February 04, 2004
Get up early in the Morning, Go way the fuck out, and throw a lot of chum in the water.
My girlfriend has this expression: it goes, “I read this really interesting article in the New York Times about blank,” only she replaces blank with whatever it is we are making fun of. She might say “I read this really interesting article in the New York Times about your shirt…” and I'll know that I need to change it. She could also say “I’m researching a piece for Salon about your shirt,” which means the same thing. It’s obnoxious, but it works. “I’ve been following a series of articles in the Sunday Styles section about the Decemberists, and they are wearing your shirt.” You get the idea.
I’m waiting for this really interesting article in the New York Times about Weblogs. The article will talk about the people and issues raised in the comments on this post. It will talk about power laws, links-in and influence as an indicator of traffic. It will discuss weblogs and google and media criticism and anonymity. Before this article is even written, weblogs will be predicting its arrival. When it comes it will cause a stir, but no one will read it, because we will be too busy reading all of the commentary it sparks.
I won't read this article, but what I will hate about it is that it will ignore the one thing that I love most about weblogs: that somewhere out there someone with a little html is blogging about the funeral of his goldfish; how he took the goldfish, put it in a box, and buried it out back under the cypress tree; and how his daughter was crying and he couldn’t think of anything to say, until suddenly he remembered a line from a Frank Zappa song: “He’s got his own little piece of heaven now,” and he used that line on his daughter; and that image of a goldfish tending to a piece of heaven will stick with the her for the rest of her life; and later, the father will feel guilty about using that line, since he only remembered it because of an acid trip he had in high school, and now his daughter is drawing pictures of it in class. And the best thing about that post? It will link to the fucking Frank Zappa song. You will have to get up early in the morning and go way out to find that stuff. You wont find it in the obvious places, but when you do, it will be like landing something big.
