Lynnette Millett at Medley considers a Scripting News post calling “weblogs without discipline” a waste of time, thoughtless “impulse journalism” with narrow “expressive bandwidth”. She doesn’t agree that every post ought to say something affirmative, as she puts it, about the item linked to. Millett goes on: “If you want to hold me to a standard beyond ‘she links/quotes stuff she finds interesting and/or worthy of note’ then you should probably go elsewhere,” and she gives a sympathetic nod to my wry sidebar disclaimer,

“For entertainment

purposes only.

All content is provided as is, with no

warranty stated or implied

regarding the quality or accuracy of any

content on or off this website.

Absolutely no responsibility is taken for

the content of external pages to which I

link.”

While I’m cited as an authority here [grin], I have to say I don’t fully agree. I feel my weblogging is more “on” when I can give you my own take on things, and most of the posts at FmH to which readers respond are those, rather than the ones I excerpt or point to without exposition. I sometimes barrage you with alot of frantic webclipping, and I often feel I’d rather slow it down and be more thoughtful. But, on the other hand, I’m driven… and I do feel, rationalizing, that I am being expository when I merely post something. It’s usually more than just saying it’s “interesting.” FmH is polemical; 90% or more of my posts make a point I want to get across, whether I say so or not. And I trust you’ll be curious about what the significance of any post was to me, or at least what significance it’ll have for you.

For a slightly different flavoring, consider this post of Matt Rossi’s I just happened upon again, coincidentally on the one-year anniversary of his posting it:

Lately, it seems as though you might as soon admit to consorting with Lucifer as

maintaining one of these sites. Everyone’s tired of it, it seems. Everyone’s sick of

the link economy, or the cookie cutter nature of 9/10’s of the content of these

‘blogs’ as people have taken to calling them. Everyone wants to get back to the

purity of maintaining a site just for them.

Well, not me, baby. Me and my diseased imagination are gonna keep on keeping

on till they pry our cold dead fingers away from the keys. Let me bare myself to

my limited readership for an instant; I am fully aware of how unique I am, and I

like it. I like that I’m smart. I like that I’m erudite. I like that I read and think about

what I read and melt my disparate reading into mental alloy. I am, in short, not all

that humble about this page, or what it is I do on it. Is it Earth-Shattering? Nope.

Does anyone care? Well, a few people do, and they’ve been very nice about it.

To everyone who has bothered to come by and send me a nice email, I thank

you kindly. Your simple generosity has been appreciated.

But I do not do this for you, and I never did.

And he concludes later on, lovingly: ” I admit it! I consort with Lucifer! Whew. That was a load

off. Well, back to the salt mines…I got nuggets of strange glowing gold to wrench

from the rock. It’s my task, and it isn’t by far unpleasant. Oh my no. I do so love

shattering reality.”