Much Ado About Nothing
David Weinberger, in his recent book Everything Is Miscellaneous makes the point that we have a difficult time categorizing things in meaningful ways. That said, I’m fascinated with some of the category names that bloggers use to describe the miscellany of life.
Of course, this is not an exhaustive list, but here goes.
- Christa Bannister (St. Paulite and best-selling author) uses “Blah, Blah, Blah.”
- Claytonius, the self-proclaimed “postmodern puritan,” uses “curiosities”
- Gideon Strauss, whose column is perhaps the most random, yet best structured that I read, uses “apophthegmata” (whatever that means).
- Mackster999 seems to dispense with labels all together. Mack, Mack, Mack, don’t make me get the blog gestapo after you.
- Modern Mechanix, a delightful site full of yesterdays technological dreams, uses “useless technology”–but I admit that this is not a completely fair evaluation.
- Yap Family in Vancouver, a site I enjoy, though I have no idea how I found it in the first place, uses “general”–probably in the sense of “non-specific” rather than as a military rank.
- Indexed, a startlingly original site that explains all of life on 3×5 cards, uses Uncategorized. Curiously, this is the only category name that is capitalized. That probably means something, but I don’t know what.
As for me, well I’ll be filing this under “Stuff & Detritus.”