Poll Time.

Should anonymous comments be banned from the 'net?

Hell yes! People should be accountable for what they say.No. Trolls aside, anonymity gives you the chance to reveal truths you wouldn't otherwise.Yes, granted protections are implemented to protect opinions from subpoenas.No. And fuck you if you can't relate.

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Adrants Hits Top of the AdAge Power 150

Back on top. Now, excuse me while I dance around the room in my underpants. (Thanks Bill for telling us.)

Why Children Are Dangerous

I was thinking recently about how most of my relatives don't really understand what I do. A conversation with a dowager auntie typically falls something like this:

"You mean you make webpages?"

"No," I say. "I write ad and technology news for webpages that already exist."

"So if I am having trouble with my page, or if I want to put pictures on it, I call you?"

"No. I write and edit content. You know, like a magazine editor? Like that, except on the Internet."

"Oh." I can practically see the wheels turning: Magazine editor. Sounds successful. Dot com crash - not so much.

The cool thing about nobody understanding what you do is no one is ever really sure whether or not you can be counted among the successful. It's not like it's super obvious, like my cousin the doctor versus my cousin the car salesman.

So, reserving their surrogate proud-parent faces, my relatives just approach me with a look of polite perplexity. I can roll with perplexity.

But kids are trickier. They're not looking for bragging rights; they're looking for the meat of things. And it's their right: after all, this is the world they're about to acquire.

Last month before the move to Ithaca, I was sitting in my pyjamas at my parents' kitchen table, my ass welded there since five-to-the-AM and typing furiously. Around 8ish, which is when people chez Natividad start wandering out into the open, my 10-year-old sister Charysma appeared on the scene. She watched me tap, then dragged her little feet to the living room, where she typically waits for my father to wake up and make her garlic bread.

A break in the silence: "Angel?"

I stopped typing and turned to her. "Yes?"

"Why is blogging your job?"

Pause. Something in my brain was not clicking.

"What?" I said.

Charysma, patiently: "Why. Is it. Your job. To blog?"

This is one of those questions you should always be ready to answer. For some reason, I wasn't.

I faltered. She saw.

"I write about new things that happen in the world," I said stupidly.

Head-tilt. "Why?" she asked.

"Because people want to read them."

"Why?" she asked.

I didn't have a response prepared for that, either. Of course I know why, obliquely anyway. But point-blank like this, I need note cards or something. I just kept thinking, I don't want to be one of those adults who pushes a kid down a well for asking a valid question...

Any number of answers would have worked. Because it's useful to others' jobs. Because the material is interesting. Because even grown-ups need to hear stories.

"Because I want to," I said.

Pause.

"Oh," she said. Then, thankfully, Pops appeared. "I want garlic bread," she commanded, changing tacks immediately.

Sweet relief.

Moleskiners, Bloggers Share Common Destiny - er, Bond

The ubiquitous Moleskine notebook: allegedly the trusted third arm of Hemingway, Van Gogh and Matisse, among others.

If the above apotheoses were alive today, would they be bloggers? It's hard to say. I'm sure Van Gogh and Matisse could contribute a great deal to the future of graphic design, and perhaps inadvertently they already have.

Hemingway wouldn't be afraid of trying something new, and perhaps even elitist contemporaries like Gertrude Stein (who never quite made it on the popularity of her work) and James Joyce may find the globally conjurable writing platform useful to their purposes as scrivners of all seasons, times and worlds.

One thing's for sure: there's a grand overlap between blogosphere members and Moleskine users (of today, that is). So if you happen to see somebody carrying a mole-clad notebook around, chances are s/he's a blogger too.

To better emphasize that relationship we find the (now Kikkerland-owned) Moleskinerie which in turn yields Moleskine City, a global panorama of bloggers hot-footing it from country to country with cameras, comfy shoes and the telltale black journals. (If you're curious about the Kikkerland liaison, read the interview with Armand of Moleskinerie by Citizen Marketer authors McConnell and Huba.)

As a fellow blogger and Moleskine-toter, I was intrigued by the shared space between those who disseminate the word on the lit-killing technology of today and those who hold the classical cahier dear. Why the parallel? Could it be possible - dear God - that the sloppy self-entitled ego-maniacal pseudo-journalist bloggers of today are the trend-setting classicists of tomorrow?

Could it be possible our neurotic scribbling online and off demonstrate a love of the word (and the world) that only other Moleskine lovers throughout history can identify with?

Could it be possible that we carry a conscious responsibility to our readers to disseminate the truth about ourselves and our societies as it unfolds?

Could it be possible that we may be called upon hundreds of years into the future to act as the witty-ass 6+ megapixel lens for the world as it is today?

Could it be possible that there's a higher calling for bloggers everywhere?

...Including me? And maybe you?

Nah. Bloggers are just the no-good lazy-ass hyper-typing fucktards you went to high school with. We'll keep our day jobs as baristas, office cogs and interns because clearly there's a higher calling in those arenas.