Can you tell what it is yet?

Last week, an acquaint­ance — and pre­sum­ably not a reg­u­lar reader of this site — said to me: “You keep a web­log, don’t you?”

I paused. I had to think about it for a moment.

Of course, I should have just answered in the affirm­at­ive and had done with it. But no, I was feel­ing in a thought­ful / fuck­wit mood, so I decided to reply: “I’m not sure. I main­tain a site on the web. But I don’t think it’s a web­log. It’s more of an inde­term­in­ate thing.” At that point, I was about to embark upon a lengthy digres­sion about the essen­tial nature of the web­log, what a web­log is, what a web­log isn’t. Indeed, I was fully pre­par­ing to ask myself — and any­one else who cared to listen — “Whither the weblog?”

For­tu­nately, I chose to glance over at my acquaint­ance, and I could imme­di­ately tell that his eyes were already glaz­ing over. This coin­cided with me real­ising that I no longer care about web­logs. The medium seems to have become more import­ant than the mes­sage; and really, it’s only the mes­sage that I care about. Words, all that stuff. Remem­ber? When the heat dies down, maybe I’ll regain my enthu­si­asm — but at the moment, all I want to do is frantic­ally dis­as­so­ci­ate (which means that the “W-word” at the top of the page is once again star­ing me in the face, in a sort of ugly and accus­ing fashion).

So, any­way, wel­come to this, um, thing. Whatever.