Wednesday, October 25, 2006

What’s My …

Even an old hand with a long established blog might find himself with a thing or two to learn from a relative newcomer. Especially if his blog has limited appeal outside a small circle of readers.

One thing I’ve picked up, while surfing other blogs, is that you’re more likely to appeal to a wide audience with a short, snappy, writing style, long on hyperbole and invective and short on analysis and argument. And short on sentences too. In fact. The. Shorter. The. Better.

Another useful trick, it seems, is to finish every post with a pithy, irritating sentence that doesn’t mean anything at all. No more than two words, three syllables at most. Something like

Catch phrase!

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

And Now We Are Four

I had a bit of a panic on Friday. For some reason I got it into my head that it was my bloggiversary, so I cranked out a quick, celebratory post. Once it was published, I realised that I was three days early so I quickly deleted it before anyone had a chance to notice and link to it.

Yesterday, I was out in Melbourne’s inner Eastern suburbs, sitting on a boathouse balcony beside the Yarra – soon to be cleaned up so that it’s finally safe to capsize your hired rowboat so that your belusted’s t-shirt clings to those voluptuous but firm breasts with the mild chill of the water teasing her nipples into pert erection, clearly visible through the clinging semi-transparent wet knitted cotton. Unless she’s wearing a black Sepultura t-shirt, of course. While I was musing on the potential benefits of cleaning up the Yarra, my companion for lunch and and a few drinks asked when my bloggiversary was coming up – and I remembered that we were celebrating it. After a fashion.

After a couple of hours of conversation, we parted. By the time I got home the four glasses of red and the heat of the day were starting to do their soporific work and I took myself to bed. I woke again around 8:30pm – bugger getting up again there’s sod all on the telly tonight – and at 1:00am this morning – bugger sitting at the computer to get anything written now; I’ve already missed the date it can wait until tomorrow.

So, once again, I’ve missed the opportunity for some nostalgic confabulation about the good old days, when the majority of bloggers were people who could actually write, and do it well, while these days blogging has become the preserve of failed fame whores who couldn’t even get through a Neighbours audition, score a gig on Australia’s Biggest Loser lack even the modicum of musical talent and good looks you need to get through the Australian Idol auditions and are too socially dysfunctional for even the producers of Survivor to put on screen. The main reason I sometimes get that impression is that I spend too much time visiting the wrong blogs.