I am starting my own blog because I miss how Shane's website felt more like a slow conversation over coffee -- as opposed to Facebook's soundbites yelled across a crowd. A blog doesn't have all of the features of Shane's website, naturally. But my blog means that I get to chose the topics of conversation. That, as anyone who knows me will tell you, is my favourite part of talking anyway. Remember, as Fran Lebowitz said, the opposite of talking isn't listening, it's waiting.
This self-absorption, and an overall lack of curiosity, means that I haven't explored how a lot of other blogs "work". There are some that I read frequently -- Roger Ebert, Perez Hilton, Arianna Huffington, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. So bear with me as I get the hang of it, and as I find my "voice". And, of course, there is something fundamentally egocentric about a blog, and that requires me to ask for your patience when the blog begins to sound like a constant refrain of Me Me Me. I am expecting that the blog will provoke discussion -- that, as we say in government, it will be "participatory".
(I should develop a list of ground rules, beginning with: this blog will contain no text that sounds like it has been taken from a Government of Canada document. It has taken me some time to learn how to write for government - let's see if I can unlearn it when I chose.)
This blog will discuss movies, books, other media and sometimes current events. It won't go into the minutiae of my life. I will also post pictures of Ryan Phillippe. In fact, I considered composing a whole blog about Ryan P., but there was too much to say, frankly. (Plus, Spoiler alert: recent pictures lead me to believe RP is beginning to look like Ryan O'Neal. And not Ryan O'Neal circa Paper Moon, if you catch my drift.) That gets me thinking, actually.
Next post: "Ryan's Hope: the film career parallels of Ryan O'Neal and Ryan Phillippe
This is so weird: A) I was thinking about how weird Ryan P. was looking these days, and when is the last time he has been in a hit movie? B) How much I used to love using and posting on Shane's site...
ReplyDeleteThat is so smart to think about it in the context of Facebook, Chris. Besides the brief thought that Shane should be a multi-billionaire right now, how interesting it was that years before FB we were all using this precursor to this social networking phenomena.
At first I was really reluctant to sign onto Facebook. The privacy issue loomed large, and to this day my husband will have nothing to do with it. However, when I did finally make the plunge I went too fast, accepting any and all friend requests. People I hadn't seen since Elementary School were contacting me, and I was happy adding them to my pile of "friends". Meanwhile I was contacting all the people from my High School who I had been dying to hear from all these years. I remember pouring out these huge emotional E-mails to people (clearly I had a bit left unsaid, or pined too much for the good old days?), and then was horrified that I had done such a thing. These people were generally strangers now to me, they didn't have anything in common, weren't in the same city, and were clearly confused by the level of detail I wished to discuss high school in. I was so embarrassed that I had written these people in such an open way that I rushed to immediately de-friend them. I'm sure to this day Jonathan Crowe has no clue what was up with me.
I didn't know the rules of FB, and I paid for it in the early days. Got myself and others into trouble - Those status sentences can get you into alot of shit if it's worded the wrong way. God forbid your comment is taken the wrong way and horrors or horror removed. The biggest question these days on FB that causes real hand wringing for me is do I make this event public, private, invite only/ all comers? ugh ! Don't get me wrong I use FB all the time for reasons of goodness and social health, but it should have come with a users manual.
This is a great idea Chris, good luck with it !