In the land of the blogger, the one-eyed, banjo-picking blog-reader is king.


In the land of the blogger, the one-eyed banjo-picking blog-reader is king.

It’s a funny old business, blogging. I spend at least half my time swearing I’m going to give it up or declaring the next will be my last. I suspect many bloggers suffer this same blogxistential angst. It’s just that there’s just so gosh darn many of them now. So. Many. Bloggers. Or more correctly, so many of “us.” It’s like Britain’s Got Talent: Which actually seems to have as a hidden mission to demonstrate just how quickly the talent-levels drop. Oh great, Season XXIV. And another 12 stars you’d never heard of yesterday are foisted upon us. Stack ’em with the others. Another 3 seasons and they’ll have enough new stars to put one on every sofa in Britain, right next to you in your own living room.

To put in the effort to write your next blog, you have to think you’ve got something to say worth saying and something that other people haven’t said before. Otherwise, you know, what’s the point? But it gets harder and harder to convince yourself that there’s much of a gap left in the ground covered by every other bloody blogger. It leads to an ill-defined malaise, an ennui, a…non-specific blogrectile dysfunction.  And unlike actual erectile dysfunction, taking your willy out and whacking it off the TV, table, chairs and all the furniture (and Mrs Figgis who happened to walk past your open front window at an inopportune moment) doesn’t eventually lead to the requisite surge in your blogging loins.

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This tweet tells it all. 113 articles from Squawka on AFC & MUFC on a Tuesday when we don’t have a match for another 5 days: Commited. Eye-opening. Shite.

I am like Buridan’s Donkey. (No! Not for the reasons you think, though that would also bear comparison, I can tell you. No worries in that department!) No, Buridan’s Donkey, the donkey who starves to death because he sees two carrots equidistant from himself and can’t choose one over the other. I’ve always had contempt for that donkey slowly starving to death. What a wally. Or so I thought to myself. “Just pick one, you eejit! Either one. It really doesn’t matter! You’re starving. Eat a feckin’ carrot!”

That donkey deserves to die. Basic evolutionary theory. If not, we’re going to raise a race of super-moron donkeys. Eventually they won’t be able to choose between one carrot equidistant from itself.

This is why I actually think people should continue to read LeGrove’s blog. Yes, he’s a self-contradicting, pompous twat with a tiresome, grinding agenda, the Bill O’Reilly of this backwater, but if we wipe him out then someone who can actually make a cogent, non-contradictory, anti-Wenger case might rise up in his place.

So, let’s encourage the Moron-Magnet to keep at it, for the sake of us all, lest something more horrible crawls out of the sewer to take his place. And so I say to you, Sir: “Blog on, good Pedro. Blog on.” Fill the void. You do the club great service indeed.

And yet…here I am stuck in the equidistance between writing another blog and never ever writing another blog again. I am Donkified. The forces pulling on me in opposite directions are perfectly balanced. I try to feint, to sway to one side but find the forces and their point of application move perfectly in sync with me.

I am torn, rent in twain. Paralyzed and suspended in equal measure. Perfectly balanced…to the point that something miraculous happens…This precise equilibrium suddenly pops me into a parallel universe. Yes, incredible as it may seem, I am writing this from another dimension. I know! I was surprised too, I can tell you.

This new universe, I soon discover, is much like our own but…it is one of low technology, perhaps even of no technology. No internet, no smartphones, no ipads, no computers. But wait… that also means no blogging and no blogs!!! Woohoo! I am free, free at last. And so are you! And if someone even mentions a protocol for connecting the world in a web-like information network, I will hunt that bastard down like a dog and shoot him through the freakin’ head. I will shoot him with a rock, as we may not have invented guns here yet.

And the even better news…I’m an Arsenal supporter here too! And I’m on the way to a match at the Emirates. It’s going to be great. No blogs. We’ll just chat about the game before and after in the pubs, like it’s supposed to be. Proper supporters. Real supporters.

So there we all are walking along towards the stadium, havin’ a bit of craic, in great form. Along the road from the tube station we pass a park, a park filled with some Gooners.

And match after match, I notice this park on the way. And each time, I see more and more Gooners gathering there each match-day. I enquire as to what this place is.

“It’s Bloggers Corner.” It’s where the bloggers go to preach, to stand on boxes, and advocate their views and opinions, insights and observations.

So there are bloggers here too? Balls!! I was wrong after all. My heart sinks. Of course I was wrong: Just as cockroaches will not only survive a nuclear holocaust but thrive, so the blogger crawls out from under every rock in this universe.

And this Bloggers’ Corner kinda makes sense. There’s no internet and stuff so you write up your precious blog on a piece of paper and take it over to Bloggers’ Corner. And maybe even hand out a copy or two.

But even here a strange yet familiar phenomenon had been occuring. Over time the number of bloggers on pedestals seemed to swell as the number of listeners seemed to dwindle.

Sure enough, it was only a matter of time before someone implored me: “You should write a blog.” But I’d just arrived. I know nothing about the team, the league or football tactics. I know fuck all. “Don’t let that hold you back. None of them feckers did.”

But still my attention is drawn time and time again to a curious, mutant-looking, one-eyed banjo-picker sitting off in a far corner of the park. Finally, I ask a companion: “Who’s that grotesque creature over there, playing a banjo?”

“Shhh,” he replies in hushed tones. “He…he does not have a name.”

Despite his reticence, I pursued the matter: “Why do you hold a nameless, one-eyed gimp playing a banjo, and that eye being smack dab in the center of his face, in such reverence? Is he a blogger? That’s it, of course. He must be a blogger. Perhaps he is an idiot savant-blogger. A Rainman blogger?”

“No. You don’t understand,” my companion replies. “He is HIM, “HE WHO READS.””

“Come again?”

“It is rumoured that he is “HIM” – HE who occasionally reads someone’s blog.

I let out an audible gasp. “You say…” my voiced tremored at the words. “You say he reads…blogs?” I could scarcely believe the audacity of my own question.

“Yes. THAT is what they say. They say that he does not read quickly. They say that he does not read well. They say that he does not comprehend what he reads. But they do say that he does occasionally read a blog.”

I gasped again.

As the banjo gimp stood up and walked across the park, my friend fell prostrate on the ground, grabbing handfuls of dirt and rubbing them into his hair. I fell down beside him and commenced to do the same. From all around a murmur grew louder and louder, a chant by all bloggers who now also lay prostrate with us:

“In the land of the blogger, the one-eyed blog-reader is king.

In the land of the blogger, the one-eyed blog-reader is king.”

I thought to myself, “this would make an interesting blog,” an idea simultaneously arrived at by every other prostrate blogger for a mile around.

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