Fence Post

(Kate's email) Re: discussion you had with Mom about Lindsey's fabulous blog: edit your blog, by all means, but don't force your tone; it comes through in your writing.

(My email) Don’t force your tone because it already amply comes through in your writing? Or, don’t force your tone because it’s obvious that you’re forcing it in your writing and you don’t want that?

My blog is scarce due to a lack of tone. I generally don’t have a tone about much that’s worth writing about. I need the tone. Lol. Am I showing hints of being contrived as opposed to impassioned?

I’ve also been exploring the blog world. I look at a lot of blogs, some just skimming them. I can’t believe how many blogs there are out there that are purposeless and boring. Like human tofu, blandly blogging about which tea they had that morning, their cats, the trip to the grocery store, the meal they made. Holy crap! This stuff is noteworthy? Now, therein lies the question – noteworthy to whom? If they have a specific reader base that’s eating that shit up then they’ve satisfied their blog’s purpose. Blogs, even more so than other writing, are chiefly driven by who their audience is. The people for whom you write govern the purpose of your blog. If your perception of your audience morphs, so does your blog. Like Brain, who, originally, was giving the family updates as a means to not have to send multiple tailored emails to everyone who asked her how it was going, her blog has morphed into an entity of its own because of its expanded audience. Its original purpose is now a component of its sum purpose.

You have exemplified a different and equally organic approach to blogging by remaining true to your audience throughout. When I started mine I had no idea who I wanted my audience to be. Family only? That’s special but begs unique restrictions on content. Strange readers? A blog without a reader base would serve little purpose. Friends only? Maybe a little attention-desperate. There was this exercise we were taught to do way back in junior high English. Whenever we wrote, creatively or otherwise, we always had to write three lines at the top of our first empty page answering these questions: In this writing, what are my audience, purpose and message? It’s clear so many blogs are written without the answers these questions. The proof: The amount of blogs that are titled “random ramblings” or “just the thoughts and scribblings of a. . .” This approach gives people an excuse to write about nothing and, boy, do some of them write about nothing. This stamp of non-commitment seems to say, “If you don’t find my writing or what I’m writing about interesting, don’t blame me, my disclaimer is at the top of my blog.” (I conveyed this to Lindsey and she changed her title to Kiss My Ass. Ha ha. What a girl!)

I don’t agree with this vagrant modus operandi when it comes to writing. One should have a purpose, take a stand, have an attitude, a tone. Fuck it. Maybe I’ll blog this email, it’s got tone. Effective writers are not just read but are agreed with and disagreed with as well. The only way to get away with writing about next to nothing is if it’s humourous. Don’t tell me about what it’s like to sit on the fence post unless you’re telling me about the splinters in your ass. (Dave Barry’s blog is a great example of topical and humourous. Of course, he’s a Pulitzer Prize winner.) And don’t say shit like, “That’s just my opinion.” How redundant is that statement in a blog? You don't have to defend that your blog is subjective, that's the charm.

If you’re a fan of tea drinkers or cat lovers I guess there are blogs out there for you. But there are some clearly well written ones out there and I want to find more of them.

But that's just my opinion.

Warning, Contains Nudity

I have a problem with faith – well, fanaticism - when it's manifested at the expense of intellect. The two may very well be mutually exclusive.

I think for the most part humans follow a code of live and let live. It’s when this code is violated that folks start to get ornery. Unless you’re trading a cup of cream for a bag of crabapples or forming a block watch community, there’s no real reason to go and fuck with your neighbour, hence, occupation -> convoy bombing. But people get especially riled up when it comes to matters of faith. That includes messing with the way god-fearing people believe the way their future will unfold. Imagine being entitled to such a thing!

Lately, the religious ranks, including the laic, have been coming out of the woodwork with a very concerned collective voice. So what’s gotten them so agitated? Who violated the code first?

The scientific community, of course, who are mere weeks away from switching on their biggest and, some say, most irresponsible toy to date. The Large Hadron Collider is the world’s largest particle accelerator and is built in a 27 km circumference underground at the Franco-Swiss border. It is intended to smash together beams of protons at nearly the speed of light and have a multitude of readings and pictures taken of those collisions. It is expected to recreate on, a sub-microscopic scale, conditions that may have existed only a few nanoseconds after the big bang. A universe baby photo, if you will. Scientists are also hoping to create the first observable circumstance of the Higgs boson particle which is theorized to give otherwise massless elementary particles their mass, given that particles are made up of smaller particles which are made up of smaller particles, etc., which are made up in the end of only energy. It should be noted that the Higgs boson particle is also known as the “God particle”.

And the fear has been rolling in. Cowering troglodytes have been ringing in with their two cents ever since the machine’s completion. Everything from saying "leave well enough alone" to the rehashing of Nostradamus’ doomsday prophecies to detailed video animations depicting exactly how, get this, the earth will get sucked into a black whole created by the LHC. (Apparently fanaticism and computer graphics animation are not mutually exclusive.) I especially enjoy those diatribes that, claiming science is doing nothing but hurtling humanity towards its own destruction, are themselves based on science, albeit erroneous. Some simply ask the scientific community how we are going to be fundamentally better off by knowing just a little bit more about the universe, sounding like a plea to turn off the scary bright light of the future. Others appear to think we’ve tinkered under the hood to create a 6th gear in a car for which there is not enough safe road – and everyone is in the back seat. Perhaps hanging a rosary from the rearview mirror would help. At any rate, every argument seems to come from deeper within the holy cave.

Godspeak from small children is tolerable because they’re cute, and at their age it’s understood they’ve not stood a chance against the imposition of fully subscribed parents. Growth-stunting, back woods, paranoid propaganda is dumbfounding, however, from adults, especially ones who hold teaching and political positions.

So why the armageddon attitude? Is it simply a fear of dying? I can certainly understand that. But then why bathe it in religious rhetoric? Are there Christian soldiers out there who are not ready to be judged by their maker? Or is there something they don’t want the world to learn, like Creation may be nothing more than a cool story with nudity, for instance? One thing seems to be certain, every religious doomsday alarmist is grossly under-informed about the function and capabilities of the LHC, to say nothing of the nonsensical theories they purport. So I ask, why must fanaticism come at the expense of intellect?