I vehemently opposed blogging until 7 a.m. this morning. It's narcissistic enough to keep a journal, or frankly to write anything personal at all. Blogs are worse, allowing people to publish (in a sense) and circumvent the winnowing of editors and economics. Blogs are to publication as glamour shots are to the catwalk. And in this nomos that Jeremy Bentham gave us, I don’t want to hear what you have to say until you’ve proven yourself worthy in a variety of market places. And it’s really self-indulgent - embarrassingly so - to expect people to read something of yours that isn’t written specifically for them, and yet hasn't been approved by the gatekeepers at TIME, AOL, Gannett, Random House, et-cet. I haven’t even read the 100 Greatest Books yet! I haven’t even opened my power bill yet! And yet, here I am being beckoned into the labyrinthine nether world of cyberspace so I can delight myself with the blogger's auto-missives that really should begin ‘Dear Diary…’ or ‘Mirror, Mirror…’

But then I realized that I too was narcisstic and wanted to circumvent the status quo publishing process! And it seems like fun. And I decided to stop being too cool for school. So here I am, blogging. And there’s no zealot like a convert.