Blog: 1; Blogger: 0 (aka You must think carefully before devoting yourself to a lifetime of blogging)

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2007/10/24 10:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2007/10/24/5634778.aspx

The conversation went a bit like this:

"Are you ready for lunch?"

"Oh, can we reschedule? I have some stuff I have to do here."

"Sounds ominous. Important meetings?"

"No, no meetings."

"Specs to finish up?"

"No, all my specs are done."

"Okay, another time?"

"Definitely, I just have to...."

"Have to what?"

"I was offline all weekend, and I have to catch up..."

"That's cool, I've been there -- hundreds of emails won't read themselves!"

"No, it's not that.

{embarrassed pause}

"I have to catch up on your blog."

This really puts a cat among the pigeons! And it takes  Brad Paisley's song Online to a whole new level, as I apparently now have to compete with my own blog for people's attention.

My biggest fear is that I think I am much cooler in the blog and that I will therefore lose this particular competition (as I apparently did here for lunch!).

What's a blogger to do when he isn't even as cool as his own blog?

Though as Isabella Bannerman shows (hat tip to Thierry Fontenelle), this is I suppose just one of the prices I might have to pay as I continue on this course, in a cartoon you can see in a post by Mark Liberman on Language Log....

It is funny, I was describing this circumstances surrounding post to Cathy, and (while being amused) she was worried about the amount of self reference here (she is not by any means a developer, but she knows I am one and is vaguely aware of the dangers of recursive operations). There is me, and there is my blog that is written by me. And because the blog written by me is considered more interesting, I find that to be an interesting topic for the blog. I eventually might overflow the stack with all of this recursiveness!

In the interests of full disclosure, I have to admit there are many advantages to the blog over me:

• Observer can control the pace as far as how much to deal with me, without having to worry about my reactions;
• Observer can make their choice as to which category they are in, too;
• It makes a fine pre-screening that one can use to avoid indrect interaction (a challenging operation at the best of times!);
• If you don't like something I am saying, you can skip it and wait for then next thing.

I was going to follow the above list with a list of the advantages that I have over the blog, but I am having trouble thinking of any at the moment; I'll have to get back to you all on that. :-)

This post brought to you by ? (U+003f, a.k.a. QUESTION MARK)

# Bob Heifler on 24 Oct 2007 11:34 AM:

referenced by

go to newer or older post, or back to index or month or day