Monday, August 09, 2004
How Blog Entries Get Written
People ask me all the time, "How do you think up that shit you write every day?" I have no idea. It's such a fragile and delicate art that I don't question it. Perhaps it's just my calling in life. George Carlin once said his job was thinking up goofy shit, coming around to tell people about it every so often, and then going back to think up some more. Sounds like this blog, all right. But because I pride myself on serving the needs of you, the blog-reading Internet news consumer, to the best of my ability, let me take you now inside my mind as I started thinking up an entry on an otherwise normal Monday afternoon. (Please excuse the clutter inside my mind--food wrappers, beer bottles, missed opportunities, old records, and barrels of regret--and be careful not to trip over anything.)
It all started when I saw the widely e-mailed story about the shutdown of the California firm that has been operating private schools catering to Latino immigrants using a textbook that says the U.S. has 53 states, four branches of government, a House of Representatives for Republicans and a Senate for Democrats, and that we fought World War II from 1938 to 1942. Never wanting to miss an opportunity to snark, I thought to myself, Wouldn't it be great to do a blog entry around that story? I could make a point about what a dumbass idea privatizing public schools is, and it would have the perfect punchline: Of course, the United States doesn't have 53 states--it has 51. And then there would be a link on the number "51" to a news story from somewhere suggesting that Iraq is in fact the 51st state. Fantastic! So I googled "Iraq 51st state," and sure enough, found James Fallows' 2002 Atlantic Monthly piece, "The Fifty-First State?", just as I knew I would. Then I thought, dang (because "dang" is funnier than "damn" in some contexts, I decided to say "dang" right here), November 2002--I didn't think the story was that old. Time flies, like an arrow--but fruit flies like a banana. (Sorry, the jokes come spontaneously. It's not like I can control them--or guarantee that they will be funny, God knows.) But then I saw the next link on the page and thought, hey, maybe that story is a little more contemporary, so I clicked it. Sure enough, it was a piece from Asia Times Online, featuring reporter Pepe Escobar, a reporter I've linked to several times previously, interviewing Juan Cole, Iraq expert and blogger, whose work I linked to just this morning. The Escobar/Cole interview is about six weeks old, but what the hell, Cole's a smart guy worth reading, so maybe I'll link to that instead. And then I noticed the link to an archive of Escobar's work right there on the same page with the Cole interview. Considering I spent half an hour the other day trying unsuccessfully to find that very thing so I could link directly to Escobar's work from this blog, it made me very happy indeed. I had all of these thoughts and did all of this clicking before starting to write the entry I wanted to write all along, which now follows.
A private company in California, thanks to the miracle of free enterprise, was fleecing unsuspecting immigrant parents and teaching their kids garbage besides, and a reporter who looks a little like a Cuban revolutionary interviewed a blogger from Michigan about six weeks ago and has never, as far as I can tell, written about schools in California. And Iraq is actually the 51st state!
Gee, I was sure it would be a lot funnier. (Am I losing it? Is it time to go on hiatus again?) Please go about your other Internet surfing tasks now, and have a nice day.
People ask me all the time, "How do you think up that shit you write every day?" I have no idea. It's such a fragile and delicate art that I don't question it. Perhaps it's just my calling in life. George Carlin once said his job was thinking up goofy shit, coming around to tell people about it every so often, and then going back to think up some more. Sounds like this blog, all right. But because I pride myself on serving the needs of you, the blog-reading Internet news consumer, to the best of my ability, let me take you now inside my mind as I started thinking up an entry on an otherwise normal Monday afternoon. (Please excuse the clutter inside my mind--food wrappers, beer bottles, missed opportunities, old records, and barrels of regret--and be careful not to trip over anything.)
It all started when I saw the widely e-mailed story about the shutdown of the California firm that has been operating private schools catering to Latino immigrants using a textbook that says the U.S. has 53 states, four branches of government, a House of Representatives for Republicans and a Senate for Democrats, and that we fought World War II from 1938 to 1942. Never wanting to miss an opportunity to snark, I thought to myself, Wouldn't it be great to do a blog entry around that story? I could make a point about what a dumbass idea privatizing public schools is, and it would have the perfect punchline: Of course, the United States doesn't have 53 states--it has 51. And then there would be a link on the number "51" to a news story from somewhere suggesting that Iraq is in fact the 51st state. Fantastic! So I googled "Iraq 51st state," and sure enough, found James Fallows' 2002 Atlantic Monthly piece, "The Fifty-First State?", just as I knew I would. Then I thought, dang (because "dang" is funnier than "damn" in some contexts, I decided to say "dang" right here), November 2002--I didn't think the story was that old. Time flies, like an arrow--but fruit flies like a banana. (Sorry, the jokes come spontaneously. It's not like I can control them--or guarantee that they will be funny, God knows.) But then I saw the next link on the page and thought, hey, maybe that story is a little more contemporary, so I clicked it. Sure enough, it was a piece from Asia Times Online, featuring reporter Pepe Escobar, a reporter I've linked to several times previously, interviewing Juan Cole, Iraq expert and blogger, whose work I linked to just this morning. The Escobar/Cole interview is about six weeks old, but what the hell, Cole's a smart guy worth reading, so maybe I'll link to that instead. And then I noticed the link to an archive of Escobar's work right there on the same page with the Cole interview. Considering I spent half an hour the other day trying unsuccessfully to find that very thing so I could link directly to Escobar's work from this blog, it made me very happy indeed. I had all of these thoughts and did all of this clicking before starting to write the entry I wanted to write all along, which now follows.
A private company in California, thanks to the miracle of free enterprise, was fleecing unsuspecting immigrant parents and teaching their kids garbage besides, and a reporter who looks a little like a Cuban revolutionary interviewed a blogger from Michigan about six weeks ago and has never, as far as I can tell, written about schools in California. And Iraq is actually the 51st state!
Gee, I was sure it would be a lot funnier. (Am I losing it? Is it time to go on hiatus again?) Please go about your other Internet surfing tasks now, and have a nice day.
