As you may have noticed, I’ve added a side-blog to the site – it’s the section of the right column headlined ‘salmagundi’. (For the record, the word means, [according to Washington Irving,] “a mixture of various ingredients; an olio or medley; a potpourri; a miscellany.”)
Basically, I’ll be using the side-blog to link pages, articles, sites and pictures I find amusing, but don’t feel warrant my usual verbosity. Knock yourselves out.
Given the vast majority of web surfers who use it, Google holds amazing power in conferring expertise. Rank highly in the results for a search phrase and you’re, ipso facto, one of the foremost authorities on that topic. Which is why I glow with pride when I say that, over the past seven days, several hundred unique visitors have arrived at this humble site through the following search phrases (listed along with the site’s position in the results for that query):
I must admit, I am somewhat saddened to think that every single one of them likely left horribly disappointed.
Still, what amazes me most is that seven different people arrived this week through the Google query “hot dog carts“. As self-aggrandizement appears as the 111th search result, those seven people must really love them some hot dogs.
In response to yesterday’s entry, I received:
1. 27 emails from people volunteering to aid in constructing (or otherwise supporting the idea of) the envisioned blog-based online dating site.
2. An email from Sarah Brown herself:
Darling Joshua Newman, I am terribly flattered. And to set the record straight, I am 25, single, and my mother would be so upset to hear that you thought I was hideously ugly. I’m also very friendly and articulate, and my hair almost always smells like wildflowers.
You are adorable.
See you at the wedding.
Best,
Sarah Brown
3. An email from Helen Jane:
james is kind of peeved that we’re dishing out this kind of money to simply give the two of you a chance to make out, but i say,
“Anything to serve our Master, the Internet. Anything.”
plus, i get to wear a pretty dress!
yours in the Internet,
hj.
Between these emails and further perusal of the Que Sera Sera archives, I am fairly sure I now have no choice but to propose by Instant Messenger and make this a double wedding.
About two months back, I stumbled across Que Sera Sera, a weblog hosted by one Sarah Brown. As it was better than most, I bookmarked the site, heading back the following week. And then again at the end of the next week. And again two days later. After two or three weeks, I was visiting daily, and had undeniably developed a weblog crush.
Which is why I was particularly shocked to discover that Ms. Brown had been (as I) invited to the upcoming wedding of (I Love Your Work on-set blogger) Helen Jane Yeager. Sure, there’s a good chance Sarah won’t be at the wedding at all, as she (so far as I can tell, at least) lives in Oklahoma. And even if she is, the odds are probably in favor of her being involved with someone, or middle aged, or hideously ugly. If not all three. But, still, I was oddly thrilled.
Which led me to an excellent, groundbreaking idea. Why not build an online dating site around weblogs? After all, weblogs and dating sites are the two fastest growing segments of the web. Here’s why it works: a dating site is really just a simple database (searchable by gender, age and location) that pops out paired pictures and profiles meeting the search criteria. Why not swap in a weblog link for the profile, I reasoned? As doubtless informative as those profiles are (Oh, you enjoy fine dining and long walks on the beach too? We have so much in common!), I’m certain spending a bit of time diving around a prospective paramour’s archives would be infinitely, infinitely more so.
If my always meager coding skills hadn’t further atrophied through years of disuse (the real reason I have to keep starting companies rather than just getting a job – I have no actual skills), I’d buckle down and bang the site out myself. Since I can’t, I’m heading over to post an ad on Craig’s List in the hopes of finding a programming partner in crime. This is going to be the biggest thing since Yenta.
In the ever popular “is the Wall Street Journal ripping off ideas from my blog?” category: just days after I illustrate having raised the techniques of slacking to high art the venerable WSJ runs a story on, you guessed it, how to slack off more effectively.
Related Note: Ironically, whether or not the WSJ is stealing my ideas, the New York Times is certainly doing so, though in a more sanctioned context, as I’ve recently been doing some advising (on topics related to tech, film, 20-somethings, etc.) for a number of section editors. One very cool upcoming article to watch for in a future Sunday Style: the long-term effects of blogging on bloggers’ lives.
Update 5/17: As promised, the Sunday Style article on personal blogs’ impact on bloggers’ lives, plus another on the New York blogs I got the Style section hooked on reading. Seems I’m single-handedly shaping the editorial agenda of the venerable Gray Lady. A scary, scary thought.
Special thanks to my roommate Jamie, for pointing out the likely connection between me sneezing all weekend long and the recently appeared blossoms on the trees lining our block. As I only discovered my seasonal allergies a few years back, they still take me by surprise each year; though perhaps they shouldn’t, as they seem to kick in like clockwork, at least judging from my blogging about essentially the same thing almost exactly the same time last year.
Just received this email:
Dear Joshua:
We are creating a TV pilot about blogging. We want to bring this phenomenon of personal expression to television for the very first time, and have been scouring the web for appropriate sites. Your web site seems like a potentially great fit for the show.
If you would like to be a part of our pilot, you can do so by submitting a video that encapsulates you and your blog. Whatever you want to say and show in your video is fine. The key is to capture the essence of your blog in video format (etc., etc.)
While I was sincerely flattered, I don’t suspect I’ll end up doing it. For some reason, I just don’t imagine this overtaking, say, Joe Millionaire, in terms of viewer potential. But perhaps that’s just my own, cynical, newly Hollywood-ified viewpoint. Perhaps blogTV will, in fact, sweep the nation, finally merging micropublishing and mass media to hysterical audience response, forever changing the very nature of television, the web, nay, written and visual artistic expression itself! Or, on the other hand, maybe not.
For those who missed it: in yet another brilliant move, Google has bought up Blogger, the web’s largest weblogging tool.
While some are questioning the wisdom of that move, I believe it makes perfect sense. Google is focused on, broadly, providing access to information. As the blogging trend grows, increasing percentages of the information on the web will appear in weblogs. Being tied more closely into blogs, then, means being tied more closely into information, exactly Google’s goal.
While I’m afraid I’m too entrepreneurial (which is to say, too bossy and too anti-authoritarian) to successfully work for anyone but myself, news like this just strengthens that small voice in the back of my head saying I should drop everything and apply for a Google job.
After spending some time this morning thinking about taglines for I Love Your Work, I realized that the tagline for this site (“now with 57% more unabashed egotism!”) has remained unchanged since its inception. Though I’m not entirely sure I’m ready to give up the old standard, I am awfully tempted by “the dangerous result of a serious Napoleon Complex run too long unchecked.”
Over the last few weeks (and arguably the last few months), the regularity of my blogging has been rather suspect. And while I’ve felt rather vaguely guilty about that from a purely personal perspective (the initial motivation behind the site being to create a regular writing exercise for myself), I’ve in recent days been frequently reminded that the site (oddly) does draw a fairly large reading audience, many of whom have been more passionately displeased by my increasing digital delinquency.
There is something remarkably addictive, it seems, about voyeuristically impinging on the lives of others, and the withdrawal from such is an ugly, ugly thing.
So, having been duly (and repeatedly) chastised, I have resolved to once again return to habitual blogging, to do this damned thing every day, to make blogging as second nature as brushing my teeth. And, while on that topic, to start flossing regularly.