blog genres

i've been teaching a lot about genre this year -- my unit on genre in Persuasion has coincided or at least overlapped iwth my unit on genre in MASS MEDIA AND SOCIETY --

(hey!, my loyal readership insists, this is the *BACK* burner. you can't talk about the content of your classes on here...yeah, yeah, i know, but...

i've been more and more interested in the diversity of emerging genres in the blogging universe.

Kelly blogs about the RANT not as a genre of blog discourse -- but of everyday discourse -- but i do think that ranting is a pretty normative genre in this medium.

the other genre i've been keenly interested in recently is the hello? genre. My brother Daniel included this tag at the end of a recent post:

"BTW: It's really wierd to post ideas without having people read them. I'm always writing a letter or a newsletter page, or updating the web site, or participating in a forum, or sending out an e-mial to my church. In all of these situations lots of people read the stuff (or at least pretend to).

It's wierd, but I like it. Even the fact that I'm writing about my feelings on this has a stench of wierdness.

Ok.. It looks like for one paragraph there I entered into the world of blogging. Don't expect more of that.

(That last statement has the unwritten submect of "You"---Who is You??--That's what I mean about wierd?) "

Or my brother David, before he had Stanley, the fan, wrote:

"hey, if you are not my brother or in my youth group and you read this, would you mind emailing me at bishoprudd at yahoo.com?"

and after several days of nothing:

"by the way, WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE???!!!??

oh yes, i know you're reading this. see that little black box to the left...no, higher up...no, the one with numbers...yeah, that one. that tells me how many people are hitting this site. and it doesn't count every time i come here! so WHO ARE YOU!!!

not that i care, as i've said before, i am here simply for you!"

in my first experiment with blogging, I wrote a "who are you & what am i doing here?" entry, and Marcaus wrote me an email about it -- which i posted to the invisible (and pretty much nonexistent at that time) audience....

Yesterday I read a blog which qualified in the "hello?" genre, but seemed so lonely, and needy and pathetic, that I couldn't bring myself to post it publicly.

I wonder if all blogs go through a state of ambivalence about their identy / role / audience?

Maybe I'll start a blog that collects links to instances of the genre.

YEAH! That sounds like a great way to avoid this depressingly (s)tall(ed) stack of grading...

***********************************************************************

well. that's it. its done.

Hello?

if you want to join the team of this blog -- (because you have so much spare time) -- let me know and I'll make you a team member. Minimum membership fees? find one instance of hello? blogging per month. if you lag behind in your fees -- you'll be on probation for a minimum of six months. then we'll have to see about what to do with you...

peace~

Good Questions

found these at the lomohome of the day:

"1. What 3 meals from your past would you like to eat again (breakfast, lunch and dinner)?

2. What 2 objects would you like to own again?

3.What is the one act in your life you wish you could take back or erase?

4. What one person would you like to see again?

5. What one experience do you wish you could repeat?


* These are all taken from an utterly fantastic book called "White Apples" by Jonathan Carroll"

jaelyn has strep throat --

i went to bed at 7 pm with some kind of monster headache --

lynn got very little sleep b/c i didn't / couldn't wake up with the kids --

i dreamed that four people called wanting to see our house.

in a separate and unrelated dream, I dreamed that i was *taking* a class with an odd conglomeration of faculty peers, high school friends, and church friends, and the teacher invited us to stand, turn in our hymnals and sing "victory in jesus" only when we stood up, everyone snickered and turned and looked at me. There was an abominable smell, and everyone assumed that I had passed gas. But I knew I hadn't so I didn't laugh.

And just then the room started getting woozy. i started to lose conciousness (which is kind of wierd given that dream conciousness is a little different than waking conciousness -- isn't it? maybe not inside the experience.). So I ran / stumbled to the door for fresh air.

All around me, people were crashing to the ground, we were being poisoned. I knew I should stop and help people, but I knew if I did, I wouldn't make it. I could see the doors, but felt the pull of sleep heavily. I made it only by throwing myself against the doors. Once they were opened the fresh air filled my lungs, I was immediately fine.

The dream continued, but I'll not. I need to make some coffee.

Peace~

went to the one act festival at malone several times this weekend.

took my dad once.

taking him made me realize how much I love my dad

*&*

how much i love so many students.

i felt a little bit of angst because i knew that the situation prohibited a really meaningful exchange where I could explain to him how much these students i was introducing him to matter to my life --

Toph, Amanda, Trena, Jared, Nathan, Brian, Kelly...

these people bring me so much joy, i wanted to tell him. you'll never believe the promise they hold...the gifts that they have for the universe...the way the intersection of their life with mine brings laughter and frustration and hope and curiousity...

If I aspired to turn the world into slogans and theme weeks -- which i don't think i'd like to do, ultimately {readers breath a sigh of relief} -- then I'd call this "fabric of friendship week" --

it's one of those odd weeks that has a lot of birthdays in it. SUNDAYS on both ends are Marcaus' birthday (yesterday) & Allen's birthday (coinciding with my debate trip to his home in Marietta, OH -- are you reading Allen?) and in the middle of the week is Gary (California-Gary, for those who know him thus...)

My mother taught us to celebrate birthdays vigorously in my family. And so I'm thinking about these three men who have been deeply influential in forming me, in caring for me, in developing me. And I'm feeling so rich. So fortunate.

Lynn just called me across campus and said:

Lynn: How are you?

Me: Good. I'm good.

Lynn: What!?

[I laugh]

Lynn: What happened? Are you drunk?

(the last two weeks have not lent many "goods' in response to that question -- I'm in the habit of being honest -- and honesty can only muster up a "okay." in general)

But I'm having all these epiphanies about calling and community -- which I long to blog about later -- but...

at the core, i have this abiding sense that even though my life is chaotic and less enjoyable than normal right now -- and there's too much to do -- and i'm disappointing more people than not --

I still feel keenly the WORTH and VALUE of life because I feel like my life has been stitched together with other lives that matter. and its just as much the stitching as the cloth that matters.

Sheldon VanAuken wrote in a Severe Mercy -- that sometimes the beauty of the world was just too much. That he couldn't take it. And I don't think I *got* that at all. And even though I'm very moved by physical beauty -- in nature, in humans. I'm so much more moved by the beauty of being with...