Blog!

Marketers must be gnashing their teeth. It’s like a wildly popular SUV named the “Treacle” or maybe the “Cytoblast”. It’s actually kind of curious when you think about it: how can such a homely collision of an oral plosive with an interrupted cry of pain come to represent such a wildly popular Internet development?

Grind them pearlies, Ms. Marketer.

Dr. Suzuki, in his commentaries on Zen, instructs that the path to enlightenment is one of creative destruction. For corroboration, hit any intellectual just right with a cast iron tea ceremony kettle and he’ll mumble something about the parable of the monk who had to empty his mind before it could be refilled. The point is that there is no reason why “blog” became the contraction of choice for “web log.” The reason will forever escape us, like the conditions for our enlightenment, a creature who slips between the slats of our understanding and grins at us from the dark beyond.

If there is some multidimensional cosmic demigod examining us, we probably make it hoot every time we do this: a new way of doing things hits humanity with enough force that we change our behavior - but that means we have to name this new thing! “*Gasp,* it’s a new sensation - quick, find a word or it’ll get away!”

That’s what I think. Why we saddle this elegant and amicable journalizing with a word suggesting the sound of a boot being dropped onto some pudding is less important than that we have a word, period.

Maybe the marketers will have the last laugh, though. Maybe there’s some demonstrable positioning of leading-edge commentators and tech heads who, when a new app hits a critical point in its adoption, have the sliver of opportunity to name the new beast just about anything they want, and we’ll buy it.

I’m not actually put off by the word. I do think Jerry Pournelle is right, it *is* ugly, even if he claims he had the first one. (Check it out: www.jerrypournelle.com, a.k.a. “Chaos Manor”)

To me, ‘blog’ is an unsightly word - but friendly. Its like an old college buddy who’s always cheery and holds his beer well, despite having a head shaped like a paving stone. I imagine this character having a perpetually lopsided grin, maybe from a highly ill-advised jai-alai game he tried on a bet.

Whatever it is, pretentious it isn’t. Hell, why not. Say ‘blog’ and the Net enabled understand what you’re talking about.

I think that’s enough persiflage for today.

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