Debra Galant Explains the Universe

Things are slow

Things are very slow over in the Universe today. I waited all day for my dad to notice that I'd made him a blog. I wasn't exactly expecting a trackback, but maybe an e-mail, a comment, a post, a call. Nothing.

Not much in the way of comments or e-mail or phone calls from anyone else either.

Meanwhile, I'm hearing about how TPB, Esq. over at Unbillable Hours is racking up the hits today, what with his mention by Jay Rosen, and then there's Jo over at Spanglemonkey, whose "International Blog Comment Week" made her the blog with the 51st most "contagious idea" speeding around the blogosphere. And I'm checking my Sitemeter and.... they trickle in.

I know, I know. I've had my good days, my Jay Rosen mentions, my Jeff Jarvis mentions, my VanRamblings mentions, my John Shabe mentions, my Media Drop mentions, my Mark Federman mentions, my Coffeegrounds mentions, my Joe Territo mentions, my share of Blog Comment Day or Week, but that was so yesterday. I mean, blogosphere, what have you done for me lately?

Which all sounds like so much sour grapes, but I think it's worth thinking about in light of all the BloggerCon discussion floating around. Because despite all this serious talk of blogs as journalism and blogs as art and blogs as business, there's the fact that blogs and blogging are also a game. And it's very easy, at any given time, to see if you're winning. Or losing. How are your Technorati numbers? How many hits? Who are your referrers? I have quoted Mark Federman on this before: "Blogstats are the crack cocaine of the Internet." Or seen another way, they turn us all into Ed Koch: How'm I doin', how'm I doin', how'm I doin'?

And now I'm going to do a very Carrie Bradshaw thing here. So imagine the cursor going across the screen as you read the payoff question: Have we allowed numbers to define us? I know some of this will be part of the discussion on Shirky's Power Law. But while I'm moping, I'll point out that right now Shirky's Power Law is scheduled at the same time as Jeff Jarvis's talk about how blogs can make you money.

And if that wasn't enough to depress a person, there's the fact that my dad, who I finally had to call to get him to notice his new weblog, wanted to give up in the first five minutes when he had trouble logging into TypePad.

But, wait! Wait! This just in! Do I hear the clatter of the teletype? The radio news sounder? The trumpets from on high? Why yes...

John Shabe has made my day with this flash, fresh from the April Fools Newswire:

With Buzzmachine dark, few got the news that the New York Times has done an about-face and enbraced Weblogging such that the newspaper's entire staff will be each keeping blogs. The blogs will be the centerpeice of NYT's Web site redesign. Word is Debra Galant Explains The Universe inspired the sea change and that Times' brass offered Debra a big fancy job with a big fancy salary and a big fancy office to run the whole Weblogging thing, but she politely declined the offer so that she could devote more time to helping get her dad's new blog get off the ground

.

It is, as Shabe says, "A Great Day in Blogville." After all.

Except, can you believe that now, NOW, when I'm all done, ready to go out into the world again, humming and smiling, my wireless internet connection should go out? Man, things are slow.

The internet food chain

This graphic was racing around the internet this week like a cat on fire.

(I first saw it at What is the Message?)

Well, that's one explanation of How News Travels on the Internet. Here's mine:

Send this to everyone you know and then maybe I'll move up the food chain.

Karen the blogger

And by the way, welcome my friend Karen Kaplowitz to the blogosphere. She blogged me long before either one of us knew what the word meant, sending me hilarious commentaries in the form of lists. When I started blogging, she began to investigate the giant web of self-expression, starting with my blogroll and jumping from link to link. You'll enjoy her humor and her Polaroid transfers as well.

Mama Blog and her two baby blogs

Is it unmotherly to withhold google juice from one’s own offspring?

Let’s say, for example, the Child A has a website and Child B has a website, and that Child B’s website is wildly funny and Child A’s is not.

Child B writes, for example, this parody on parental translation:

Okay, now don't get me wrong, I think my parents are cool. But I do not appriciate it when they lie to me. And your parents will never get a lie past you if you read this translation page: If you say "When will we be there yet?" in a car, "Soon," means:"I'd tell you but I promised we'd be earlier than that." Take a shower, do your homework, make your bed, and other junk all mean "Get out of my face." Bed time is not when you get tired but when your parents haven't said anything for a while, and decide to say something. "I'll think about it," means "No," "Probably," means "No," and "It's your decision," means "No." That's nice," means, "I complimented you, now can I watch my show?" "I don't like the way you're complaining," means, "Stop trying to make a point." And what else I hate is that grown-ups think that kids will run around with pot the second they take their off them. And if in a shrink's office, if nothing they say leaves the room, why do parents get progress results? Aside from all that, grown-ups are usually nice. Usually...

Whereas Child A’s website is, well, let’s put it this way, a website only a mother could love:

Hey Welcome to the coolest website on the planet!!! My name is Margot and someday I'm going to be a star! I Love the theatre. Broadway rocks my socks! I like to sing, I like sushi, and rainbows!

