It turns out that many of my favorite books are in the form of journals or letters. Off the top of my head, there’s Dracula, Les Liaisons Dangereux, and Frankenstein. I’ve taken a turn at trying to read online journals, and without offering up any specific sleights I have found online journals to be of three or four varieties: Teenagers cultivating generic apathy. Middle-aged women who have discovered various forms of bondage, discipline and general kink and seem to like talking about it more than doing it. Bored people who like to cut themselves to experience sensation. And tech-junkie click-whores looking for attention and, evidently, work.

Now I’m well on my way to condemning myself but, as with nearly everything, I cannot stop myself. The problem with online journaling is not new. Back in the 80s, Buddy Cole (Scott Thompson) said: “The problem is, the people you’re most likely to encounter in Cyberland would be computer nerds and hackers. And Trekkies with red pubic hair.” Yes there are some exceptions. But the problem is still mostly true. Bloggers, no doubt, midnight minions, the color of blanched shrimp, take their communion at their electric altars and think their way through life.

No manifesto is this. I am no doer either. But — again I aim the rifle at my foot here – there is not enough worth reading online. Cyberland does not have a Motorcycle Diaries equivalent. Cyberland is not where Rilke shared his letters to a young poet. Yes, perhaps I’m not looking hard enough.

Or perhaps it’s something else. Perhaps online communities are so fragmented, so faceted, like a diamond, that I am missing some important cyber-point. But, nevertheless, there is plenty going on that I would like to see documented on someone’s blog. That domestic queen, Martha Stewart, would no doubt inform and amuse me with her daily updates of her current circumstances. Egyptian archeologists with a digital camera could entertain and instruct. Some others: An Arctic journeyman tracking some beast, or even the effects of global warming. Doctors without borders. A Korean rice field tender. Hey Nasa. Want to reinvigorate the Space Program? Let’s get a blog from the shuttle. I would read that. Let’s follow the career of a new spaceman. Let’s hear about his training and his estrangement from his family and about his first launch. Or those guys who live on space stations. They probably haven’t got much to do. Give them a blog. I’ll even design and program it for NASA just for the fun. Or those Raelians. We haven’t heard from them since their cloning fake-out. Sure they’re whack jobs but it would still be entertaining. Or the Pope. Could we get the Pope a blog? He could post polls about same-sex marriages, birth control, and the exact geographic location of hell. Or some mid-western teacher busy seducing a lusty student. That’s a blog I would read. But I’d want to see letters and communications from both parties: a dia-blog. Incidentally, when that word takes off, when someone tries to register that word – diaBlog – I want credit. I’ve just checked; and I’m too late. Innovators and inventors, it turns out, need only to be one thing: punctual.

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