Brain Drain Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Blogger’

Have you ever analyzed what blogging means to you and how it influences what you write??You could learn a lot.?Recently, I did just that for Esther Prokopienko, a grad student at the College of Saint Rose. Researching both the act and platform of blogging, she incorporated the following answers into her research and posted the resulting paper, The Scholarly Writer/Blogger: A New Discursive Space,?on her own blog, Esther’s Space.

1. How long have you been blogging? Why did you choose to begin? Do you notice any changes in your writing/thinking process from before you were a blogger to now, as an active blogger? Do you use blogging as a way of thinking through ideas? How do you use the different mediums (journals, blogs, livejournals, etc) for thinking and writing?

While spending a great deal of time overseas as a flight attendant (1997-2001), I had begun a blog of sorts, The Lincoln Street Chronicles,?to keep friends and family updated on my personal activities and observations. I?d also share pre-digital, scanned photos of my layovers. That primitive HTML site was hosted by Geocities and I would add entries to the top of a free, single and static web page. There was no mechanism for readers to enter comments, but I sometimes posted interesting email replies under the main post. I certainly wasn?t the only person doing this, but I suspect that blogs, as they are known today, stemmed from this type of ?web logging.?

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I learned last week through the WordPress pingback feature that?a substantial?number?of Brain Drain posts had been mentioned?on another site. As any blogger would probably agree, to see a pingback to what you’ve written?is an honor of sorts, a hat tip to your brilliance or at least a?mockery of?something quirky you’ve said. You smile,?feel full of yourself?for a minute (sometimes two)?and move on.?Instead, this?list of pingbacks aroused suspicion. This is a partial view:

• literature linked here saying, “Silence Speaks Louder In response to Richard Barsa …”
• literature linked here saying, “Anne Finch: Creating Her Own Space The poem ?The …”
• literature linked here saying, “Quills: Voyeur as the Voice of Reason The Voyeur a …”
• literature linked here saying, “Objectivity: A Question of Perspective In referenc …”

Although I’d like to think I’m that important, nobody is worthy of?being legitimately quoted?twelve times in a single day.

I followed the pings to?their source. There, a solid,?orange banner bore the photo of a young woman-child. She wore a skimpy, green silk halter and?cowboy hat. Her long, blonde highlights were?seductively fanned by some off-screen electronic device yet there was an innocence about her that threw me.?The small image was cocked to one side and framed as if it were a film negative but?that?didn’t produce the?negative feeling in my gut as much as the?title?”literature” in bold letters (with a?lower case?L and quotes included) under which were all my latest posts. Only one, Aisha in Rwanda: In Need of Humanity,?had been?offered up for redistribution, NOT?MY WHOLE DAMN BLOG.

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