The Trouble With Blogging
I think I'm gradually realizing there's one thing I'm not crazy about
with blogs: The
tedium of tracking a discussion that wends its way through multiple
blogs. It's especially frustrating when I just want to respond to
one specific thing that's sandwiched in a fairly long entry.
Example:
Sean
Collins takes issue with
my
description of Bendis' dialogue as
"Tarantino-esque," stating
John was certainly mistaken in calling Bendis's dialogue
ripped-off
Tarantinoisms--it's actually ripped-off Aaron Sorkinisms. But Bendis is
actually better than Sorkin, because the dialogue is crafted
(as Jason suggests) not to sound clever, but to sound human.
It's an interesting, if somewhat fine, distinction. And I'd like
to react to it, but at the same time I feel it's not something that
merits its own blog entry. (So instead I craft an entire blog
entry around why it doesn't deserve its own blog entry. Yeah, I
know.) So I guess one thing message boards do better than blogs
is facilitate discussions in smaller increments. Perhaps it's
only a personal preference, but I find it much easier to scroll through
a thread than to click through multiple sites. (Immediate
counterargument: Except when message boards grow littered with
irrelevant comments, trolling, flaming, unwieldy quotes and sigs, and
general inanity.)
At the very least I
really wish Sean (and others) would
reconsider
implementing a comments feature on his (their) blog(s). I know
it's not a
democracy and he runs it as he sees fit, but as a reader, there are
times I'd much prefer to fire off a quick reply instead of composing a
new entry on my own blog, linking to the appropriate entry on his blog,
and finally writing out my short response. (As an incentive (?)
for Sean to add a comments feature, I'm going to withhold my thoughts
on his opinion, saving them for such a time when I can post them on his
blog in some form.)
As an example of why I think allowing comments can be good and useful,
consider this exchange: I linked to
one
of Jim Henley's entries
to bolster
my
own argument; Jim read my piece and thought I
misconstrued his point, so he clarified his position in a
comment;
I
explained
that I understood his original point but admitted that I may have
phrased it poorly. Issue addressed without either of us having to
wait for the other to update his blog with his take on the other's post.
Now to touch on the hot memes of the week:
- Manga: Not necessarily crap, although I'm sure some
(lots?)
exists. Possibly clichéd
or formulaic
at times, but deep down, what isn't? Why not try out some of the
manga recommended by critics you kinda-sorta-mostly trust?
- Floppies: Not inherently bad, but the cost is
becoming
prohibitive. I'd like 'em a lot more if they were a lot cheaper,
but they're not, for various reasons. So my greedy/selfish side
prefers formats that provide more bang for my buck (ignoring issues of
content quality for the sake of argument/comparison).
- Palomar: Ordered,
check.
Finally, regarding Tuesday's same-sex decision in Mass., I'm still
mulling everything over. I'm at the stage where I've succeeded in
confusing myself so thoroughly that I can't even justify why
I'm
married, let alone why anyone else should be. (No offense,
honey.) So I'm not going to blog anything about SSM or the
court's ruling until I can make sense out of my own thoughts.
This may take some time, especially if I decide I need to go to law
school before I can parse out just how and why marriage is a
fundamental right and how the strict scrutiny analysis should play
out. I also realized that I skipped the endnotes when I read the
decision the first time, so I'd like to go back and reread
everything.
(The
HTML
version makes it especially easy to jump back and forth between the
main arguments and the endnotes.)
In the meantime, I thought I'd recommend
this article by Slate's
Dahlia Lithwick.
Dahlia, one of my favorite pundits (her
Supreme Court
Dispatches are hilarious and insightful), raises a lot of issues
I'd really like to see addressed by those who kvetch about the
"sanctity of marriage" and how allowing SSM will "irreparably harm" the
institution. I'd like to be an idealist about marriage, too, but
I don't think it's fair to hold same-sex couples to some abstract,
impossible-to-actualize Platonic Form of Marriage when opposite-sex
couples get an "Anything Goes" license along with their marriage one.
