When I read newspaper articles about blogs, it reminds me of the papers I wrote for the earth science class that I was forced to take as part of my liberal arts requisites in college. I didn't understand what the fuck I was talking about. Viz:

At the close of 2002, there were some 15,000 blogs. By 2005, 56 new blogs were starting every minute. As I type this sentence, there are, according to technorati.com, 27.2 million blogs.

This blows my mind, because I felt as though I, who began blogging in earnest in the summer of 2002, was really on the tail end of the phenomenon. Apparently I was a progenitor. Me and Justin Hall. Who knew?

Oh, and:

According to the monitoring done by thetruthlaidbear.com [sic], only two blogs get more than 1 million visitors a day and the numbers drop quickly after that: the 10th ranked blog for traffic gets around 120,000 visits; the 50th around 28,000; the 100th around 9,700; the 500th only 1,400 and the 1000th under 600.

Can this be right? (Answer: No, it can't be.)

I want to propose something to all journalists out there: For just one week, let's declare a moratorium on calling Gawker Media people as expert witnesses. Every article is like a greased ourobouros in a fucking centrifuge. Enough. Also: Can we never, ever mention Gawker and the Algonquin Round Table in the same sentence--nay, paragraph--again? Really. Dorothy Parker would jump up from the grave and snatch you bald, Butterworth, if it weren't folicularly impossible.

Butterworth owes the best parts of his story to Choire Sicha: "'The word blogosphere has no meaning,'" he said from across a folding table vast enough to support the battle of Waterloo in miniature (the apartment owes much to eBay, the Ikea of bohemia)."

Out of curiosity, where is the auto-da-fe of Bohemia?

He's right, though. Sicha, not Butterworth. And then there's this:

"'Satire,' said Choire Sicha, 'is the most useless cultural effluvia one could possibly produce out of the cultural situation in America right now.'" It's a bit depressive a pronouncement, no? I say this as someone who enjoys satire. But satire is Moliere. Satire is not mocking the death of an 87-year-old woman who gets run down by a bus.

Sicha doesn't imply that Gawker is a purveyor of the detestable satire. But I will. Does anybody remember laughter? Does anybody remember Gawker when it was more than just tepid captions underneath party photos that only 125 people care about?

Oh, and hey: speaking of transparency, are we sure the Gawker editorial roster remains intact? I'm noticing fewer typos and considerably less grievous adverb abuse. It reminds me of when Jenna Bush disappeared from the family photo ops and they said she volunteered with Americorps or something.

It makes me sad to see Choire Sicha sad. East/West, his blog with Philo Hagen, was one of the first blogs I read regularly, and it was what inspired me to start writing #1HS.

And yet who could have predicted that six years down the line there'd be quotes like "'We’re sure Marx and Orwell would have blogged,' said Heather and Jessica of gofugyourself.com," that would make me never want to look at a Movable Typle login screen again? You can't win. Talk about kicking against the pricks.

These "last waltz" stories, they've been coming coming fast and furious lately. Cash in now, honey. For those of us who never wanted to cash in in the first place, though, maybe we'll wait until it all blows over. As a friend put it, "I've been thinking about this, and I think all this bored-with-blogging coverage is good. Hopefully it will stop people from starting crap blogs that they never update or abandon after three weeks. I'm in it for the long, long haul."

As for me: This fall, I think that I'll be heading back to school. Just like Rodney Dangerfield! At that point, I may be hanging up my hat, just like Trevor Butterworth is predicting. But until then, I'll be doing it for the sheer, irresistible, goddamn glamor of it all.