You simply must visit Jonny Billericay...

So, The Observer asks: In a world of blogs, can the gentle art of journal writing survive? I'm getting tired of trad paper-based media suggesting to me that tapping away on a keyboard might, in some way, be less valid than scribbling in a leather-bound book. What century do they think this is? Has Caxton just invented the printing press, are we all dipping quills into pots of ink or have things moved on a bit? Besides, journals and blogs can exist side-by-side; when there are things that don't fit here I write them in a book - for instance I've got journals about the Kicked Into Touch and Sully rehearsals that live in a cupboard upstairs. Either way is all about understanding what's going on, neither way is superior to the other and to suggest one way is the right way renders the whole reason for documenting our lives utterly meaningless. So The Observer gathers nine 'diarists', only two of whom are bloggers and one of them is Jonny Billericay, who hardly needs any more publicity. Of course, unlike those with real, hard copy journals who are writers and critics and columnists and novelists and authors, the blogger that isn't Jonny Billericay is a mere student. And the mere student, Jennifer Lee, gets less lineage to talk about the blog she shares with her friends, which, where her posts are concerned, tells of her life at clown school. The 'real' journal keepers are much more worthy. Phil Hogan openly mocks his son's Myspace account, "There are old videos of him as a younger danger-teen falling out of trees and setting fire to his arm with aftershave. He loves 'partying' and 'chilling'." My, the vernacular of today's online youth is shocking, ain't it? Lyn Barber, who does blog at The Guardian and likes to ask her public what questions she should ask her interviewees, informs us, just in case we hadn't realised, that the use of a diary "is simply to exercise the writing muscle." Y'don't say? Still, it was an interesting-ish read. But I just don't trust newspapers that take the time to suggest that those of us that start the day with blogger, livejournal or wordpress, or take time out to upload portions of our lives to flickr or bebo or wherever, are wasting our time. Which should, of course, be time spent reading The Observer of a merry Sunday morn.

And another thing! I am getting irked by lists of the best blogs, must read blogs, top 100 blogs, most of which send us all in the same direction, in a pointless effort by someone else that isn't me to make sense of the millions of pages that exist in the ether of this internet thingy by narrowing our decision making for us rather than encouraging us to embrace the madness of blog hopping our time away under our own steam. I can find a host of very readable blogs quite successfully without being instructed to, say, visit Jonny Billericay's ramblings (which are very good, that was just an example). Why are we loading a blogospherical canon with 'the best' of today when this medium is just so god-damn ephemeral that today's today pretty much becomes yesterday's today in much less than 24 hours? Half the time these much-lauded blogs are the least updated, or we'll get sent to the home of a new high-profile blogger (usually a journalist), who enters the scene to a fanfare of a million bugles, fires off a flurry of posts for a week, maybe a month at best, and then decides that blogging is "taking up too much of my time." Well, thanks a lot, you twat, if you'd thought of that before you launched your blog I would never have bothered visiting in the first place. So, hell, never mind lists like this one at Fimoculous, although at least there's a caveat admitting that no human is qualified to compile such a list. Still, thanks to that very list, I can now keep up with the kidz at Ypulse (come on, you're not being serious?! "an award winning youth marketing agency targeting tweens, teens, gen y and gen x"? A marketing agency? How long have marketing agencies been down with youth? Anyone that uses the term tweens deserves to be shot and gen-xers are hardly the youth of today, are they?). All of which should bring me nicely to my own, alternative, list of top must-visit blogs for you to visit. Right, erm, No 1. Jonny Billericay...No 2. Jennifer Lee (note: not updated since December 10 despite major publicity, just two posts in November. Must be relative of Observer hack)...No 3. Ypu... No, wait, no, no, I mustn't fall into that trap...*

*I already have. All of my favourite, must-visit blogs are over there in the blog roll and can also be found over on deli.cio.us No need for an old-fashioned list, is there? Not in the 21st century.

Listening: The Beatles - Love.

top 100 blogs, blogging, The Observer, Jonny Billericay, Lyn Barber, Phil Hogan, Jennifer Lee