Weakest blog post ever (apologies in advance)

A couple of months ago, I attended a conference in Seattle (RSA for all of you rhetoric folks in the know). It was fabulous, and I really enjoyed the city. For the trip home, for reasons I still do not understand, unless I was interested in doing some sort of autoethnographic study about enduring sleep deprivation in various airports, I scheduled flights that would have me either waiting at an airport or in the air from 8 pm at night until 2 pm the following day. So, during those hours, I periodically journalled in a cheapo notepad I had bought (for $15) at one of those airport newsstands. Here are some of the results of that inspirational burst of unbridled freewriting energy (and keep in mind that I was literally doing this to keep myself awake and also dozing in and out of consciousness while I wrote):

What I guess is funny about this, and the reason I felt it to be worth retyping, is the increasing sense of desperate fatigue and annoyance with the people around me.

5/27/08

We begin boarding in 30 minutes. (and then a bunch of bla bla bla about how much I enjoyed dining at the Cheesecake Factory and the hot fudge sundae I inhaled without shame)

All the little shops and restaurants at the airport are closing now--I just want to get out of here. Everyone looks so tired. I tried to find out how close we are to Alaska--many people seem to be flying there from Seattle. I wonder if it's a place worth seeing.

(and then a bunch of pontificating about a book I am considering writing a proposal for)

6 minutes until my restroom break and then we board--hooray! (at this point I had taken to scheduling breaks for myself, trying to convince myself they were like mini field trips down the hall)

We'll get to Dallas early and I'll have 4 hours to bum around and scrounge up some breakfast. We board at 10:20. I'm so happy to be on my way back home.

(more pontificating about my book project, which was really starting to sound fabulous in the midst of the crushing boredom)

This [the airport] is a good place to people watch. You see people kissing each other goodbye, and your imagination can't help filling in a story there, bickering with each other, and sometimes just running their chubby bodies down the aisle to catch their planes.

6:30 am

I have almost 4 hours till my plane boards. This day is killing me! But at least I'm in Big D now. And it's a short hop to Houston.

I don't think I've ever really "killed" time before like I am right now. I am waiting these minutes out with a maniacal determination--why don't they have few little beds in airports? Or at least blankets and pillows? They know we're tired. And I'm starting to feel cranky too. But I have to maintain my sanity so I can greet my dad.

I'll find some coffee and something to eat at 7. Then before I know it, it'll be 8.

I drank some weirdo "passion fruit" tea at the Cheesecake Factory yesterday--it smelled like perfume and tasted like it too until I dumped in some Sweet'N'Low. Scary stuff.

Too tired to think any more, but I've enjoyed freewriting.

8:20 am

Why do all these stupid first class people get to get on first? And what makes them first class? Money? I just wish I could lay down--this flight is only a little over an hour.

Board in 80 minutes

I'll tell you one thing--I'm about sick to death of airport restrooms. I've been travelling since a little before midnight and I am finally on the last leg of the trip. I need some food and some comfy covers to snuggle/hide under for a while. Come to think of it, I have a whole summer to hide. Woohoo! This will be a good year.

Board in 35 minutes

I'm homesick for Dallas. I need a week there. Just took a pic of myself with the cell phone--bleccchhh! I look like a toad--with bags under her eyes.

My peeps will be p.o.'d that I took not a single picture while in Seattle. I'm sorry, but when I'm having fun, I'm concentrating on having fun, and not on going to great lengths to remediate that fun through a camera lens so that you can tell that I was, indeed, having fun. I guess I have a very Garfield perspective about some aspects of life. [clarification--Garfield the cat is my hero, and thus, when I notice myself adopting a particularly cynical or sarcastic view of something, I have to give him some credit--we can discuss the disturbing pathology of someone who admires a cartoon character later...]

[And now for the last gem, which was apropos of absolutely zip and was probably written on the plane ride back to Bum-out from Houston...]

There is nothing grosser than bar food. Really. Most of it is fried chunks of who-knows-what--maybe cheese--maybe meat--but what do the patrons care? It's a BAR--it's not about having a good meal--it's about getting tanked.

[And for clarification on that last "blurt"--I almost never go to bars unless I feel it is some kind of social obligation--this brief rant referred to one such outing in which several acquantances ordered an "appetizer sampler". "Appetizer Sampler" translated basically means "a bunch of stuff cooked/fried within an inch of its life and thrown on a plate--we're not even sure what all of it is, so out of pure laziness and to eschew identifying it, we're calling it a "sampler.'" I was all agog at this cornucopia of nastiness--it was like a train wreck on a platter, and no, I did not partake.]

So there you have it: airport blurting, a completely useless genre, which I have invented.

Second Blog Post...(on audience addressed and blogs)

I have been working on this second blog post since December 1, 2006, so prepare to be dazzled by my brilliance.

Not quite. In reality, what happened was this; I created this blog with much excitement a year and a half ago with every intention of dropping by every day to wax rhetorical/linguistic/pedagogical. After a few weeks, the new semester began, I became bogged down with teaching and research, and once I actually sat down to write another post, I realized I had lost my blog. I literally misplaced it in the great chasm of the Internet (thank you, Steve, for reminding me to capitalize that, even though I know you are not reading this), having forgotten I created it through blogspot. But a week ago I decided to hunt it down, and lo and behold, here it is, intact.

If a blogger makes a post in cyberspace and no one is around to read it, does it make a sound? Yes, I realize that I have mangled one of the great philosophical questions concerning the presence of an audience, but, well, you know what I mean. The question of blogs and their audiences (and how the audience shapes the genre) is one that interests me greatly. I am considering having my Fall 2008 advanced students (perhaps even my first years) create a blog for the purpose of recording various structured freewrites and research logs. Many of them, no doubt, will have already had experience with blogging on myspace--a *good* thing, in my opinion. They will likely come in without the knowledge that one can create a very engaging academic blog that allows them to collaborate productively with peers, and so this little rhetorical adventure will (1) allow them to expand their knowledge of a genre they are well aware of, thereby allowing them learn by association, and (2) let them write for a real audience--an audience addressed (me, their immediate peers in the class, and whatever cyber-couch-potato-riffraff who randomly searches blogs and happens to find theirs) rather than invoked.

So, back to whether this post makes a "sound" (or perhaps "resonates" might be a more appropriate word) if no one reads it. In fact, is this even a blog if no one reads my posts? I don't know yet. I'm sure that over the coming months I will mention to someone that I, too, have a blog, and they will peruse it and perhaps even tell someone else, and eventually I will gain some small readership of likeminded rhetoric dorks who enjoy pondering things like this to no end. But for right now, it feels kind of cozy posting in what may be the last tiny undiscovered corner of the net.