WILD WANDERINGS ON THE WAY

Not surprisingly, after a year of writing this blog, I am running out of interesting things to say. Yes, I hear you. You think I ran out of interesting things a l-o-n-g time ago. Ha! A pox upon ya, ya scurvy son of a sea dog. (I'm writing this on Talk Like A Pirate Day. Arrrrr!) I've found it harder to write things lately mostly because the ideas that come up are rather involved and require substantial essays to work properly. I have one on philosophy that is going nowhere, another on being a benedictine oblate from last year, another I have thought about on the Iraq war, and one I started about my great-grandfather.

After a year of doing this I have developed some understanding of this strange world of social networking. I am amazed that my profile has been read over 800 times on Myspace. Of course this is nothing. Some young people have hit counts in the seven or eight thousand range, in the space of a year or two. Of course I only have seven friends listed, and I had to beg two of them to take me as friends. I could have a lot more "friends" on MySpace because I get numerous friend requests, but they are always from strange women not wearing very much who are interested in selling pictures of themselves wearing even less.

For someone who just wants to write rambling opinions, this Blogster is much safer. Occasionally I get comments from complete strangers which I find interesting. I wonder how they fall into this blog? Most of my readers are people I know at church or relatives or even a few real friends, but there are thirty people or so who drop in every week –certainly more than I can account for.

This whole Internet phenomena gives pause for thought. I write a blog, and people I don't know look at it. Maybe some come back again, probably most are one time visitors. But they are all folks who would never have read anything of mine had this vast system of communication not appeared.

I have learned to stay away from most forums or discussion groups because they seem to degenerate into attacks quite quickly. In fact, some people seem to be seeking others to attack. I find it sad that religious forums seem to be especially prone to this. People seem to look for reasons to criticize others, especially if they share the same religion. I've seen some particularly nasty attacks by Lutherans on people not regarded as being sufficiently orthodox.

Another strange phenomenon of the Internet world is the practice of "Googling" someone. You type their name into the little box, hit search, amd voila! More than you could want to know about a persin. I've Googled myself. Naturally, a link turns up to the church website, several to the Ocala Civic Theatre where my name appears among the volunteers, one to the classmates page for my high school, one to an online petition I signed for clergy supporting the teaching of evolution (someday that's going to get me into trouble), a few links to this blog, and bunches to Lulu.com where my book and play scripts are available. I'm surprised so many people (over three-hundred) have stumbled into my store there, and even more surprised that a couple dozen people have taken the time to download my free scripts. Now if someone would only perform them. Well, you can't have everything.

Oh yes, some time back I found a mention of my doctoral dissertation online. You know, that ponderous tome with the catchy title that starts "Cognitive Dissonance and the Effect of Acceptance of Methodology, Beliefs . . ." zzzzzzzzzzzzz So what? I've found online a copy of my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grand father Jacob Heerbrand's book Compendium Theologiae published in Latin in 1575. I wonder how many people have actually tried to read that thing? It takes forever just to download a single page. Great (11x) grandpa wrote a lot of stuff, some of which is better forgotten. He thought that a comet appearing in 1577 was a sign of the end of the world and held a disputation against witchcraft. Consider the time period, however. Besides, family is family, and I am sure most of the stuff I have written sounds like the work of someone suffering from a severe mental disorder or maybe just a bad case of silliness. If only I could write like Robert Benchley, that would be an achievement. Maybe I would get to act in movie shorts like he did. Ever see "The Treasurer's Report"?

Well, speaking of acting I have a performance coming up (literally as you are about to discover.) I am playing the part of the Voice in The Journey. The director says my screaming is fine, but my vomiting needs work. I have to go practice for a while.

Until next time, faithful fans and visitors, may the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne