Sparky made a point the other day about blogging that resonated with me:

As much as I appreciate that there are people out there who have the focus to maintain a repository of targeted content, I still bristle at the idea of blogs as necessities, marketing tools, or places that have to be about just one thing. When I read someone saying that they have six blogs about different topics, I wonder why they don’t just have one that’s mostly about the six things that interest them so much, and anything else they throw in. It’s still the person that’s the point for me.

I’ve sometimes wished that I could stick to one thing on this blog. Unfortunately, I have too many interests and a fickle mind. This is not a recipe for consistency.

Many of us pre-9/11 bloggers still marvel at how blogging changed after that date. The rise of the warbloggers led to the rise of the political blogs. Blogging had been represented by Jason Kottke, but now it was represented by Little Green Footballs and Andrew Sullivan. (Actually, Sullivan has a pretty good blog, a mix of politics and “hey look at this”-type posts; the only problem is that he blogs so damn much that you practically have to be a full-time Andrew Sullivan reader to keep up. Who has the time?)

Blogging can’t just be fun anymore, apparently. Now it has to have a mission, a purpose.

Sometimes I wish I had a blog that focused on a single topic and got linked and quoted all over the place and could lead to a book deal. Not gonna happen — I don’t have the discipline or, again, the consistency. Plus, I just can’t write that fast. Prose does not tumble elegantly out of my brain. Rather, words spurt out erratically, like a broken faucet. Listening to me type at the keyboard can be weird. Dadadadadadadada dat dat dat (that last part is the sound of me backspacing because I mistyped, which I do all the time — I never learned to type properly). Dadadadadada — dat dat — dadadadada… (long pause)… dadadadadada dat dat dat dat dadadadada (long pause) dadadadada dat dat dat dadadadada.

My blog is just a place for me to be me and express whatever thoughts and ideas I feel like expressing. It’s for me, it’s not for other people.

Oh well. So much for success.

“[I]f they kicked out all the gay and lesbian staffers from Congress the way they kick gays and lesbians out of the military, then Congress would grind to a halt.”

That’s a quote from an interview with Kirby Dick about his new movie, Outrage (warning: the trailer automatically starts when you click that link), about closeted gay politicians who vote against gays. It opens tomorrow.

Dick’s previous movie was This Film is Not Yet Rated, about the MPAA’s screwy rating system.