Brain Fertilizer

Not yet. I'm working on it.

(and you're missing a </i> tag somwhere)

Thanks for the 'splaination.

I think I've formed a group of bloggy friends that all seem a bit interlinked and all -- and yet always welcoming of new bloggers. Although I don't think any one goes in quite the same direction or has quite the same interests, finding some people that you begin to know and that you know will be reading what you write and will probably comment on it is what for me makes blogging an ultimately pleasurable experience. Without that I probably would have quit a long time ago.

I'm not sure how I would deal with losing all my archives... (and yes, I found your site again! :D)

Ah, there you are, Irene...I had lost you, but too much inertia to do something useful like Google for your page.
But you are back on the blogroll.

I have noticed that you tend to develop cliques, if that's the right word, that gradually morph over time, adding and dropping people as tastes and blogging change. It's something I've long observed and never gotten around to finding the words to post about. You can almost get a leg up as a new blogger if you can charm your way into a clique, and the cliques overlap, so you can be in more than one at a time. For most people, growth is limited by how many of these groups you "fit" with and how many you can maintain yourself as a part of. All of this is unstated and spontaneous for the most part.

Funny, I've always had a problem with V. Kate, who, Dean just loves - btw.

My problem with her was the Acidman business. I told Dean that he was taking her side because she was a girl and I found that even more annoying. It seemed to me that she was exploiting her "girlness". Of course, since I'm a chick it could be that I'm just being catty.

One positive about her is that I think her "letter of the day" rhymes are usually pretty witty.

I need a clique!!!!!!!!!!

That's my problem.

Rosemary: you're welcome to join my click.....if I actually have one. Just think of it as the 'everyone tolerates Mad Mikey's stuff cause he's a nice guy' click.

For me, blogging just pretty much bacame "not worth it anymore."

Jo retired. Page went on hiatus. Vicki retired. I "fought" with you. Blah, blah, blah.

Now I read you, Kevin and Page pretty regularly. I post occasionally. And the rest, as they say, is history.

The unchanging Zombyboy.

I somehow, suddenly, feel so pathetic...

Wow, Nathan, thanks!

Well, Rosemary, you kind of have an instant clique with Dean.
And there is a little cliquish-ness with Ara and Tim the Soldier and Whas-his-name the selfish aesthete (Stephen Malcolm Anderson?). Mutually antagonistic with Ara, I believe. Some of that inherited from Dean, but the selfish aesthete one you've developed on your own.
Zombyboy, I see it as: you're doing it right, so why mess with success?

Martin, I'd wondered where you went...
I noticed you had a less antagonistic communication with Kevin McGehee going...probably because he's not so vain and prickly about his opinions as I am, but your comment does make me think:
Blogging is a new thing. The "Grand-Daddies and Grand Dames" have been doing it for 3-4 years at the most. My, how it's changed, no? All the little niches keep getting filled up, and it is like a network marketing scheme, in that the people who get in first have the easiest time making it "big".
In the beginning, there was more discussion, and more crossing, but the way the war has developed and the way the debate on the national level has declined, it's split up some cliques, I think. It made blogging not-fun for Jo and you, it seems (sadly). I cannot even go to Tom Burka's site anymore, because what I loved about it was he was helping me take things less seriously, but his commenters were taking his jokes like gospel truth, and I can't take that much earnestness on a site that's supposed to be humor (even if humor with an underlying current of truth, especially if it's a "truth" I disagree is true).
So I do mostly stay among the conservatives these days. I wonder what blogging will be like in 5 years? I plan to keep going...
I wonder what it will be like in 50 years, or if it will go the way of....what's something that everybody used to think was neat but has now faded into obscurity? Well, it may go the way of that.

Nathan,

You're right. The blogosphere has maybe "broken up" into cliques. Instead of discussion with others, many of us began communicating with those who have the same outlook. It becomes preaching to the choir, you know? And that can get boring.

I remember how Jo got her butt kicked because she was against the war. Like she couldn't even have an opinion. And a lot of butt kicking seemed to come from "friends."

Blogging, in my opinion, will continue to go more and more mainstream. Much of it has. No longer is it "alternative."

Maybe it will go the way of the hula hoop?

Nathan: Good point. I do sort of have a clique with Dean -as to the readers you mention I've always thought of it as more of a mutual despise society - with the exception of the aesthete. He really loves me. :-)

Rosemary,
Then again, I have no idea if you visited their blogs at all, and that is part of my idea of a clique, as well.
There were a few months when the only blogs I'd hit in a day were Jo's, ZB's, Kevin's, Deb's, Dodd's and Juan's.

Iw as primarily relieved that mine wasn't on there; then realized that it wasn't because I am not in the monolythic cliques (I recently posted about this in a self-deprecating post). Then I thought how good it would have been to have been listed because, as I learned from the war of words with Kos, there's no such thing as bad publicity. And at the end of the day, civility is always the best night cap.