That’s All I Have to Tell You…

“That’s all I have to tell you…that’s all I’ve got to say.”

—The Last Unicorn

So, Chris, you might be wondering, you’ve already got a livejournal that you barely keep up with as it is…why do you need a blog, too?

The answer to that is two-fold. First of all, because I can…I have my own domain, so now I can host it with FTP without having to jump through hoops like having a GeoSh—I mean GeoCities account or having to go with blogspot.com (which I’m sure is very nice, but I like the control having my own webspace affords me).

Second, you don’t hear about livejournaling causing a journalistic and political revolution. There seems to be a distinction among web readers that livejournals are just that: journals of lives, “dear diarists” formed into a community—but blogs are more serious, journalistic endeavors that can topple dynasties and so forth. Of course, I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who use their blogs as little more than diaries, though I don’t think I’ve ever seen a journalistic (in the “news reporting” sense of the word) livejournal. Still, Drudge doesn’t run a livejournal, and you didn’t see livejournals from news reporters in Iraq…

Anyway, since I can, and I’m already a member of the free service, I’ve decided to start a weblog over here, that I will use for essays, editorials, reviews, and so on, thus reserving my livejournal for recording my day-to-day life. I’d just like to get one thing straight, though: I cordially despise the term “blog”—it sounds like the noise one makes while throwing up—and I don’t find “weblog” to be all that much better. This is a journal, darnit! Not a “live” one, but one where I can chronicle my thoughts and ideas. The only reason I use the term “blog” at all in this writeup is that I rather have to—it’s fallen into common usage and everyone knows what it means; it’s even part of the name of the service I’m using to record the thing.

But I’ll be darned if it shows up anywhere in the URL for the thing…