My blag is a horse's ass. Or, Best Stories.

(Apologies to savvy blagger types, as this post is a wee bit “Wankosphere 101”-like to ‘splain our bent to non-blaggers.)

People seem to have a black and white reaction to Scott Adams' blag. They love him or hate him. Haters seem to fail to see that he's a contrarion, witty shit stirrer with a wicked sense of humor. They take him literally. They suck.

His posts of late have been about unfunny things, wittily written. He's recently returned to funny posts peppered with the occasional personal one. This personal, Best Story post last week was awesome.

Hmmm. Best stories. Haven't "made it" yet with my passions (singing and writing). Joining the band could lead to good storytelling, but it’s nascent and simmering n’ stuff. I bidness wrote an article for an industry "white paper" a while back. A trade rag where vendors pay to place 2000 words of (typically) thinly disguised marketing dreck as "vendor neutral, educational" points of view on a topic. After its publication, a college professor in the midwest reached out, saying he'd read the piece and presented it in his bidness class for IT majors as good stuff on customer needs and business reasons for technology use.

That was the bee's effing knees. A lapsed English major with former dreams of teaching, I’d let writing go in the rush to career and paycheck advancement in the tech sector. Segueing from a tech role to a marketing one in ’99, my writing kung fu was slowly reawakened.

I am continually, gut-wrenchingly, knickers-in-a-twist disgusted at the inability of the below average person in bidness today to fail so utterly at writing a complete sentence. That such folk call my bidness writing superlative is not exactly a compliment, based on the source.

But that professor? Saying it was all relevant n’ stuff? That rocked. And it rocked for Sheena, too, as part of my piece included work she’d done. Both of us would happily languish in university obscurity if it didn’t pay so effing poorly.

But still. Bidness writing doesn’t satisfy the creative urge. Any clever wordplay or Cheek-isms were usually beaten out (sorry, Sheena, “edited”) before publication. But Sheena offered another path, and became my blagmother just over a year ago.

From Hugh MacLeod's Gaping Void

I’m still in Hugh’s 2005 stage of blag herstory. Posts slacked the last couple of weeks before vacation and catch up ensued last week. Typical Cheek light fare - things observed, things that resonate. Such was the "What Women Want - What Is Sexy" post, with a Gaping Void cartoon for eye candy.

Blaggers vary widely on the eNarcissicist-O-Meter. We use tools to track how often folks look at our blags, how they land there, how much time they spent, what they click to, etc. My "traffic" kung fu is weak - I'm not writing for a popularity contest. But I'm a vigilant sourcer, and Hugh has a creative commons license.

Happened to check traffic last night at the end of the work day, and the hits were high. Curiously strong high. From far off lands. The referrals were coming in from Twitter. Specifically, Hugh's Gaping Void Twitter page. For those of you un-Web 2.0 types, Twitter is MySpace on crack, the ultimate forum for minutiae addicts anonymous to let the wankosphere know what they're doing at every second. Hugh, fortunately, is not a card-carrying MAA member, but instead uses Twitter for the *interesting* tidbits and "random links" that aren't the stuff of "substantive posts".

Hugh must have done a Technorati-like search to feel the love and fell upon my last post with his cartoon. Hugh “random link” mentioned the post on his Twitter page as a “nice article on what is sexy from a woman’s POV”. Day-um if I didn’t have a Sally Field moment.


Hugh, that was indeed good for me. I’m not a religious type, but “Oh My God!” burst from my mouth a dozen times before I stopped squealing, realizing anyone walking by would think I was having one hell of an orgasm. The blogasm buzz is still in me today. That was the best happy blog anniversary present I could have never imagined receiving. Spanks. And it’s one of my best stories.