I Will Do Anything to Be Part of the Blogoaksphere

I never meant to be a holdout. College Grads in Urban Areas Without Cellphones is a sorry club. I imagine a bunch of tweedy middle-aged men with Objections. What's a perky twentysomething (fifty-nine days left on that claim) doing with those old sods?

It was an accident, I assure you, not some statement of principle. It wasn't that I didn't want a cellphone. I just never wanted one. Like, not paying-money-every-month want. I'm a part-time receptionist. I can't buy things just because.

Now when it comes out that I'm not carrying, I have to go all explainy, and hear expressions of astonishment, and perhaps even get congratulated on my contrarian pluck. All of which is possibly worse than shelling out monthly and being all *reachable*. And I'm wide open to accusations of dinosaurism. You're not on Facebook. And you don't have a cell. Oh my God: and you have CHICKENS. They start building a Theory. They think I have Objections.

So let me be clear: I'm totally going to get a cellphone one day. I daydream about it, even. My phone will do every damn thing those Japanese phones do now--for less! Print cash, perform voodoo hexes, all that. See, because I'm going to leapfrog. That's how sophisticated I am.

However, technology for its own sake does irritate me. I don't want a bunch of neato shit that's only going to drain and distract. Yes, I have a plog. That does not mean I want to Twitter. I plog because I like to write (do I vainly hope this is apparent?), not because I'm a connectivity whore. So leave me and my hens alone.

Was what I was saying. But then Crim became part of the Blogoaksphere. His wunderkind, Oakland Streets, won the warm embrace of linkage from every other cool Oakland blog. That had the incidental effect of creating readership--a whizbang concept I hadn't considered. Here was a connectivity I could get behind! I realized that I would do anything to be part of the Blogoaksphere.

At an Oscar ceremony a few years back, Steve Martin introduced Gael García Bernal (you know, the muchacho guapo from Y tu mamá también) by saying: "I would do anything to look like this guy. Except, of course, eat right and exercise."

So Clebilicious will do anything to be part of the Blogoaksphere. Except, of course, be more accessible and stick to a topic.

Tweet

Plogging Away

So glad I called it a plog. The present participle form fits right it with so many existing phrases: slogging through, plodding along, plugging away. Why...it's perfect :)

Tweet

Welcome to My Plog

It's settled. This will henceforth be a particularly lovable weblog, or

plog.

I hope you will indulge my calling my own blog lovable, and, worse, particularly so. But what if I had called it a pathetic little weblog or a pretty lame weblog? Then you'd feel all obligated to pump me up with reassurances. Such a favor I'm doing you.


So, why a plog?

The innernet is well-populated with snarky weblogs. The snog genre is wide-ranging and inventive, if a bit hackneyed. Wonkette is one familiar example. The one about the white people is another. Snogs may be of the highest quality, funny and incisive, but there's nothing lovable about them. Byron Crawford, snogger extraordinaire, often refers to "people who live to hate on shit, such as myself." Pure, delicious snog.

A plog distinguishes itself by its joie de vivre. Its outlook is more sincere than sarcasmic. Here are a few plogs of note:

• The Fix. Fine political plog from Washington Post reporter Chris Cillizza. No one takes quite such genuine delight in deconstructing the horserace. (Well, besides Chris Matthews.) Cillizza has a great rapport with us Fixistas.




• Tiny Farm Blog. From a two-acre farm in Ontario, Canada comes this whirlwind of delights. Best garden porn around.




• Hendrik Hertzberg. New Yorker stalwart Hertzberg is a surprisingly tender plogger. I find his tag, "Notes on politics, mostly" particularly lovable.

Let me know of other plogs I should check out. And with that, this little plogger is taking a wee break. See ya.

Tweet

I Like This

MANY SENSIBLE people would be pleased to move into a new home with a finished yard: crew-cut lawn, tidy perennials, perhaps a sturdy herb garden, all pre-drip irrigated.

I suppose so because that seems to be the way yards are prepped for the real estate market. But that sounds so paint-by-numbers. My fantasy yard is more like a barren plains: flat, empty, hideous, awaiting my hand.

A blog is a nice barren plains. You scatter seeds however. It's a blank canvas, amenable to whims.

So, I like it.


THERE IS one problem, however. "Blog" is an ugly word. It does not make me feel cute inside. I wish this innernet-based repository of serial commentary could be called something else.

You know how "carefully researched weblogs" are called "crogs"? I need something like that.

"Plog," for example. Now there's a sweet little word. "Brog" is cute, too. I don't know what I would retroactively declare that either stands for. Petty weblog? Pathetic little weblog? Badly researched weblog? Maybe something with a little less built-in self-loathing.

Ideas?


Note to readers: This marks my 100th post. (Hence the existential talk.) Happy Centpostial!

Tweet