Have you tried to explain blogging to anyone? I had to do it this week, and even with Greg there to provide real exposition (”Blogging might be described as …”) to my verbally-challenged attempts (”Well, here’s the thing. It’s kinda … no, wait … well, y’know…”) I’m not sure we covered it. A blog is part journal entry, part news item, part community bulletin board 3×5 card, part homily, part Web-page … and it’s none of those things.

I was contacted by a reporter from the St. Joseph newspaper who wanted to do a story about local bloggers and, believe it or not, couldn’t find any. Or rather, couldn’t find any who allowed for comments or any other contact to be made. So Greg and I were sort of it, and the story is slated to come out Sunday morning. (For any St. Jo News-Press readers who read that story and are joining for the first time — welcome!)

It was all very nice, and I suppose I have to concede that it knocks another 20 seconds or so off my 15 minutes of fame, especially since this is a Sunday feature and so includes — pictures!

Pictures of someone blogging? You see the difficulty, don’t you? I mean, what does it look like? In spite of Dan Rather’s churlish comment, I don’t think most bloggers really are “people in pajamas”. Those would be telecommuters or people with colds. Bloggers don’t even have that much of a specific look. A person typing at the computer could be blogging about nonsense, working hard on the newer model of widget or plotting to overthrow the government. Such are the challenges of our time.

I think the photographer who had gotten the assignment was aware of there being some kind of challenge, even if she wasn’t quite sure what it was. When she called us to arrange a time, she started off by saying, “I think I’m coming to take pictures of you because you and your husband do a lot of blogging.” Somehow, it all sounded so sordid. And a “lot” of blogging? What’s our standard unit of measure?

“So were your husband and you planning on doing any blogging this weekend?”

This struck me as odd. Are we planning to? Well, … “Um, probably. But you know, it doesn’t really look any different than just being at a computer. We could just sit in front of the computer and it would look like we were blogging.”

Silence. Apparently, this just struck her as odd. “I mean, I could come over whenever you were planning to blog.”

I started to get the impression that the whole blog thing was a little hazy for her. It was a verb and noun and applied to an unusual activity that some people — but darned few in the St. Jo area — engaged in in the vicinity of computers. The temptation at that point, of course, was to resist messing with her. I had a clear picture of bringing her into the house and then the first time she brought out the camera, yelling, “INFIDEL! Take not your pictures! Do you think that I am blogging yet??? I have not adorned the Sacred Head-dress and Girdle of Blogdom!”

But to be fair, it’s not an easy thing to get a clear picture of, or get the hang of. She came and shot pictures of me laughing at the screen. (The reason I was laughing is that just two minutes before she arrived, I had knocked out our internet connection by vacuuming, and the foul things Greg was saying to me over the phone to get it hooked up again made me think how hilarious it was for us to be the Mid-Missouri Blogging Poster Couple.)

And she inadvertantly got me back for any lingering smugness I was feeling. Getting copy for the photo caption, she asked me what my blog is about. What’s it about? Holy cow, I never know till I do it.

“Well, politics …”
Brain to Grace: Shut up. You sound like a nut.
“… and religion…”
Brain: You sound like a religious nut.
“Sometimes I talk about walking my dog.”
Brain: @%&#!!!

So there it is. If you’re a familiar blogging friend, welcome to the new site. If you’re new to this blog and the whole genre, welcome to the place where I talk about politics, religion and walking my dog.

***

Last-minute addition: Here’s a link to the online paper. Must’ve been a slow news day.

Two quick things:

• That isn’t my office. It’s my bathroom with towels over the window and I’m sitting on the john. This is not a place I blog from, but the photographer wanted A Look. I think I look like a happy evil scientist with a laptop.
• The stupid dog-walking line made into the caption. Argh.