Rainbows? Sheesh.

Now let us suppose that said mother put Child B’s website on her blogroll and that Child B soon discovers to his delight he has received a major infusion of google juice. In fact when he types the name of his website - “Your Average Midget” - into Google, it actually comes up. He's famous! A giant among midgets! And who does he have to thank? His mother, of course. (Actual conversation: “Who gives you google juice?” “Mommy gives me google juice.”)

Now Child A wants on the mother’s blogroll. Child A wants google juice.

So far this hypothetical mother has resisted, on the grounds of, well, standards. And she has started receiving, well, comments on her blogsite from Child A, and the comments are beginning to sound like ransom notes:

I luv you website Posted by: Margot at February 15, 2004 06:47 PM

I wanna be a link now Posted by: Margot at February 15, 2004 06:56 PM

A mother who puts her anonymous readership ahead of her own Child A would be a very, very bad mother, right?

OK. So let’s say this mother (ok, it’s me, all right), let’s say I offered google juice to Child A if she cleaned up her room. In other words, let’s say I offered to sell my readers out just for the momentary pleasure of seeing Child A’s floor clear of 18 million outfits. You would understand, dear reader, wouldn’t you?

But could I possibly be forgiven for giving the google juice away when the room is not cleaned up, just because Child A, asleep in her messy room, momentarily looks angelic? Would that not violate every principle of motherhood, blogrolling and negotiating with hostage-takers – not to mention teaching Child A that a mother’s bribes mean nothing?

Oh what the hell. What’s a little nepotism on the world wide web?

Sleep, dear Child A, and let me sprinkle a little fairy dust, um, I mean, google juice on you. Dream sweet dreams of being discovered, by a very special search engine.

Midnight madness

Did anybody else catch the interview on Morning Edition Thursday with Alice Flaherty, author of The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block and the Creative Brain?

It turns out that this urge to tell the world every little thing that’s on our mind is a disease and it actually has a name, hypergraphia. “Compulsive writing” (and I always thought it was just being prolific) is actually a sign of flawed brain chemistry. The take-home message of the piece: it’s a lot better than writer’s block, but if you’re up past midnight scribbling away, you’re not well.

Well I could have told you that.

As I write this, it’s 12:36 am, and I’ve been going hard since the morning, racing to Newark and Jersey City and then Montclair, and I’d finally caught up on e-mails, turned off the computer and climbed into bed when I remembered hearing this story on NPR. And I just had to make sure that everybody in Blog World knew about it.

The question on the table: If staying up past midnight writing is a disease, then is the fact that thousands of people are now up posting to the blogosphere an epidemic? I’m too tired to check the CDC. But check out the story on NPR and tell me what you think.

Through the looking glass

© Debra Galant 2004

I feel as if I’ve just stepped through the looking glass, and into a very, very crowded bar.

In 2003, I was still a blogging virgin. I wasn’t posting columns to my webpage yet. Today – three weeks and about a million internet hours later – I learned about google juice.

I learned that you get good google juice by linking to, and better yet, being linked to by other websites. Particularly, you know, those popular blogs and websites, the ones where all the cool bloggers hang out.

Which is, when you think of it, the same principle behind getting invited to sit with the popular kids in the cafeteria. Be sitting with them already.

But here’s the thing. I didn’t know that this cafeteria – or crowded bar – even existed until three weeks ago. I didn’t know that there were this many people in the world all had opinions they were so eager to vent. I didn’t know I was being ranked by google. I knew how to use google, sure. I looked up things all the time. Just usually not myself. Now, embarrassingly enough, I do.

The funny thing is, I’m writing for two audiences. There’s Mom, Dad, Sue, Karen, Walter, Char, Ellen – normal people in the real world. People I’ve actually shared meals with.

And I’m also writing for Ellie and Mark Federman – my new blog-world pals – and for people who link to me from Ellie’s “Prose and Cons” page. It was Federman, of the Marshal McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology in Toronto, who told me about this platform, typepad, in the first place, and who filled me in on the concept of google juice during an hour-and-a-half telephone conversation today. And it was Ellie who told me that I had to get rid of the picture of myself with the American flag behind me because it made me look like a right-wing kook. Which is why you now find my pony picture on this page. (Cuter, anyway.)

So, I have gone from blogging virgin to blogging slut in three weeks flat.

I have discovered what the black holes are in my subtitle.

And I am spending less and less time out in the quote-unquote real world.

I did, however, go out to lunch today, where I discovered that poor Sushi Hana was virtually deserted – the result of the recent proliferation of sushi restaurants in Montclair. I also learned that they serve a Debbie roll, but - and here's irony for you - it features calamari, the one food in the whole world I'm allergic to.

I also took a long walk, and went by the Glen Ridge Pool, where I saw the bright primary colors of the sliding board and fountain rise out of a field of snow. Set against a 4 pm winter sky of pinks and blues, it was an odd and lovely sight.