"no one is alone, truly"

So a longer than expected Thanksgiving break at home with a dial-up aging computer put me out of blogging comission for awhile but like most things, it's refreshing to see that the blogging community has gone on quite smoothly and quite overwhelmingly with out me. I hope everyone did something delightful with their brief holiday!

I thoroughly enjoyed Aldon's touching post (no sarcasm intended), but I'm not sure if I can whole heartedly agree with the idea that blogging takes away the feeling of aloneness. Obviously, on a many levels it does-we spent a week reviwing how it connects communities and the fact that we as a class can keep up with each other's lives is indicative of how it can bring people together but it also promotes a certain breed of anti-socialism despite how social it is. For every hour I spend sitting at the computer, sending my thoughts into a void, that is one more hour I could be spending communicating with people face to face. I realize this isn't always feasible and I also realize that blogs work brilliantly for those "pj types" who are more literary than they are good in person, but there is some danger in the addictive distance blogs create even though they try to bring people closer. I did really love Michele Agnew’s blog. That truly does encourage cooperation. It's like the anti-(insert name of that blog that made us all mad the first week of school). Her little "word a day" format gives me nice things to ponder. It's like boingboing for people who would rather get poetry flashes than news flashes.

Another great website for fostering community is www.answerology.com. I don't think it would classify as a blog, per se but it's an online network where people can give and recieve advice. They are typically about relationships but the topics run the gamut and theirs nothing tacky about it. It's also quite addictive and like a blog, if you think a person's feedback is good you can make friends with them. And I'm not just advocating this site because I spent the summer working there, editing people's responses, but because it brings people together for a good cause-even if that cause is wining about ex-gfs, but what else is there, really?


Aldon also points to Brett's blog and from there I found one of the most infuriating sights. I was really tempted to email this "thebestpageintheuniverse" guy but my email address isn't as conducive to anonymity as my Vivica A. Fox honorarium blogging name is. What makes his narcissistic home page any different than a blog? It seems like a bit of projection here.

The quote on http://looseleafnotes.com/ blog, "Things I would not tell anyone, I tell the public." ~Michel de Montaigne basically sums up my rationale on blogs. We've discussed this ad hominem (is that the word im looking for, it's foreign for "a lot"?). Just like theater, for me it's always been easier to perform if you can't make eye contact with the audience and you don't know who is there. Realizing that a few key people are watching you gives you the added adrenalin rush to do your best but when you connect with them while you're in the spotlight it suddenly makes you feel even more vulnerable and silly to be performing, oh hey, for thematics sake, a Sondheim ballad about hats. Like blogging, I'm sure if I had a reputation like many of you, in the class, have developed, it would be nice to know that random commentors were out there and may be checking it but as coffeerhetoric said, if my mom ever wanted to have a direct conversation about what I had written I may feel awkward. Back to the blog though, it's pretty heart wrenching. I'm glad to see that the comments have been nice. It fortunately attracts a different audience than some of the other blogs we have read, who wouldn't have been as kind.

I'll leave this post with yet another Sondheim reference that I thought was especially pertinent about blogging, for those of you who just can't get enough musical theater:

This reminded me of yet another Sondheim reference, for those of you out there who I just know, love, love, LOVE musical theater:

"Someone is on your side.
Someone else is not.
While you're seeing your side maybe you forgot: They are not alone. No one is alone."