As I tried to show a couple posts down, I used to write about blogging quite a bit four years ago or so. Many people still do, and -- don't get me wrong here -- I'm glad they do. Some of them anyway (you know who you are). But me, I kinda stopped writing so much about blogging and went back to writing about... well, everything else.

I imagine that when our Paleolithic human 4-bears first learned to paint on cave walls at places like Lascaux in what we now call France, and at Altamira in proto-Spain, there was quite some lengthy conversation about the How-To's of prehistoric horse art. "No, no, Og, you're holding the blowstick wrong!" And so on.

But after a while, several centuries perhaps, the talk gave way to more pictures of bison and elephants and such -- and eventually people. What they looked like. How they moved. Representational stabs-in-the-dark as to what it all means.

Then came hieroglyphs and characters and alphabets. Same thing. How to make a proper "H" or XLVII. How to mark these things on papyrus, how to chisel them into stone. "No, no, Badronicus. You're holding the stylus wrong!" And so on again.

Then came a bunch of other things... up till we got electricity, let's say. Don't mean to give you whiplash with the historical fast-forward button, but otherwise I'll be at this all night. And it's already 6:46am. So it's too late anyway.

I've imagined for a long time that in the early days of electrification, farmers would meet at the local Grange hall and jaw about 60-cycle current. "You gettin 110 volts out at your place, Clem? Hell, I think I'm only gettin 106." Which again, don't get me wrong, was important. For a time. But it's harder to imagine whole broadsheets and magazines devoted to the follow-on plug-ins market.

Headline: A New Class of Peripherals for Your Electrical System - LAMPS!

Headline: ElectricWeek Tests 42 New Toaster Ovens

Headline: Kilowatt Times Presents: 10 Reasons to Electrify Your Dog

I have little patience for people who look down their noses at blogging. They're either insufferably arrogant elitist snobs and/or hopeless idiots too dim to find the ON switch. But I sometimes wonder: are we electrifying our dogs? That is, in a metaphorical manner of speaking. I don't really mean anyone is seriously blogging about electrifying dogs (except maybe Wired; they get off on that sort of thing). However, I mean, and this is just a thought, but I'm going to say it here anyway, even though I'm a little afraid I might get yelled at: is it possible to have too many bloggers blogging about blogging? I dunno. Just something to think about.

Because all these signs and symbols, codes and linguistic semaphores our species has developed over tens of thousands or years are good for other stuff too. Like describing floods and babies and morons and night and canned ham and flowers and stars and the boss's proboscis and water and wine and watermelons and whiskey and severe personality disorders and girls and dustbunnies and the mailman's hat (if he wears one) and the oddball mondo-bizarro practices of the primitive tribes of Lower Manhattan and yes... even cats. Once it was uncool to have a page about your cat. But I think we're getting back to basics here finally, and my cat just walked by under the space between the coffee table and the couch -- which also happens to be the space between my brain and my keyboard -- so I thought I'd mention her here. And if I can figure out how to recharge my ancient low-rez digital camera that saves grafiks to a "floppy disk" (yes, that old; and me now with a Mac that doesn't have a "floppy drive"), maybe I'll send y'all a picture of her and tell you about her apparently deep-seated interest in going outside and coming back in again.

Look, I know this is still blogging about writing, or writing about blogging, or some damn thing. But I look forward to the day, soon I hope, when we'll be using all this latest technology (and don't get me wrong; I love it; really) to produce a bit more fundamental stabs-in-the-dark as to what it all means.

Or possibly, by process of elimination, doesn't.