:@ And :'s

In an ongoing quest to prove that I thought of everything first, I offer you the following in relation to all those annoying :) s and :( s that people have been sending around on emails for the last 10 years or so. :@ which = no friends so just shooting the breeze, and (this is the best one) :' which means I'm stoned, please ignore me, unless you really really (really) want to talk about the time I met that bald bloke from the Smashing Pumpkins and there was like this real connection man, like he'd been writing all those songs about me and Janey my girl, well she was my girl until I accidentally burned out her recently deceased mother's trailer in the desert that night we scored that skunk from the Mexican bloke who used to work in the hardware store downtown.

In other news..actually I want to talk about stoned people some more. My recent assessment of the web and blogs and stuff is that there are four/five active groups using it/them: 1) geeks 2) :'s 3) people trying to sell you stuff 4) people who are looking for pornography 5) and or a combination of all the above. Somewhere along the line we have to factor in the business community and political lobbyists and people looking for nice dates and or who genuinely believe that anyone would be interested in a photo of their newborn child (just for looking at rather than as a view to purchase). But we are dealing with the active and the passive here people. Think about it. Why is You Tube so popular? Er, because it is best viewed by :'s [allegedly].

Which leaves us innocent bloggers with a dilemma. Do we pander to the market, or soldier on with our gentile thoughts on middle class England (or wherever) in the vague hope that our voice will eventually reach similarly-minded people once they have trawled through the discussion groups about coding, and the offers to change our lives with one click and your credit card details, and the :'s' lists of their top favourite ice cream flavours and J Mascis guitar solos.

I spent a fascinating day with a web expert on Tuesday. She really knows her stuff and explained about how all the advertising works on the web, and what connects to what, and how you get Google to love you etc. But there is this dilemma of writing to attract advertising or writing that does attract advertising. I should say here that househusbandnot has only ever been about me writing and never about trying to make money. I happen to have made approx enough out of the advertising on hhn for a couple of those J Mascis CDs and a large tub of Triple Chocolate And Space Cookie Ice Cream, but that was very much chance rather than design. The reason I was meeting with this web expert was around this work I am doing for mrs househusbandnot and a new site which is looking to make money through advertising etc.

But the more I am learning about the web, the less and less it seems such a great emancipator or provider of objective information. Eventually, everything will be so searched and tailored and filed and provided, that it all be like one small library, run by extremely tough librarians who will only let us read the books we are supposed to read. And the geeks and the :'s and the people selling us stuff and the pornographers will find the connections and the ways in and out, but you and I will be stuck at the back of the library with our shared copy of Look And Learn.

:@ x