Bloggers and Urinals

A postcard-sized notice appeared in the university toilets:

PLEASE DO NOT PUT CHEWING GUM IN THE URINALS

Next time I went, I took a pen, and, there being no one else around, added:

It makes it go hard and taste pissy.

I was a fifty-five year-old lecturer at the time.

I know! It was shameful. Cleaning the men’s urinals must rank amongst the most unpleasant jobs in the world. But what I am most ashamed about is that it was not entirely original. It echoes an item in Nigel Rees’s book Graffiti about cigarette ends becoming soggy and difficult to light. 

Yesterday’s post ended by recalling a similar incident from my student days when someone added a humorous comment to a humorous news sheet I had pinned to notice board. Who was the humourist in that case, me, or the person who made the undeniably funnier enhancement?

Which brings us to an issue that lies somewhere in between a simple dispute about terminology and a matter of deep philosophical importance of infinite significance to the future of humanity. What is a blogger?

Is a blogger only someone who posts blog posts, or can someone who comments but does not have a blog of their own also be considered a blogger?

It might not be as simple as it looks. It differs from writer and reader. What about blog writers whose posts consist of only a brief sentence or image but attract huge amounts of debate or comment? What about blog writers who do not allow comments? What if they allow only some comments? What if they never respond to comments or never comment on other blogs?

As for those who do comment, what if they make only brief or trivial remarks, or produce long erudite rejoinders that dwarf the original post and even take the subject off in a different direction?

This is something else I touched on yesterday. Rachel said that blog commentators without blogs were most definitely not bloggers. They are more like concert audiences or football spectators who could not in themselves (in that role) be considered to be musicians or footballers, even when their presence or participation alters the performances of the musicians and footballers on the stage and pitch, and even though the crowd is part of the football match experience.

I think there is more to it. When you go to a concert you don’t take your own instrument and play along, or at a football match you can’t run on to the pitch and help your team out (even though you know you could do better). But there are events at which large numbers of musicians play or sing together. Admittedly, it is not like singalong showing of ‘The Sound of Music’ where you dress up as Maria von Trapp (even the men), stand up, throw out your arms and join in with “The hills are alive …” as loud as you can. Cinemagoers are not film makers.

However, it seems to me that blog commentators are also a bit like members of facebook groups where the initial stimulus can be secondary to the responses. What, then, is a ‘facebooker’? Can you be a blogger on facebook?

If only life were simple. I feel truly in the urinals for arguing about it.

Writers At Heart

Bloggers are writers at heart. We paint patterns in words, feel their force and hear their harmonies.

A few have written for a living. At least one I follow, Brian Sibley, is an accomplished author and radio dramatist. He blogs but does not engage in comments. Another, Hameldaemepal, is, I believe, a retired journalist. He comments but does not engage in blogging. Others have enjoyed writing at work, say, as teachers or report writers. I even wrote computer manuals for a time.

Many of us have been writing all our lives. As a child, I tried to write stories and poetry, and intermittently kept an diary (“went trainspotting at monkey bridge”). I wrote a family newspaper to send to cousins (“Loch Ness Monster seen in River Humber”), forms for others to fill in at school (“Enter your name and address to join the Black Hand Gang” – so named because my John Bull Printing Outfit fortuitously contained a pointing hand symbol), and, as we did then, I liked writing letters. 

It continued after school. I attended a writers’ workshop in Leeds where one session was led by a tall chap called Harry. I’m not certain but suspect he was Jack Higgins. I should have paid more attention. At work, it was more fun writing spoof newsletters than studying for accountancy exams (“Mr. Hawkwind mugged on way back from bank with firms’ wages for the month of June. Over twenty pounds stolen.”). It got me into some trouble. Then, when I went late to university, there were spoof information sheets on notice boards.

I still have some of the university ones. The first arose out of the way we received assignment marks: through lists pinned up in the Department. Instead of by name, we were identified by anonymous numbers: 1501 62%, 0007 68%, 2486 55%. Number 0007 always did well, and, being a memorable number, everyone noticed. This irritated me somewhat because it was me. Very soon, my marks were public knowledge.

I could not resist retaliating with an imaginary set of results for an assessment of lecturers’ competence (never imagining that some years later such an exercise might take place for real). It went something like: 9507 74%, 8872 65%, 8077 58% … 9037 24%. Underneath it added: “Please would lecturer 9037 report immediately to Head of Department, Professor Brener.”

Never underestimate your readers. Next to the note at the bottom someone had written: “It is Professor Brener”.