Thinking About Blogs

I heard about this blog from Charlie Oberndorf, who heard about it and checked it out--partly to see if his school's internet nanny would keep him from doing so. It did not. It's the blog of a London call girl. Granted, everybody in the world except me and Charlie have probably already heard about this. I read about it on Bruce Sterling's website.

http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/

But there are two issues with it. One, she got a book contract and stopped posting in her blog, so if you want the juicy stuff, you have to go back and read in the archives. Two, it may not be real.

Seems that The Guardian, which gave the blog an award for best blog of 2003, considers the book dumb. And is beginning to wonder if the call girl even exists. No one has come forward to admit to knowing her and there's no collaborative evidence for her existence, much less her career. Some guy pretending to be a girl writing about sex? On the internet? never happen.

But it did make me think that my blog is seriously lacking in titilation and, well, the kind of material that goes over on the internet. (Tongue firmly in cheek.) Bob told me, after reading a couple of entries about me and the wig, that I ought to do something called "The Wig and I". I turned to him and sang (we were in the car, he couldn't escape.)

Some enchanted evening
you will meet a stranger
you will meet a stranger
across a crowded room.
But then when she turns
it's only your wife
the wig has disguised her
and hides her from view....

But I think my limited inspiration ran out. I have a good friend (hey Linda) who is really good at this kind of thing. And her husband Jim is a fabulous musician. If either of you feel inspired, you're welcome to this material.

I guess I could hope that my cancer experiences got more interesting, but you will forgive me if I don't. So I am thinking of pretending to be a middle-aged man writing a blog about a middle-aged woman who has cancer...but obviously, there are flaws with that plan.

One thing it seems to me that blogs provide--and a major difference between blogs and books, is the pleasure of a serial. We don't do serials very much anymore in fiction. We used to. Charles Dickens was published in serial form. Television episodes are serials. Blogs are, mostly, real life serials. And when a blog is about something like mine, there's a sense of beginning, middle and end. But the middle--ahh, that's where everything happens, right?

And in a blog, you can't check out the end the way I often do in a novel. You've got to let it unfold. See what happens.

And all you people who don't have cancer but have blogs? Well, you'll have to come up with your own strategy.