even money in it (for some; nobody clicks any paid links on my weblog), but the overall content isn’t so spectacularly different from what went before. There are some who make an effort, and others who don’t, and yet still others who wouldn’t know the difference, but from Live Journal to Blogger to Moveable Type, there are still inane quizzes, pretty kitty pictures, and updates on summer holidays at the beach, lake, mountains . . . wherever. I concede that these software improvements have made “home paging” more of a worthwhile activity, and I visit various other journaling sites frequently, whether they’re those of friends, family, or pure strangers whose thoughts or writing or humor I enjoy (or am infuriated by for that matter).

So why does the “old media” get their knickers twisted over weblogs? Because they get called “old,” I guess. Those trying to pursue using weblogs for serious purposes got up the noses of more traditional media outlets over the last four years or so, and the newspapers and cable news channels are fighting back. It’s silly, though, and only shows a lack of perspective, if not perception. It’s fun, it can be informative, and it can even foster a sense of community or at least of conversation among individuals rather increasingly lacking opportunities to connect with anyone outside their workplace or immediate family.

Meanwhile, Rana and Jill and ”Wolf Angel” have been having some fun coming up with Timesian descriptions for their own weblogs. I ought to get Rana to do one for me, too, but by this time she ought to be charging for the service.

“(Southern Cross) Words” purports to be an exploration of cultural differences and similarities between Australia and the United States, but shows an utter lack of perspective in its political leanings, while failing to provide cat-based content at the level of better web logs [sic]. Desperate for attention, its author has even resorted to selling out to Google, placing advertisements for products no one is interested in along with the traditional sidebar content. Note: Nick Cave is not personally for sale on eBay.”