Rambling On

I was over at Technorati, a site that keeps track of who is saying what in millions of blogs and shows you how many blogs have links to your own. It's kind of fun and can be seriously addictive. With technorati you can tag individual post to make it more accessible. I have yet to tag my posts because it can be quite time consuming like a full-time job. Browsing through some of the so-called "top blog posts" I am somewhat taken aback: people are yet to be sated with entertainment scoops and Hollywood gossips from inundating sources like ET and tabloids that are literally up your face. And here in the blogsphere you find people tirelessly babbling about the same goddam thing! Look at covers of In Touch Weekly with a unswerving loyalty to cover the latest of Nick and Jessica's drama, Tom Cruise's baby; sometimes I think those vanilla nonfat latte-drinking (right, how can vanilla be nonfat anyway?) chicks would swear not to miss a single issue of the tabloid at the expense of calling mom at home. We are in a society where chasing the stars become more than a post-dinner passing comment. Here are the top posts according to Technorati, at the current hour:

Clay Aiken Faces Lawsuit
When Best Friends Go Mad: Bruce Willis Sues
Travis and Shanna: The Divorced Barkers

Nobody seems to care, or even being savvy, of the news that we have alarmingly elevated to a red terrorist alert this morning. Then I shifted over to Blogroll, a site that helps keep track of my favorite blogs/links with a one-click setting. For a paid premium membership, you can even categorize your blogrolls. Mine is one mixed bag of gay (life), literary tidbits, books, and social reflections. My friend Matty from Matt's Bit of Space mentioned how his boyfriend B never left any comments on his blog. That is not uncommon among people who might have been reading, checking, or lurking anonymously my blog. Neither of most of my friends blog nor do they post any comments. They are like few of my students who always sit at the back of the room and make themselves invisible during class discussion. Sometimes I look at their searching faces--they are struggling with the surge to raise their hands and make known their sound thoughts but at the same time they are too conscious of what others might have thought. Something to consider when I assign the course grade, like in borderline B+/A- case.

John Baker just published my responses to his book-related meme. You can read my entry here. Nothing new if you've been following my blog. I did make a comment about why I pursue literature: Literature/fiction has the power to afford such chronological and culture diversity so remote from my own experience that makes it very appealing to me. It's like arm-chair travel but the novels dig deeper than the physical landscape to the hidden, sometimes forbidden terrains of culture, secrets, sexuality, humanity and history.