The Anniversary Party
So, it seems as if blogging is experiencing something of a renaissance, or at least a resurgence, amongst my glorious friends. Huzzah!

Five years after I was introduced to the hurly-burly world of web logs, fear plays a much larger role than when this world was young. The Mountain of Love lost a job because of his blog (actually, he lost it because of his evil boss, but the blog was at the heart of the instigating incident). The Watergirl has fled a succession of stalkers and sundry lurkers (lousy lurkers, always lurking and skulking avbout). Others have given up entirely. A joyous and frankly reckless spirit of liberating anonymity has given way to a witch's bew of paranoia, sober and responsible caution, pseudonyms, oblique references, and codewords. The banal pleasures of YouTube aside, ye olde internet is not fun the way it once was. Once, the all-encompassing point of the exercise was that virtually anyone virtually anywhere in the world could read the idiosyncratic drivel you pounded out while sitting in your dorm room in your boxers. Now, Bog forbid anyone should find you out. The world was once each and every blogger's oyster; now (brace yourself, this one's a groaner), we wish the web to be anything but world wide.

"When did the future go from being a promise to the threat?"
--Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

As ever, and as in every other occurrence for this you have my apologies, I have questions by the English ton and naught in the way of answers. When did we all become so afraid? Was that bygone unbridled enthusiasm proper and the current dread a perversion, or were we carefree fools who have now woken to the sobering restraint of respectibility? Were we wrong then or are we wrong now? Or wrong both then and now, with right as the exclusive province of some unknown alternative? Is blogging here to stay or a passing fancy of these early, untamed years of the interwebs?

Of one thing only am I certain, I must make a point of working "hurly-burly" into far, far more posts. Down with Google! Death to New Blogger! !Viva los bloggy blogs! !Viva los bloggerinos!

Parker Posey Appreciation Day
And also, because Parker Posey is part of the ensemble cast of The Anniversary Party, here's a neat banner from the fine folks at parkerposey.org!