Intro to blogging

In response to the Intro to Blogging Content Competition, I have decided to post the most authoritative post on blogging, ever. Sit back, relax, and stay away from any sharp objects for the duration of this post.

So the questions are:

1) What's a Blog?
A Blog is a shortened form of Web Log, which comes from Web, which is what spiders weave, and Log, which is a piece of wood. So a blog is simply a piece of wood that is covered with spider spit. The spider, having done this after trying, trying and trying again, decided to write about it and found no publisher worth his or her salt (who the hell is worth salt? publishers perhaps) was willing to publish this extremely boring piece of writing. Therefore, the spider chose to use the internet instead, which is why you call it the world wide web. Which also explains why the majority of blogs are about extremely boring topics like libertarianism and its effect on mutated frog embryos in Baluchistan.

In the internet you can't have a six letter word. I mean using weblog is not happening. You get four letters, they said. So we got blog , because webl sounds plain silly. So does eblo, if you were planning get democratic with the words.

2) Start Blogging now. How?
First, you get a spider.

Then you kill it, because your wife is standing on the table and screaming. You open your computer and write a nice article in Microsoft Word about how your wife is leaving you in peace because she's still on the table not yet convinced that the spider is dead. Now you figure your good friends want to read this also, because it does not occur to your brain cells that this act will eliminate the adjective "good" from their description.

But you also want the whole world to read it and not have to email the whole world, because let's face it, the world is stupid and will simply email it back to you and say "FYI" in the subject and then you will spend the rest of your life deleting emails and your wife will starve to death standing on the table.

So you decide you will publish your own BLOG! So you go to www.blogger.com. From there on, you enter all sorts of details like Name, last name, any other given names, any names not given but could be used in times of peril, shade of lipstick, make of underwear, and small technical details like if you want to "ping" "weblogs.com" or "enable float alignment" which sound important but the spiders in the background are laughing when you click "Yes" and thinking how stupid humans have become that they actually want to align floats or float aligns or whatever the hell it is that option does, and frankly the spiders couldn't care less because they're bloody spiders and they're only good for eating flies and scaring women though with all the women's liberation movement and all it is more likely a woman will squish the spider and tell you to do the dishes or she'll shove the wooden log up where it doesn't belong, but we have to warn you because we have now reached the end of this sentence.

So you publish this blog and tell your friends that you are now a blogger and they look at you with awe and wonder and ask you if it hurts.

But you have to face such hurtful remarks when you have just become a writer and publisher, so don't give up just yet. Give up when they actually read your blog and threaten to kill you.

3) Tools for Blog Nirvana
The last time someone achieved Nirvana was under a tree, which presumably consisted of lots of spiders.

So that really is your only hope. Write whatever you will, and post it in your blog. Then go sit under the biggest tree you can find, and I'm really sorry for you folks that live in bonsai territory. Recite the following mantra, over and over again:

Om Technorati linkaaye namaha.
Om Flickr asya picturaaya namaha
Om Shree Google adsense inastu
Om Stat Counter badh jaaye namaha.

Repeat until your head bursts or your wife voluntarily gets off the table, and hits you on the knocker with a kadai.

4) State of the Indian Blogosphere...
...is Karnataka. Tomorrow it may be Maharashtra. We don't know yet.

That's what makes blogging so dynamic.