My dear publisher has asked me to write a Blog, which has always sounded to me like the monster in a 50's B horror movie.

I gather the term "blog" came from "Web-Log" (I bet nine out of ten Bloggers don't even know that... they just hear a word that sounded funny or cool and just jumped on the bandwagon.) My first instinct was to resist, since generally I think of blogs as dreck that is mindlessly taking up bandwidth where a bunch of people with strong opinions and weak intellects rant and rant and rand about things that bother them, mostly because they don;t know anything about these things.

Much Like I am doing now. I don't read blogs, and I don't care to, for the previously stated reason. Yet now, I am asked to write one. ...regularly!

I write a monthly newsletter in which I tell entertaining little stories about musical gear that you could buy from me, which has a few thousand faithful readers.

In reality, it probably has a few hundred faithful readers, and several thousand faithful receivers and deleters. It's easy to receive and delete. Since it is a "bulk e-mail, you can do so without guilt!.

The fact is, my opinions of blogs is that they are cheap and easy and pretty much worthless... the Political blogs are only read by people who agree with them, so it's a thought that there should be a socialist leaning blog and a radical conservative blog that should become popular and then have a sentence at the end that kills everyone who reads it...

Like, My dog, it has no nose... how does it smell? Awful!

(Duetsch speaking monty Python enthusiasts will get that)

At least that would leave the iWorld full of moderates who could actually work together and get something done!

No, I say, I am not a blogger. I write fiction, and I write non-fiction that is designed to help people help themselves (can you say, "Self Help" ...) but when I write non fiction that is simply designed to express my opinion, I usually have written them in my journal... or in letters to friends...

In reality, what I write when I write in this style is an Essay... yeah, like in school... only by my own choice.

I am an essayist, and I will do it for my publisher to put on the web... so it shall be a "Web Essay" or, for those of you too busy to actually fully complete your one syllable words... a Bessay. (Which is NOT the name of a COW)

I have much disdain for the disposable "journalism" of the virtual world, and I am loathe to contribute. And I must say that there are probably responsible, thoughtful journalists and essayists out there writing blogs, that can be found by gleaning through terabytes of useless drivel... but I have never read any... But that's really more obvious than it seems on the outset, since I have never bothered to read a blog, or even glean for a good one.

I hope that if you are in the habit of reading these kinds of things, that you are not offended by this view... or if you ARE offended by this view that instead of stopping, you will actually put some thought into it and figure out WHY you are offended. That is the job of an essayist... not to rant and rave and sway people by logical thought or illogical browbeating to their points of view,. No, an essayist is supposed to inform and inspire thought.

Think about it!

I hope you do.

I'll write again when there is actually something to say. (And I'm mulling something right now, so hopefully it won't be too long before real worthwhile ideas come out of it.)