I Hate Blogs
Sunday, 27th April, 2008
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It seems that just about everyone has a blog these days. I am not sure if this is good or bad, and I do not really care. The fact is, lots of people write stuff and for some reason people read it.
A good friend of mine loves to read blogs. Every night he takes a lap or two around the internet and peruses a variety of blogs. I am not exactly sure how he goes about this process, but given the fact that he fastidiously squares his pen with the edge of his desk every time he sets it down, I am sure there is a very precise, borderline neurotic method to this nightly ritual. I do not know all the blogs that he reads, but I do know that a good deal of them are written by poker players.
I am not much of a blog reader. The vast majority of blogs that I am aware of are ones written by people that I know, and since I know these people I figure I don’t need to read their blogs to figure out what is going on with them. I am not much of a blog writer either.
I have probably read 15-20 blogs written by poker players at one point or another, and lately I have been reading a few with some regularity. I wish I could say the reason I read these is because they are very well written and insightful, but I cannot. This is not to suggest that I have never read a well written/insightful blog. I have, but those blogs didn’t make me laugh like these recent few do.
These blogs are written by guys who think that they are professional poker players, but haven’t the foggiest idea of how to (a) play poker or (b) be a professional. I’m not sure why I find their misguided confidence to be so funny, but I do. I guess it’s like a guy who claims he is a meteorologist explaining to you how he knows the earth is flat. How can you not be curious how that story goes?
These few bloggers remind me of a guy I used to see a lot on campus at the U of M when I was in school there. He must have been 20 years old and was in excellent shape. He would roller-blade (shirtless) around the quad area in front of the physics building during high foot-traffic times. Students were everywhere, but this did not deter him as he clearly loved the audience. He would do laps and soak up the attention that he apparently didn’t get from his father.
His loop would take him up a handicap ramp onto a large, flat concrete area that was on one end of the quad. He would blade across this area, and then instead of taking the ramp back down the other side he’d actually go down the stairs. Backwards. Fast. It had to be tough to do, and was absurdly dangerous. He would get to the top of the steps and quickly turn so that he was now going backwards and boom-boom-boom he’d bounce down the stairs. When he got to the bottom he’d turn around and start going forward again, sweat glistening on his shirtless torso as he weaved through students for yet another glorious, testosterone driven lap.
You know that feeling that you have right now, that little twinge inside of you that says, “I sure hope the next sentence details how this macho jackass fell in front of all those people?” Well, that is how I feel every time I read one of these blogs.