Not Soup

No, it’s not the answer to a really lame Jeopardy question. It’s this blog, obviously. But that doesn’t really tell us anything. “A blog” doesn’t really mean anything anymore, it’s about as useful as saying “A piece of paper”  or “A book” it tells us only of existence, not of content.

Once upon a time, Blog meant content. It was where those at the leading edge of technology stood on their pulpit and made proclamations to the masses and usually spoke in arcane words and symbols that had no meaning to the mere mortal behind the “tv part,” as my mother was fond of calling it. You needed specialized knowledge. What’s a baud? What’s a RAM? What are the internets? of course, these questions existed before the blogs, but I think the blogs are what really started to transform those arcane ramblings. The normal people, the slack jawed, unwashed masses saw that this one group, was finally giving itself a voice. and in turn each of them saw that and said “I want that.” They wanted their pulpits, their platform, their milk cartons to stand up and raise there voice over the crowd.

We’ve entered a new age of Snake Oil Salesman, but they’re giving it away, just as long as they’re heard. First there was Geocities. Geocities allowed anyone to have their 10acres and a mule in digital format. You could set up in whatever neighborhood you liked as long as you didn’t mind being /aliens/mothership/zebulon/8675309. But geocities had a hurdle, and it was a huge hurdle at that. It required work. Sure they had basic templates, but they were basic and templates. And they were coming out with all new toys to play with, embedded music, animated gifs, scrolling text, variable fonts. With all those options who could settle for a plain old template? But there was still a lot of work to be done. and that work had to be done every time you wanted to add or change content on your site.

Over the years, new toys came and went, but I think the next major step was LiveJournal. LJ was in my mind, the dawning of the social internet consciousness. Anyone could come in and pull up anchor. Ok, maybe you needed an invite, but those weren’t very hard to come by at all. And this one let you be a bit more personal. You could actually be /~you. And you could connect. You could have friends, you could have people that were your friends, but you weren’t really their friend and you could go off and form your own little groups and cliques and talk and be heard, by as many or as few people as you liked. Plus you could personalize it. Give it your own style and your own flair. But LJ still lacked something. Anyone could say anything and everyone could hear it, but it was still a bit like reading someone’s diary, peering into some side that they’re hiding away; it lacked authority.

Finally, came WordPress. now for the mere cost of a domain name ($6.95 for the one you’re looking at now) and possibly a few dollars a month, though there are free options, you can have your own website, that shows some level of authority.

Now, to get to the point, unless you’ve been enjoying the stroll down the digital memory lane. What is Not Soup? I originally planned it to be my platform, my place of authority, where I would rant from on high and everyone would listen. Then I had my baby girl. Suddenly I don’t matter. I want to tell the world about her and just goof off so I don’t become an old man too quickly. That’s what Not Soup is, a place for people who care about me and about my family to pay attention to what’s going on. It is not for everybody. Honestly, it’s not really for anybody but myself. If you don’t like it, go screw. For the rest of you, welcome, rest your feet, enjoy the tea.