It all starts out so innocently.

I know understand and appreciate a controlled press.
I spent my whole life (until about 6 years ago!) thinking that having a controlled press- bookprinters, newspapers, and most print media being *owned*- was a bad thing. It meant that all the ideas had to go through a few people, and those people got to decide what ended up being available for all of us to read.
I was wrong.
I am sorry.
I explosion of the blog - even more than the internet page- has turned the world into one long dissertation on absolutely nothing.
Hours of it are posted every second.
Billions of gigs of blogging rant, stupid thoughts, obscure bits and pieces.
Everyone thinks they are Hemmingway.
Everyone thinks they are funny.
I just finished reading one gal in Australia going on through almost a month's worth of daily posts about mostly nothing, but none the less referencein the vomit in her house due to a flu wave going around through her kids. It was cute the first time. it became tedious about day 5. If there was an EDITOR, they would have either shut her down or demanded a rewrite that did not include rainbow showers references.
Now, you may ask, how did I get to her?
Well.. I started with a link a FRIEND (read now :fucking mortal enemy of the people asshole who sends me adorable links that eat all my time and distract from real life) who sent me http://www.rahoi.com/2006/03/may-i-take-your-order.php, which is really a nice web page of a really crazy translation issue. It had some interesting comments, one of which said that "this was the funniest thing since I read :http://www.onemanbandwidth.com/wordpress/?p=118," so I wandered over there and found this great professor in China with some wonderful insights and a great funny bone.
That was where the good times ended.
This professor has joined this links racket to promote his site. It's rather underhanded-- everyone promises to link to each other by signing up on http://www.samanthaburns.com/archives/2005/07/open_trackback.html the "Open trackback alliance". It is a list that appears on every members web of HUNDREDS of other web sites. It's the best scam since FEMA.
It was a list of some of the weirdest stuff- hit and miss archives- as well as the above mentioned vomit obsessed mommie. It creates a world where everyone gets advertised no matter how good or bad they are. It's the equivelent of writing your own reviews, and then awarding yourself a medal. It is a numbers racket for size queen writers.
It is not the only "advertise yourself" scam out there.
They have "best of blog awards" people bestowing titles for things without any input- but the title holder is suddenly elevated to the status of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for bloggers. They have links for "blogs of the day" and "international fun" blogs. The industry has spawned itself. And folks that want to lie, misrepresent, distort, and rant have just as much space as anything with some basis.
What a crock. I read a few of these blogs and wished that the world had a "governor" on it- those old style machines that monitored other machines and made sure they did what they should. I would like to see a facto meter attched. I want something that is at least honest. Fact checking, date corrections, photos unaltered by photo shop masquerading as real.

Editors.
Quality assurance!
Yes, I might very well not make the cut either (although I have the knowledge that *I* was paid for my editorials and columns for a decade in real print, which gives me some miniscule satisfaction that, given the chance, I made the minimum skill requirements in life to write), but that was part of the charm of having the media controlled. Yes, it stifled freedoms of speech, and yes, it created a whole world of "butt lickers" who got into print while deserving, funny, serious, intelligent people did not. It put a stall on several thousand Shakespear's and Hemmingways and Woodsteins. It also stopped millions of but scratching wanna-be's from clogging life with drivel.
Drivel that, at this time, we have to SORT through with our own time and effort.
I agree that it would be nice to have a way to find the "creme de la creme". Signing up for open trackback isn't it. I am new enough to this that I am sure that I will stumble across some GOOD way to find/read/promote the sites that have some consistancy (and less mommie vomit). Less splogging and more Pulitizer potential.
More funny, less arrogant.
In the meantime, I will sit out here alone, and post what I feel. If I am blessed, one person a month will come by and truly feel changed or enlightened or moved. I don't need a thousand hits a day to tell me I am worth it. I know that just by waking up each morning.

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