Sunday, October 09, 2005

State Blogs (Read Away Purveyor of Mighty Links)

What is it about Connecticut blogs that are so boring? No wonder people rarely vacation in Connecticut and very often refer to us as "Patheticut." Man, our blogs are more dull than playing Uno on a Saturday night in college (that was a bad date). Maybe there really is not much to discuss in Connecticut other than uninteresting politics.

Take this conservative Connecticut blog. I don't agree with its politics at all, but I'm capable of being interested in things I do not agree with. Hell, I always check out Drudge and I hate that guy. Even the visual layout of this website should put someone to sleep. What really makes this blog so snoozeworthy though is the awful prose style imitated as such:

""Random out of context quote from Hartford Courant." This quote demonstrates why democrats are bad. It is a good quote. You should read this quote and realize why this quote makes sense and helps you notice that democrats are bad. Jodi Rell should win the next election. She's pretty. I'm going to end with something I believe is a witty phrase, but is really sort of an imitation of a witty phrase. Republicans rule and democrats drool. How long till Rowland gets out of jail?"

This website has a great title and that's about it. It feels like a community bulletin board that you ignore every time you walk past the YMCA. It does detail events that are happening in Connecticut, but if the best we have is a symposium on Climate Change, we are in trouble. Please, please tell me there's something better Connecticut.

IN Southington should have committed webicide (my term for a website killing itself) long ago. This website was like the old home town newspaper, only with all the interesting stuff cut out and replaced with ugly polls. Oh, and usually when a staff doesn't have enough time to keep the website running, it was usually run by one person. His girlfriend/wife/partner got upset with him because he was spending too much time in his underwear writing boring polls for Southington folks to take.

This blog is interesting, but not so much a community blog as it is a less talented Dooce.

Okay, so the one blog I found really exciting and interesting, fun to read and absolutely community oriented was from my hometown and run by people I know. Check out how cute Westport Now is. It's not politically motivated, but seems to have a general ambition to highlight the great aspects of Westport. It made me homesick.

But I've been wondering if this blog appeals to other people, and I think it truly does. It feels like reading a Bradbury story about that perfect town, where the parents sit around on their porches drinking lemonade while the kids run around playing games until the last lick of sunlight falls below the mountains. Of course in those stories there was a terrible sense of danger, but you get the point right? Westport Now is a fantastic example of what a community is. I'll take it over political blogs any day.

1 comment:

Dems for Education said...

I am deeply disturbed to learn that I live in Patheticut. I have a new motto for Hartford, New England's Falling Star: "Hartford -- two hours from everywhere."