How's it going? Well, it has been a while, hasn't it? Over a month in fact, and the last post was pretty slight. I guess part of the issue for me is not knowing what the blog is for. If it's an online diary, wouldn't I rather keep my diary private? Well, I suppose that rather than negatively assuming the blog is a diary for show-offs, it is in fact an excellent way of communicating a point of view to millions of other people and thus allowing all those other people (who chance upon it and have the patience and sympathy to read it) an insight into the life of someone else. And maybe in a small way that increases people's general experience of the "other", thus slightly increasing the patience and sympathy of one human for other humans. Which is what we all need, I reckon.*

But that's just my theory, isn't it? In reality, much of my blog has been spent ridiculing certain other bloggers and making the odd jibe against American culture, which can only consist of generalisations when the jibes concern around 280 million people. This approach certainly does not add to the sum of human kindness, and yet it is also what a lot of other bloggers do. However, while lambasting myself in the above sentences I come to realise that there are checks and balances: a bit of gentle fun poked at some bloggers is balanced against some lauding and praising of others. Any knee-jerk political statements are balanced by more detailed honesty-driven musings. So it isn't all bad: perhaps it evens out at "neutral".


*Apparently it's one of the main gains from reading novels, and much as this appeals to me, a great many novels are long and tiresome (and crap), so it's hard to know which ones will give me genuine insight and which will piss me off. At least with blogs I can just click "next blog" when I lose patience with the current one. Hmm, that opens up another tangential debate as to the weak minds of the internet generation, so let's not go there. I'm bored.  ¶ 14:40