In the course of writing the always-just-around-the-corner Blogger column, have coined yet another blogger word (and I’m thinking BTW that ‘blog’ is ‘smurf’ for the overly Net-friendly): Blooger, n. A particularly disgusting or trivial blog. My blog, if I don’t commence to updating, is liable to turn into a blooger.

Here are two blogs that are the opposite of blooger (precise word TBA, currently in development at AG Enterprises). First, find out how Kaycee’s life is going. Now hear what her mom has to say about it. I read these things and wonder if it’s strictly fair that I collect a paycheck for writing and these two don’t. Either one will knock you off your desk chair. The two together… damn.

Okay, if English is killing other langauges (like The NY Times says) and geekspeak is killing English (like The Register says)… dammit, I knew I should have fulfilled my foreign-language requirement with binary not French…

Still not writing the Blog column this week. This could turn out to be one of the great lost columns, archived only in the library in the Dreaming. (And that makes exactly one Sandman/Gaiman reference on this site, which is several hundred less than might have been expected. Those cult-exit deprogramming programs, they really work!)

In case anyone asks, the difference between a geek and a nerd: A geek bundles up, gets a cup of coffee, fires up Planetarium on her Palm, and goes outside to watch the Perseid meteors, amusing herself between starbursts by identifying constellations and planets. A nerd does the same thing, only a nerd fills a thermos, loads up the car with her astronomy books and bee light and binoculars and perhaps a lawnchair, and drives into the mountains to watch the Perseids from a spot with less light pollution.

In case anyone asks, I am but a geek. I will try harder next time.

One from the vaults, deposited here so it gets out of *my* head:

Old frog.

I jump on.

Squish sound.

And that, dear hearts, is why undergraduate poetry classes are dangerous. A shiny gold star to the person who can identify the haiku we were studying that day.

The Naughton / ShapeShifter column is in (though next week’s feature hangs over me like skunk stink) and I’m wondering what there is to say about blogging that ain’t been said. I’m glad that so far (on my own site at least) it hasn’t turned into a play-by-play of my interior life, which I think would only frighten the horses; OTOH, it’s tough to step up the mic and not say “testing, testing — is this thing on?” More acclimation is needed, but aspirin and a nap are needed more.

Well, I *was* writing about Blogs this week. Now I’m going to explain how a man convicted of attempting to solicit sex online from a minor gets (basically) house arrest, while a man walking down the street with a Palm in the vicinity of the GOP convention gets tossed in the pokey and held on $1 million bail. But the US government continually whittles away at free speech and privacy online to protect us — they say — from pedophiles, not political protesters. You don’t think they’ve been… LYING… do you?

True to journalist form, I’m writing about something — these Blogs — I barely know, learning about them by fussing with them in a bleary overnight cram session and hoping I remember enough tomorrow morning to regurgitate something that interests the readership without making me sound like an idiot. And they said life after college would be different.