Todd Terwilliger

I’ve come to a decision. I do not like the term, “blogger”. I don’t know what, exactly, a “weblog” is but I don’t like it. Okay, I know what a weblog is as a practical matter but what is it, really? I’m not logging webs or webbing logs. I’m not keeping a log of the web nor keeping a web of a log. I’ve seen logs, loafs, bars, and loads, and my interest in them is, at best, tangential. The only webs I’m interested in are the spun-out lairs of the spiders in my bathroom and what interest I had in those I have already expressed. No, whatever currency the term “weblog” had with me is spent. I must define myself elsewhere.

It’s less a case of definition vagueness than it is a lack of descriptive power, a lack of any sort of spirt or charm. “Blog”, “weblog”, “blogger” are soulless belches, word farts- discharges of breath without any substance except, at times, a certain stale malodor. There’s no attached imagery here, at least nothing I want to be attached to. No, no, I must look elsewhere. What word can capture the debut de siècle zeitgeist that I so desperately need?

At first, I grabbed recklessly at “journalist” but it immediately struck me as a poor fit. While technically it might make sense in that I keep a journal of sorts, the feel is all wrong. I’m no newsie, not a reporter of any sort. At best, I might be considered an op-ed man but that hardly makes it a good match. No. With a shove, I cast it back into the Thesaurus. There must be a better fit out there somewhere. There must.

According to Thesaurus.com, these are the synonyms for “journalist”: announcer, broadcaster, columnist, commentator, contributor, correspondent, cub, editor, hack, media person, newspaper person, newsperson, pencil pusher, press, publicist, reporter, scribe, scrivener, stringer, television commentator, writer.

To be sure, hack has a certain rustic charm and scrivener a colonial eloquence (does a scrivener scriven?), but neither was quite what I was looking for. The rest? Too vague, too imprecise, too weak, or just too too. Nothing of use to me. Clearly this problem would not be solved without great amounts of verve and moxy. Thankfully, I am chalk full of both.

Still, this was a dark moment. I was hovering at the edge of a yawning abyss of dispair, hopelessness, and poor vocabulary. To cheer myself up, I decided to watch the 1959 film production of The Diary of Anne Frank, starring Shelley Winters as Mrs. Petronella Van Daan. I understand, now, that this was precisely the wrong film to watch. However, like some dark Nazi-flavored clouds, this one had a silver lining: from the word “diary” in the film title, I leaped nimbly to its sibling, the “diarist”. This was a word I could work with.

With a soft aura of snobbery, a slight blue-tinge of ink-stained fingers, and the aroma of fading parchment, leather bound chairs, and stuffy unmoving library air, it represents everything I can’t afford but can conveniently claim on the internet. It’s perfect.

From now on, I am no longer a blogger. I am a diarist. I feel more elite already.

Technorati Tags: blog, blogger, diarist, diary of anne frank, hack, journalist, scrivener, shelley winters, spiders, weblog