Thar she blows

It's been a long time between blogs, and I don't have a decent excuse. I've been wondering if I'm not just temperamentally unsuited to running an actual blog. I enjoy contributing comments to other people's blogs, but for me as a writer, blogging feels uncannily like exposing the process to readers: the little man behind the curtains furiously tugging on strings. Or perhaps it's simpler: I don't have all that interesting a life.

I could mention that the whales have arrived in force, breaching and blowing, basking, making thunderous love. Trails of sand track the inshore area, now a busy labour ward as the midwives close in and the big males circle to keep off predators while the calf is born -- great whites are multiplying in this area, and they are very hungry. But I haven't managed to get one usable picture. So that's a bit of a crock.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do about the Vapours. I may just post on the odd occasion when life actually happens. Or not. I'll probably still hang around other folks' campfires. See you around.

I spit on your grave

It didn't occur to me to blog about the death of the Aussie wildlife populist (and conservationist) Steve Miller until I realised I was going to have to say something to get the foul taste out of my mouth after reading comments, ranging from mean to outright malevolent and even celebratory, that brought it home with renewed force that the blogosphere sometimes reveals some of the darkest depths of people who would never dream of uttering such thoughts in "real life", where there are consequences. Such as other people thinking you are a repulsive human being.

It seems to me that blogging is encouraging the birth of a misshapen kind of consciousness. I have never seen one of Steve Irwin's shows, but no matter how irritating they might have been, nothing he said or did could justify the poison pen scratchings (what's left of Germaine Greer is a spiteful, dried-up, self-publicising creep, and a raging colonial snob). Right now I want to close the door on the whole cacophony. And go and do something worthwhile, like writing some more poems.