I woke up this morning knowing that I had the day off from filming today, so naturally my thoughts turned to Bollywood actresses. Actually I’m not really a sad old lech I just happen to have a copy of Nasreen Munni Kabir’s book “Bollywood – The Indian Cinema Story”. I won’t be reviewing it, so relax but will recommend it if you’re at all interested in Indian Cinema.
I mention it because I was reading it this morning, well actually I was trying to read it but my thoughts kept drifting away towards this infernal weblogging business. Am I becoming obsessive? … not really because I abide by some rules …. (ahem!).
The first rule; don’t blog more than once per day.
Which I think is enough unless you’re a blogging anorak like instapundit, who remains as frightening as he is compelling, (like looking straight into the headlights of the American juggernaut), which brings me to,
the second rule; don’t fish for traffic
which is something that I have done in the past but am trying to avoid now. It’s just too ‘needy’ and speaks of a desire for validation. Instapundit is often credited for causing huge increases of traffic to people’s blogs, indeed the term ‘instapundited’ is used to describe exactly this as a mention on his website has that effect. So this means no leaving links back to my own blog when I leave comments on other’s … (yeeees! something I have been doing a lot of lately). Now these are my rules and I have a motive – I’m trying to get REAL!
I left a comment in the guestbook of fudgeit thanking her for visiting but then rather patronisingly adding that I thought her excellent weblog was ‘refreshingly real’, (who died and made me blog god!). The fact is that it is real and in comparision, some of my posts seem like pale imitations of assorted warblogs and daily journals and all the other good stuff I’ve read out there. Thus,
the third rule; blog with your head pulled out of your arse
which brings me straight to,
the fourth rule; that there is no fifth rule
(gimme a break! I’ve only just started all of this), so, trying to put a name to this developing manifesto I thought of some variation along the DOGME 95 lines.
(This is a set of rules that a couple of Danish film makers came up with as an antidote to the Hollywood method of making movies. Which I list here,
Shooting on location (no imported props or sets) Sound and image produced together A handheld camera Natural light No optical work or filters No superficial action (murders, weapons) No temporal or geographic alienation No genre films No signature
courtesy of an article in Bright Lights Film Journal.)
To be honest, this all stemmed from reading Salam Pax’s return to blogging, finally, last night. Here is a REAL blogger and I noticed that he listed fudgeit and moorish girl via blogrolling. Now, they’re both REAL and they’re also both weblogs where I’ve left comments recently, which were genuine enough but break the second and third rules.
At least I’m good at the first rule.