blogging is the new anal

remember when aol first came out? everybody rushing about, trying to classify themselves in more than seven letters, with less than two numbers (you know who you are, farmgirl40, juliaroberts4eva, jt1088883998y897) while at the same time wishing they'd been the first to realize that one could type 'lol' instead of 'hahahahahahaha.' i recall spending four hours i.m.-ing with an acquaintance's brother who was two years younger than i (making him a fresh-as-a-daisy fifteen) about music, school and the fact that his sister was a giant slut. i lay my head down that night with visions of future pop-up conversations to come, while my index finger twitched methodically, as if on a mouse, and wondered how i could pass dating a fifteen-year old without seeming like exactly what i was: desperate. imagine my surprise when, the next day at school, the young object of my affection sat with the other skater kids at lunch, ignoring me and my plight (plight being a bad haircut and a runny nose).

but that is beside the point. what i am getting at is that this new wave of blogging is what instant messenger and email accounts were in the 90's. with society's (society being the rest of you) obsession with 'reality,' what is better than being able to log on at all hours of the day to read well-documented accounts of a complete stranger's life?

i give you the blogging craze currently taking over the world. now anyone with anything to say can do so to his/her/its heart's content. my boss is creating his own 'blawg' and he can barely keep his nails clean (seriously, mr. _____, what is all that brown stuff under your nails? is there a sandbox under your desk?). pretty soon i won't call my mother to catch up, i'll simply log onto her blog and read about how soy cures the cancer and how she's always regretted dragging my brother through the bra aisle at target all those times, because 'he's never been right since.' blogging, like all pop culture guilty pleasures, is spreading faster than one can utter, 'what the hell's a blo-"

i like to think of myself as above lemming-like hype, but i have been semi-broken down by a) boredom at work, and b) extreme boredom at work to the point of giving myself breast exams on the floor next to my desk. there are rules, however, to a good blog. if, for example, i wanted to read all about how someone's mother is such a bitch and how great the o.c./alias is, i would simply log on to livejournal, a.k.a. day care for indie kids. (or read insound's email updates, but i digress.)

so, in the grand tradition of snobbery, i give you five of many rules for what makes a good blog:

1.) the blogger has never owned a trucker hat
2.) the blogger hates the word 'blog'
3.) the blogger is extremely sarcastic
4.) the blogger has and will never use an emoticon
5.) the blogger is embarrassed to have a blog, and is therefore viciously sarcastic.

that narrows the field down quite a bit to one blog, and that is my blog. live and learn, people. live and learn.