I have mixed feelings about a blog making the rounds recently: <a href="http://blogs.salon.com/0003522/">Beauty Dish</a>, an avon lady with a flair for a writing. But her recent post has struck a chord. More on that in a sec.
Actually, I have mixed feelings about blogs in general. While my blog is new, in fact I have been doing this sort of thing for four years now. I started keeping a weekly rant list around the time my son was born. Though I didn't use a "blogger" or anything quite so puerile as "post", I simply hit "create new page" on my WYSIWYG editor and uploaded it (I mean, really, is that so hard?).
Anyway, blogs are getting a lot of press coverage and Internet attention lately. And me too: I finally found one that worked for me (yay <a href="http://www.speirs.org/xjournal">Xjournal</a>!). But as I say, I am not entirely new to this phenomena and have some idea how it works. That is, people post their <a href="http://www.tametheweb.com/ttwblog/archives/000255.html">do's and don'ts for blogs</a>, their lists of things that make blogs work, and whatnot. And people criticize blogs, for whatever <em>their</em> opinion is worth, eh. It seems that, like all new fads, people approach it with zing and zeal, only to end with sloth and zzz. You can't post everyday. And if you do, chances are it will stink. The best formula is to post "when the spirit moves you".
That is why most of my blogs are links to things of interest to me. Who cares what I did last night? Who cares about my great Internet chat? Who cares about my great digital camera? icarumba!
A blog for me is an opportunity to explore new links. And is a way to access things I might not ordinarily have run across through my usual ten-links-a-day routine. The trick lies is knowing which of the many webpages you run across is good enough to be "memorable": blogging links walks the fine line between short and long-term memory. On the off chance that those things that interest us now will, in the long run, interest us later too.
And that is what makes the latest Beauty Dish post more appealing than most of her others. Since I don't particularly feel drawn to her blog I wouldn't have landed there had Wil Wheaton not <a href="http://www.wilwheaton.net/mt/archives/001635.php">posted this on his site</a>. It is about her <a href="http://blogs.salon.com/0003522/2004/06/13.html">family ritual sitting round the TV </a>getting lost in the future of futures: Star Trek, the American dream at best, American propaganda at worst. And if she hadn't been writing about Star Trek, chances are he wouldn't have posted it on his blog. Such is the circle of blogs.
Since I have been in Japan, I went back and watched all episodes of Twin Peaks from start to finish, all James Bond movies in order, and yes, Star Trek. Watching the films in order was a real eye opener. Watching the level of special effects evolve, seeing story lines develop and copy one another at eight year intervals (heh). But mostly, I totally understand this woman's connection with<em> it.</em>
It is a nameless "it", and we shall let it go unnamed. Not a dream, not a hope, not a mass delusion. But something calming. A time you can hold on to from week to week. I had exactly this experience watching the original Star Trek with my mother and brother as a kid, again with TNG in high school, and of late in Japan, Voyager and Deep Space Nine. They have only recently taken it off air and replaced it with Kiefer Sutherland's "24".
Anyway, <a href="http://blogs.salon.com/0003522/2004/06/13.html">her blog on Star Trek is quite beautiful.</a>
<strong>A Love Letter to Star Trek
</strong>
I made microwave popcorn and poured it into an orange bucket and added extra melted butter, this was our ritual once I put the parrot to bed, and the dog and cat would sleep on the couch between us, while my oldest son manned the remote control. I never suspected it would become part of our life like brushing teeth and doing homework. That first disk rental was a lark. But the first became the second, then the third, and a month later we were well into the first season and I began to hear my two youngest sons discuss the finer points of antimatter during waking hours and every chipped saucer in the cupboard became an inpromptu model of the Enterprise star ship.
I can't explain the hold it had on my sons, and then on me. I don't remember the episodes the way they do. I'm sitting here crying while I type this, searching for a way to tell you how it transformed them into something a little bit better, how they started recognizing the world news for the first time and asking me when would our people stop fighting, start working together as one planet - simple ideas, good ideas, too simple for people who crave power. One day, a bad bad day, when many soldiers lost lives in that distant senseless war, my middle son stood with barefeet on the cold tile floor of the kitchen, listening to NPR, and clenched his fists in frustration.
"Why don't they stop fighting? We're never going to join a Federation of Planets if this continues. Don't they know that? Why don't they want to help end starvation instead? I wish we lived in the future."
I wished we lived in that future, too, where replicators created gourmet meals and women wore flowing tunics and held important positions, and no wars raged on planet Earth because starvation was a memory from some other sick place and time. I loved that my sons saw this, wanted a future of space travel and social justice.