The Why Of Dog

Random Barking

Most people I know who cruise the Intertubes have a handful of sites which they visit regularly. They also use it for topic-specific searches (Which actor played the cop Bruce Willis punched at the end of that movie on a river which I can't remember the name of?), and just for random cruising.

Pretty pictures, writing that makes us laugh, cry, or not; funny videos. As a species, we demand our Entertainment -- and where there's entertainment, there's advertising and data mining and money to be made. Facebook knows. So does Little Lloyd Blankfein (CEO of Goldman Sachs VampSquid).

For the sites I visit regularly, I'm amazed at the amount of personal opinion about -- well, stuff that gets tossed out there, embedded like raisins or ratshit amongst more 'serious' essays about Our Life In These Times, or posts based on their professional work as financial analysts, historians, or monster truck devotees.

Opinions about the best martini, whether Jimmy Page or Rory Gallagher is the better classic rock guitarist; reports about their vacations; or why, uh, "intimate" relationships in marriage can actually be Teh Hot. It's like reading someone's diary, with misspellings, misinformation and syntax errors intact -- but, I suspect you already know this about the Intertubes.

It's the functional equivalent of a playground (or a neighborhood bar), with all the arbitrary supervision, rules you learn as you go, and ultimately organized for someone else's financial benefit. But you hang out there because it's flashy, and fun, and sometimes you're lonely and have no where else to go. Unlike the neighborhood bar, it can also be a place where everyone doesn't know your name (this blog a case in point).

Some sites are nearly all random junk tossed out of the unsorted, sock-drawer minds of people who should spend less time online (Some -- the Goldbergs and Malkins, the Coulters, McArdles and Althouses, shouldn't be allowed Intertube access, at all). Occasionally, they find an acorn and publish something enlightening, but it's like hunting for a bomber in the chaff: Your radar has better things to do.

We who blog can't resist posting that personal and meaningless, opinionated Stuff, though -- because we're paradoxical creatures, who crave order and regularity and at the same time seek the "new", the random and surprising. And everybody who blogs does it.

I'm doing it right now. Woof Woof Woof Woof. Bark Bark. Bark.

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