Endless Reams of Bad Prose

I pause to reflect on this blog's subtitle, lifted from Camille Paglia's sweeping indictment of the weblogging scene. What amazing arrogance we bloggers have, to think that we can shirk the disciplines and standards of conventional writing and spew out our thoughts in jumbled, unedited text with no thought of self-restraint, or of even retaining the interest of the reader! The sad fact is that there are far more avid bloggers than avid blog readers. Granted, my blogs and some others flirt with self-mockery, realizing and even celebrating the ludicrous self-importance of blogging, but at its core, it's a pathetic venture, a public exposé on a massive scale of what would previously be confined to our diaries and journals. Of course, to be fair, I am much like a person writing about his disgust at corporate embezzlement using stationary from his office...as I say, this is yet another chapter of Neufeldian Bad Prose.

I find blogging to be the ideal compromise for me; lacking the discipline to commit myself to the construction and writing of columns, I confine my less organised thoughts here where perhaps someday I will be able to gather them together into more professional pieces of writing. Also, blogging is a wonderful thing for my wife, as I tend to spend a bit less time ranting to her about the latest political news, when I've already ranted to you!

But in the end I know that little to no material posted here is original, and few thoughts I put forward are unique, new, or exceptional...this is a haven for a muddled rehash of thoughts, and I can offer little else. But in the end, the purpose is still entirely selfish...it documents my ideas and thoughts like a journal, nothing else. Any readers who wander on here are most MOST welcome, but my goal is not to enlighten the masses.

A great example of what I'm talking about? I hate these few paragraphs, I think its terrible, longwinded writing. Do I delete it? Nooooo. Do I even edit it? Not at all. Rubbish, I tell you, all RUBBISH!!!

One of these days I'll just go completely stream-of-consciousness on you all and then we'll see...