A Blog About Blogging, Part II – Digging Deeper

Stephen Weber
August 19, 2018

So Much to Say
At this point you’re probably thinking, “There’s more? Good grief.” Yes, this blog will
probe deeper into the world of blogging, providing even more superficial and
inapplicable knowledge for you, the exploited and bamboozled reader.
I have utmost respect for bloggers that can research, crank out, or concoct both stellar and
marginally interesting or relevant material on a regular basis. They must be full of ideas,
or maybe they just feel they can dump whatever they want – even the most sensationally
mundane – on the public. Maybe they’re just convinced they’re good at what they do, and
some are. Confidence is a good thing. Those of you that know me are very aware that I’m
not much of a verbal person. As a matter of fact, I have a daily “spoken word limit”. My
wife doesn’t care for this, because when I use most or all of my daily word allotment at
work, there aren’t many words left to use on or with her when I get home. However, give
me a piece of paper, a topic, and some time, and I’m likely to just ramble on. Maybe you
already picked up on that. You’re thinking, “can he just get to the point, already?” You
may keep reading on in the hope that I’ll actually have something important to say, some
takeaway. But that’s a dicey assumption on your part. I’m not even sure you’re
comfortable being addressed so directly here; that’s generally not supposed to happen in
a blog. You’ve become a participant in this charade, whether you like it or not at this
point. No, what’s going on here is stream of consciousness bit, and as long as I’m
conscious and uninterrupted by life, this could go on for a while. Heck, I could even put
this away for a while and come back to it to keep adding more. It’s your call, at this point,
if you want to proceed. I’d like to suggest that the real gripping part of this BLOG ON
BLOGGING is forthcoming, but I can’t guarantee it. I absolutely don’t want you to feel
like you’ve been drawn into some sort of Seinfeldian world, grasping for a thread that
holds things together, some metanarrative to guide you through this mess.
This is a characteristic of many bloggers, the ability to ramble on incessantly, hedging a
topic, and occasionally dangling a carrot of intrigue to keep the reader hooked. You
certainly aren’t getting any of that here.

Leave it to the Experts

Many blogs are written by experts in the field, highly trained and respected individuals
who studied a given topic for years, consulted Wikipedia for the real truth, and
relentlessly scanned articles in People magazine at the doctor’s office for additional
superfluous and trivial data and documentation. I’ve even known some food bloggers, for
example, who eat regularly in order to stay fully informed and abreast of developments
and trends in the culinary world, using those occasional eating experiences as fodder for
blogs. Expert bloggers, utilizing their self-appointed status in their given fields, can break
things down for the below-average readers and ill-informed consumers like us. I
appreciate what these experts contribute to the field, and I totally trust these people 100%
of the time. I marvel that some have the gift to quickly cite unsubstantiated, anonymous,
or undocumented information or studies. This further demonstrates their mastery of their
chosen field. They can also provide a highly biased or emotionally charged perspective
on a given topic, further strengthening their credibility. Others consider themselves
experts on a variety of subjects, an enviable and rich gift. We all want to get know meet
these types to fully benefit from their captivatingly conceited and egotistically
charismatic personalities.
I don’t consider myself an expert in anything, despite nine and a half years of college and
three degrees. I suppose I have something to offer in regard to some focused areas of
study and interest. In general, though, discipline-based knowledge doesn’t particularly
interest me. I teach at a liberal arts institution with an interdisciplinary curriculum. I am
interested in how to connect fields of inquiry, to think critically, to question, to analyze,
to synthesize information, and to subtly but confidently befuddle and inflame readers
such as yourselves. One certainly wouldn’t want those skills put to work in a blog, a
format more designed to provide one-dimensional expertise or perspective to the engaged
reader. Alas, I have perhaps not given the blogger or bloggee enough credit, because
clearly there is a market and audience for the deep insights, universally applicable, and
consistently well-crafted information shared by expert bloggers on specific topics.
Figure E7 – “Toilet”: This is a picture of a toilet, a subject of
keen interest to the writer. Its multidisciplinary connections are
myriad: aesthetics, design, engineering, sociology, psychology,
physics, medicine, print media and communications, etc. This
particular toilet also has economic ties. It’s a toilet in the train
station in Lucerne, Switzerland, and it cost me 2 Euros to use, but
it was impeccably clean.

What’s Inside Your Head?

Many blogs give us deep insight into the multi-facetedness and captivating personality of
the writer, sometimes exposing their deepest and innermost feelings and general
emotional instability. These blogs can be masterfully gripping; they reel us into the world
of the writer. We can find ourselves, as readers, fully immersed in the thought process,
and empathetic to the plethora of emotions experienced by the author. The blogger wants
us inside his or her head. Much like an episode of the Brady Bunch (any one, pick any
one), we are immediately and helplessly drawn in, tossed about at the schizophrenic
whims of the plot or storyline.
Believe me, you just don’t want to get inside my head. I don’t even like, understand, or
acknowledge what goes on in there. To better illustrate this, below you will find three
separate MRI’s of the inside of my head. The first one (see Figure 7.b) is after a full night
of sleep (generally 5-6 hours). The second one (see Figure H.3X ) is after consuming a
full can of Mountain Dew in one go. The last one is after participating in a
lecture/discussion on the ideas of 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (See
Figure 8.ü.#).

Figure 7.b Figure H.3X

Figure 8.ü.#

Now, I’m going to have to be honest with you here – and that’s something you’ll always
get from me, honesty, honestly – those aren’t actual MRI’s of the inside of my head, but I
did take the original pictures, and I did manipulate them with software tools all by myself,
but I didn’t manipulate them a second time after I manipulated them the first time. So I
want to be clear that these images, which I originally suggested were MRI’s - then
corrected myself as a matter of integrity - have only been manipulated once. I also
checked with a podiatrist friend of mine who specializes in foot fungi and he said that
even though they weren’t actual MRI’s of my brain, he thought they pretty accurately
capture what he imagined the inside of my head to look like. He also said since they were
manipulated only once, that makes them even closer to reality, once removed. So, having
now seen these once-manipulated images, not really MRI’s of my brain, and having read
this ridiculous discussion so far, would you willfully succumb to getting inside my head,
knowing what’s not going on in there?
Stay tuned for blog three in this series of Blogs on Blogging.