Words: Apparently Dumb, Stupid, and Easily Misused

Words are apparently stupid, because when you attempt to write many of them on the internet for any purpose you are missing the point. The internet is all about ADD, ADHD, and Twitter. Twitter's got it right and I've got it wrong. And I've had it wrong all this time. Paragraphs, sentences, and long-term writing are stuff of the 20th century and earlier.

I am not savvy enough. Don't believe me? My smartphone doesn't have apps or even a data plan (which makes it a part-time computer with built-in phone capabilities), my Twitter account has no followers (because I don't tweet and forget [my password constantly] to check Twitter unless some really hilarious hashtag is imploding),  and my blog is full of words and skimpy about pictures, videos, and excitement. What a fool I must be to keep at it: like it's some kind of book ebook that I'll never finish and that nobody cares about anyway. Like one of the stories Machine of Death rejected.

This blog is like an Angelfire crap page except not written by a child, no stupid .gifs or burning text, and no annoying MIDI covers of Limp Bizkit songs. So maybe it's not like an Angelfire/Geocities abomination... but why in the hell can't I figure out a way to capitalize on A) putting effort into making a way cooler blog [is this even possible] B) marketing this blog since I care so much. I can't have one without the other and, to be honest, I'd rather skip both.

Making a blog cool, even with idiot-proof software/front-ends [sorry Blogger], isn't as easy as I think it is. I'd have to scrap Publicato and try something new, losing probably everything that I struggled to build. But, honestly, if all I'm going to do is write stuff, link to stuff, and occasionally drop a screengrab, then I might as well go with a less tacky layout.

I will take a look, and feel the pain of what I imagine are actual human readers (unless even this is a delusion, and I've just attracted a lot of search-engine crawlers). Wood grain accent – like an 80's station wagon – black text on white background within it (ugly, amateur) in a non-offensive font at the very least. Flawless punctuation, occasional misspellings and typos despite a clear pro-professional writing bias. Nothing cool at all. High concept in words, not execution. Nothing hand-coded or done lovingly. Lodged in the belly of a content farm.

So that's why I don't always update. I always think that I am fooling my fool self with a fool blog on the internet. I play blues records and drink, and I hate that I ever started a blog at all. People make money off of facebook pages and twitter accounts, the odd blogger goes on to get published by an actual website, and almost everything I write is instantly drowned in the deep, still waters of the internet. It seems to me a hopeless case of building with sand on sand. Holding water. Fooling an eagle. Being angry at a dolphin.

That is to say: impossible. Writing is like smoking cigarettes: it stinks, it's bad for you, you end up making the wrong friends and distancing the right ones. Writing on the internet with more than 500 words at any one time is like being Henry James (or Theodore Drieser) at a post-modern microfiction literature convention. You can practically feel the cold shoulder given you by anything cool or contemporary. Who gives even the slightest shit?

Reviewing Fog

Fog is a musical group (it is I assure you) or project (look it up) or whatever highfalutin concatenation. If I was stubborn and vain enough to try and review the group I would be forced to review at least three albums. On a blog, and I don't profess to know much about those, three album reviews is virtual suicide. You might as well bake bread, or bet on Political Maverick Jack Layton.

Please take a moment and note how both alternatives are good ones.

Now to properly review an album, you have to state with methodical correctness who authored it, who published it, and the year it was published. If you are a particular rebel you will open with a quote from a review of another type of art. Then you move on to comparing it to other albums that it sounds like. Once you have completed that torturous step, you get personal.

Break out some adjectives and make a good time of it: after all, you've broken the album down into a series of ethical and musical and historical components to make it relatable. Plus you've already established your judgment by your tone, and most of your thinking audience has already agreed or disagreed with you. Then you write a paragraph about how the album sits in the context of the times as you see them, and when you attach it to a particularly noxious news story they come and sit on your legs and stuff hot peppers into your nostrils.

Since I'm reckless and generally a sloppy blogger I will raise the stakes and tell you I can review Fog's first two albums in only one image. The album names (so you can be conscious of the true extent of my wager) are the eponymous "Fog" and "Ether Teeth":
 

You're all welcome