Today I have a guest author. She (he, who knows about real identities, anyway) emailed the.effing.librarian and asked if she could write a post to increase her web presence. I don't know what writing for this blog could do to help anyone's visibility on the web; it sure hasn't helped mine. But 13 of you have purchased "effing" merchandise, so there is a very good chance that I could travel the globe for the rest of my life and still never meet one person wearing my tee-shirt.
If you googly Heather's (the guest) email, you'll find her many guest contributions on many sites. So I'm not sure what benefit there is to posting on other's blogs. On the one hand, you become more visible, but on the other, you become more visible. I avoid being visible: I am the boy/ that can enjoy/ invisibility. (But I heard it from Sonic Youth, not Joyce.)
If you ever want to spot me at a conference, look for the guy who's trying not to be noticed. I understand my weaknesses, and given too much attention, I will abuse it. Just watch the video of me giving the toast at my friend's wedding reception, or any wedding video where I appear, for that matter.
I don't comment so much on blogs because I'd feel like a whore, overused and easy. But I try to visit and comment on sites where I think an appearance might be welcome or at least not given a swift boot to the ass. If I've commented on your site, I'm sorry, I was probably drunk. Or horny: God, you are so hot.
No one has invited me to write for her blog nor has anyone offered to write for mine; as much as blogging is supposed to be part of the family of social media, blogging is mainly a solitary pursuit.
Wait, I take that back. Birdie at LISNews asked me to contribute, but since I didn't think I could guarantee writing anything that wouldn't embarrass her or Blake, I declined. But I comment there and I have a blog there, but I don't claim to be a contributor.
Ultimately, the answer to why I have a guest poster is, she asked.
Again, I wonder why any of us do this. Is it better to be slogging through the web alone, or is it better to band together and battle grues. What would we do if this were a mmog?
I don't know if the.effing.librarian will become a brand. I will edit all these posts into book form some day, and that could become something I might prize. But there's always the question of why do we do this? To help, to entertain, I don't know. Before I named this blog, I thought I was going to call it The Dude Librarian. I guess I could have begun each post with "Dude!" like, "Dude, today we have a guest contributor." Gosh, why did I abandon that idea? Here is a snippet of a message I sent to someone on 4/26/2007: "a dude librarian, hey, maybe I should have a blog called 'the dude librarian'..." But on the same day I opened my Gmail account under the current name; what made me think of the.effing.librarian??? Weird.
[note: the current Wikipedia entry for Evol has been edited to remove "the lines 'I am the boy/That can enjoy/Invisibility' from 'Secret Girl' are lifted from James Joyce's novel Ulysses," so I wonder if there is no confirmation that the lines are from Joyce, or heard elsewhere.]
