Articles with the Tag blogging about blogging is a sin

So I missed my anniversary again

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Last year I claimed that I started this blog on 10 March 2002, but I was lying. It was actually March 7 2002, which means I once again missed my anniversary. Not that it’s that important; I only started blogging because I needed some outlet for my frustration at reading the news and Usenet was dying and poisoned and by and large Wis[s]e Words has remained just that, a vehicle for my own thoughts. Anything more ambitious I might have hoped for has not been realised, largely because of my own laziness and reluctance to become a Stan Lee -like self promoter, as well as the usual distractions of Real Life. Over the years I’ve written a lot of reasonable posts, some truly bad ones and slightly more quite good ones, or so I’d like to think. Neilalien, a far better blogger than I, put it best when on his ten year anniversary he said:

It’s a creative outlet that brings me great joy- but I don’t let it take over my life, and I never make it a job. I don’t blog when I don’t feel like blogging. I don’t link to something that doesn’t interest me or that I haven’t read. (Nothing is more obvious and damning than a lack of interest.) I’ve always refused free review copies partly because I never wanted to feel the pressure of having to review a book. Adding ads to the site adds obligation to generate eyeballs, and potential smell-tests. The blog is not toil and trouble, it’s an escape from toil and trouble. So as yet, I never burned out. I kept it fun. If by protecting my joy, that means I haven’t shared or given of myself as much as I could have or as much as people expect from a weblog, or seem aloof, or I haven’t reviewed a comic book in a timely fashion, or I don’t get that book deal or get paid for blogging, or it means the night-sweat horror of a million missed links- so be it. The weblog is what it is. I do stubbornly addictively resist going a week without blogging, but if I do, so be it- you’ve always known what you’re getting, a working guy in his pajamas when he has time to blog about one of his life’s passions. I respect the audience, and try to be the consummate classy professional- like a Broadway actor or the Undertaker, when that curtain goes up, it’s A-Game time, regardless of what’s happening backstage or if the entrance pyrotechnics just gave you second-degree burns- I have never blogged about ennui with comics or blogging- but the moment I think to myself that I *must* blog today, that I owe you anything for visiting a free personal website, it’s over.

When Decents fight…

Decentists and other ex-lefties
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Say what you like about Marko Attila Hoare and his politics, but he knows nasty little bully boys when he sees them and he sees them at Harry’s Place:

Racism, misogyny, incitement to violence – all can be overlooked when a member of your sad little circle of groupies is the guilty party. But God forbid that anyone should hold you accountable for what appears in the comment boxes of your own website, or that anyone interfere with the right of freaks and psychos to defame and abuse whomever they want while cowering behind anonymity.

[…]

They make a cesspool, and they call it ‘freedom of speech’.

In this behaviour Harry’s Place resembles nothing quite as much as the wingnut parts of the American rightwing blogosphere. There’s the same persuction complex, the same need for enemies and the destruction of them, the same inability to understand that other people might disagree with their views other than out of sheer perversity, the same dynamics with which an already extreme worldview is made more and more extreme over time as the in crowd parrots its eternal truths over and over again while anything coming from outside the group is either rejected or seen as a confirmation of this worldview. It’s a very cultish mentality and the nasty attacks even on political allies like Marko fit in perfectly.

Resolutions

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this year I want to: 1) write better when I blog 2) pay less attention to the hitcounter 3) write more about things other than politics 4) pay more attention to politics outside of what’s happening in Holland, the UK and US 5) not just try and chase the ourage du jour.

Also, more sex.