Story A; part 1

On the first day of eighth grade, Rob Arrow assigned his U.S. history class the essay "Who is my hero?" Sophie went home and pondered the question. Like some 13-year-old good girls, she was not simply eager to please. She insisted upon pleasing. As such, she put out of her mind the nagging possibility of questioning the very term "hero," and focused on accomplishing the assignment as written. Two days later, she turned in her three, neatly handwritten, in ink, pages.

"Some people think a hero is a man on a white horse who rescues women from being tied to train tracks," Sophie wrote. "But that is not true. A hero is a person who has qualities that you admire and who does things that you want to do yourself." Sophie was, at the time, a little impressed with herself. She was more impressed when she heard Mr. Arrow read her essay to the history class held before hers, then to hers. At first, she thought he meant to criticize the essay as an example of a bad assignment. Instead, he held her essay up as an example of a perfect essay, the kind that the rest of the class should emulate in their own. Sophie's goal for eight grade, then, became to maintain this level of perfection for the entire year.

Twenty years later, Sophie remembered eighth grade as being the last time that she ever felt completely like herself and completely certain of her ability to achieve some form of perfection. Twenty years, of course, had blunted the awkward sense of alienation and isolation that she felt for those nine months. Each year added another layer of gloss, smoothed over the imperfections, surpassed the adolescent frustrations with greater humiliation, blurred details.

Sophie gradually tried not to insist on pleasing. She learned not to push those questions about concepts such as heroes to the back of her mind. Life moves in a forward direction, however. Sophie learned; but lessons move forward also. She applied them to the future, or to the immediate past. She has a more educated perspective; she thought about herself, she sees now what was really going on last year or the year before. Next year, she will know not to get in a similar situation, not to think that way, not to do things wrong. Beyond last year, or the year before, she did not see. That part of her history could not be revised, and seemed too far away to matter. She still believed in perfection, although she would never say such a juvenile thing, and perfection lay in the future. The past was a perfect as it would ever be.

Why 'Blogs?

My initial impression of weblogs has never been positive. The name alone, "'blog," is an ugly word, like some swamp creature in a children's fantasy story ("don't go into the forest after dark, or the Blog will swallow you whole!"). The people who wrote them seemed no much better. The cover of the internet permitted the worst sort of communication in which people take extreme stands and batter one another with obnoxious language, be the subject political or personal or the odd interwining of both. Even the most benign seemed like a nauseating practice of self-agrandizement. I would meet people would would act as if the maintenance of a weblog were tantamount to having a book on the New York Times bestseller list, but would not discuss the ideas on the 'blog except as a posting on the 'blog. There, the "conversation" would be public. Yet, oddly, the participants would be private, separated from one another by a barrier of space, time, and screen names. The "conversation" would also be under the control of the 'blog master, and therefore, turn the "conversation" into an interaction within a hierarchy rather than an interaction of relative equals. Then, of course, the wide and obnoxiously stated, half-investigated, knee-jerk brand of pontificating opinions that seem to be the most prolific reminded me of the saying, "Opinions are like assholes: Everyone has one."

So, why am I entering into this ugly world myself?

Perhaps I am self-indulgent, myself. Perhaps I want that same "New York Times bestseller list" feeling of other 'blogmasters, as well as that sense of control, that thrill of exhibitionism, that power of owning a platform for pontification. I know that the forum allows me to formulate and express my own thoughts much more skillfully than when I speak. I also know that those skillfully expressed thoughts tend to be taken as much more obnoxious or aggressive than I intended; and that feeling perversely makes me feel much stronger than I actually am.

That cannot be the only reason to embark upon this project, can it?

My opinion of 'blogs has been shaped by my reflexive cynicism against anything popular, my exposure to the most irritating of weblogs from the political "blogosphere" (a word more fitting to a fantastical children's story), and the personal weblogs that highlight some of the more irritating features of different people that I have known. I have been neither a student nor connoisseur of the medium. My reactions are based on non-scientific impressions. They are, in fact, the same sort of opinion that I despised from those 'blogs to which I did have exposure. They are the "asshole" sort of opinion.

And, again, here I am. Throwing myself into a virtual world for which I have not yet developed a respect, not as an observer of a phenomenon, but as a participant. Why?

Don't answer that just yet (unless you have an insight through your own experience on a similar mission) because I am not done exploring why. I haven't ventured deep enough, and part of this experiment is, in fact, to claw my way further into this idea of weblogs, to figure out why they seem so important a phenomenon, and to figure out these darker aspects of personal public display.