Solipsistic Note from the Blogosphere

As a final post, I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed this class. It was great alienati--I mean talking with all of you openly about controversial issues in a perfectly calm and rational way.

I'm a little ambivalent about the blogging, though, since I find that, as perfectionist, I'm frustrated at the the tension between polishing my work and "dashing off" something quickly in the spirit of blogging. (Note to Prof. Larsen: when I say I'm a perfectionist in writing, this means I feel compelled to spend a long time anguishing over it, not that I can't manage to mispell "Goguryeo" ad nauseum).

So I'm leaving you with a note from the "Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy" movie soundtrack, "On Blogging":

Blog·ging - Blogging is the act of regularly updating your website with some humdrum information about your life or a link to something you just read on the internet in the mistaken belief that anyone actually cares.

It is the 21st century equivalent of hanging around railway stations, writing pithy but erudite descriptions of the passing trains. To take part in "blogging" or to use the appropriate terminology "to join the blogosphere" there are a couple of things you need to do. Firstly, you'll need to increase the size of your ego. Without a swollen ego you simply cannot achieve the levels of solipsism required by a modern blog. This necessary step is often missed by new bloggers, yet without it, you won't believe that anyone is remotely interested in what you've had for lunch today, how cute your cat Mittens is, or whether or not you designed some tedious internet protocol.

In fact blogging without a nova-sized ego can actually be dangerous. If you start using words like blogosphere there is a very real possibility that your own major intestine will leap straight up through your neck and throttle your brain in an attempt to preserve civilization. Fortunately there are various forms of medication to increase the size of your ego, many offering a money back guarantee that you will be at least twice as obnoxious in four weeks or less.

Until you are sufficiently obnoxious, you might feel the need to explain or at the very least describe the things you leap to. Experienced bloggers know that they are so important that readers will blindly follow their links. After all, a few seconds of one blogger's time is clearly more valuable than all the time spent by people discovering they really didn't care. The other thing you should do to become a successful blogger, is change your website to use dotted lines and unreadable tiny fonts, wherever possible.

Have a great rest of the semester, everyone!