Why blog?

Congratulations to interesting folks at www.unfogged.com and their roommates at the Flophouse for making the front page of The New York Times Style section. There's a part of me that's jealous (when I last checked, their blog had 484 comments on said article alone). But there's another part of me that's just a wee bit annoyed at The New York Times for painting a picture of bloggers as these cool bohemian people who invite you into their cybersalons, where you feel a little dumb for not knowing what poetics is or if you should ditch US Weekly for Naomi Novik.

So, the article got me thinking: bloggers probably fall into four categories:

1. LOOK AT ME, I'M SMARTER AND HIPPER THAN YOU.
These guys read Kafka for sport and get all the news they need from the BBC.

2. IT'S CHEAPER THAN SCRAPBOOKING.
These blogs were created by Aunt Matilda after she took that really neat class at the community college. Aunt Matilda probably could have saved some bandwidth (and pride) by keeping your family's history in photo albums on her coffee table.

3. 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE.
These guys think that Washington Life comes out too infrequently and they NEED to see their beautiful selves in the most excellent locations that no one has yet discovered.

4. SYLVIA PLATH.
These guys think the Internet is like open mic night for poets. Yeah, some of it may be good, but all too often these blogs reek of pre-pubescent awakenings.

And then there's me. My reasons for blogging change, depending on the topic on which I'm blogging. I hope I'm not so self-righteous as to project an attitude that my reasons are more noble than anyone else's, because they're usually not -- I like to see my hit numbers increase just like anyone else, I love doing Google searches on my name and seeing my blog come up, blah, blah, blah. So if anyone finds a noble blogger, please pass the site along to me so that I can burn incense on their altar.