There's No Earthly Way of Knowing….
posted Tuesday January 13th, 2009
A lot of people blog for fun. That’s at least part of the point of GIAPH. But if you happen to have a job that has a blog component (and I’m betting an ever-increasing blog component) you’re likely experiencing the same love/hate relationship I am.
A lot of complaining goes on, around my workplace, about the whole blah-blah-blah-blogging thing, but finally this weekend, I took the time to read Andrew Sullivan’s treatise on the matter in the November Atlantic Monthly, and I’ve got to say it made me feel a lot better.
You should read it, too, since you’re here, which means you read blogs, if not blog yourself: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/andrew-sullivan-why-i-blog
I also felt much better today after tracking down this poem, parts of which had been floating through my head all morning. It’s recited aboard a boat somewhere in the bowels of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory — I recall it from the original, though it seems too good for Tim Burton to have passed up. (Did Dahl write it? Or is it a famous literary gem by someone else that I missed along the way?)
In any case, for me, it equates nicely — if a bit on the melodramatic, macabre side — to the whole blogging thing:
There’s no earthly way of knowing
Which direction we are going
There’s no knowing where we’re rowing
Or which way the river’s flowing
Is it raining, is it snowing
Is a hurricane a-blowing
Not a speck of light is showing
So the danger must be growing
Are the fires of Hell a-glowing
Is the grisly reaper mowing
Yes, the danger must be growing
For the rowers keep on rowing
And they’re certainly not showing
Any signs that they are slowing
Oh I’m hearing Gene Wilder and feeling motion sickness from that scary boat! That is one of my favorite parts of one of my favorite movies.
Of course the favorite one being “so shines a good deed in a weary world”.