jr conlin's ink stained banana

Kids stories make no sense.

i'm serious. Consider Jack and the Beanstalk, which teaches the age old lesson that you should steal from large cannibalistic, well-to-do people by hiding in their ovens and pots.

The Pokey Little Puppy teaches kids to be slow (because that way you get all the desserts and are unaccountable for your actions, well, except for the last day, but who cares when that is. You've already eaten a weeks worth of desserts).

i'm fairly certain that the Billy Goats Gruff teaches kids to spit on toll-takers, and the Gingerbread Man says that cookies can give you the runs.

Now i'm kinda glad i don't have kids. i'd probably read them man pages. They don't make sense either, but at least they might teach them something useful.

Wead Bash, Daddy! Wead Bash!

Ok, i don't get this.

Mind you, i also don't get most Podcasts either since listening to someone's spittle laced diatribe about Bilbo Baggins preferences in modern cutlery (i'm thinking "Ginzu") doesn't always make for the best way to spend 15 minutes. Now, having to pay per minute for that honor to my cell phone provider? No, sorry, not happening.

Funny thing is that i got into a conversation not too long ago with someone about the importance of YouTube. His comment was how this opened up video bloggers to the world. i'm not quite sure that's always a good thing.

Mind you, this is coming from a used dixie cup level blogger with an audience just slightly bigger than the average number of voices in any given lunatic's head, so i know "thriving sense of obscurity".

Thing is, PersonalCasting (or whatever the real name for this crap will eventually be, is becoming reasonably mature. Mature enough that folks are pretty much finding the stuff that they find interesting, and to no surprise, it's the stuff that is well produced. Stuff like Ask a Ninja, Ze Frank, and TWIT are stuff from folks that know what they're doing. Heck the most viewed "personal vblog" turns out to be anything but.

It's pretty much the same thing for blogs. The ones that are most popular are from folks who are either already published, in a position of importance, or at least have developed proper writing skills (thus explaining why my blog is less read than those this billboard). There were hundreds of broadsheets published during the Revolution, but not everyone got to Thomas Paine's level (and yeah, he wasn't out just mucking stables before he got the bright idea to start writing down his ideas).

Ah well, this is the era of UGC, which we're all encouraged to make because, by God, Google needs the inventory. *sigh* And to think i'm giving this stuff away for free.

Just like other things.