This Is This

Last week saw me writing under the guidelines of the British Association of Slow Writers. BASW aims to redress the balance brought on by advances in communication techniques which has lead to a rapid decline in the quality of modern writing. Its purpose is to encourage its members to write less and write better. My attempt was, I’m afraid to say, a failure. Not only has the standard of my writing failed to pick up but I’m still writing too fast and I am, suffice to say, no longer a part of the Slow Writing movement. It was a hard decision, but they can go fuck themselves. And now, back to our programme of stuff that gets bashed out both willy and nilly (technically it’s a 60/40 willy-heavy split) and let’s start today’s post.

Someone: Jesus Christ. For fuck’s sake. What did I just say? Cliff.

Me: Um, you said “For fuck’s sake.”

Someone: Before that.

Me: Oh. “Jesus Christ.”

Iiiiiiiiiiii admit it. Not my words, reader, but those of Eddie Vedder at the start of Pearl Jam’s landmark debut album Ten, but you know what? So will I, because I’ll admit that I’m an arrogant pain in the arse.

I must be, because most days I’ll assume that I’m going to write something and you’ll read it and validate my need to write something. I won’t bore you with this again today. I’ve written about the mechanics of blogging before on this site. But if you’re doing your own bit on it and want my opinion, then I’ll happily give it.

OOOH. You see?!?

To which end, I’ve created a Facebook page to both regale you and adorn, if not festoon, your own pages. No, not festoon. That sounds mucky.

Technically, it’s a fan page, but that’s Facebook’s term, not mine and should be considered as what in legal circles is referred to as by the by.

But if I want to create a web page for this site on Facebook, I have to either create a “fan page”, or make a personal profile page and pretend my name is “This Is This”. First name “Thisis”, second name “This”. Like Missus This, except it’s Thisis.

Mr Angry did this and I have already been over to call him Ian Livid. Never one to resist a funny, it was either that or Iams Livid, which sounds like food for angry cats. OK, a narrow audience there among UK blogging cat owners, but nevertheless - I have to take the laughs where I can get them these days.

What’s more, when I create a fan page, I have to become a fan. There’s no way around it. Me. So it is written in the Book Of Face.

So, I’ll just tell you what I think and you’ll read it and then we’ll all become fans of it. If anyone wants me, I’ll be up my own bum. I may stay there if I can get network access sorted out.

No, seriously, it’s just another outlet for this site to reach a wider audience of people who mooch about on Facebook, because it’s very good at pulling together all your stuff like email and pictures and message boards, so why not blogs you read?

It’s got a feed on it so these posts will go on there automatically (although many hours later for reasons I don’t understand), and people can send it round to their friends and talk and stuff. It’s got a message board on there, but then there are message boards here. It’s up to you, but I realise people use their web stuff in different ways.

Like any blogger, I check the stats to this site and keep an eye on how things are going and if anyone’s reading, but until yesterday I’d never checked how many feed subscriptions there are to this site. You know - people who set up readers so they can download posts to their GPtouchpods and MacPs and things.

Well, it turns out the site has one hundred and twelve people subscribers. One hundred and twelve, mind you! I’d never thought to check. And that’s not counting the readers who visit the actual page, which may or may not be you depending on how you read this. So hello to the feed readers and sorry I didn’t know you were out there.

This Is This. How do you eat yours?

That would have been a good closing line if I didn’t have this bit on the end:
This Is This on Facebook.

Also on This Is This
As for ageing, let’s face it - the world reveres youth. No one is eighty in their dreams.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 8:48 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or you can skip to the end and leave a comment yourself.