On language, sort of

One thing I have noticed, as I continue working at writing, and refining my writing, is that my mind is starting to use words not by what they mean in modern, idiomatic speech, but by what they mean in terms of the roots of the words themselves. Their actual meaning, in a sense.

I just realized this as I was organizing my bookmarks, placing similar links next to similar links, and I thought about how I wanted to cluster together the bloggers who are "journalists." But I wasn't meaning the bloggers who, say, work for a newspaper, like Ezra Klein, or who report of the news online, like TPM, or even those unaffiliated individuals who nevertheless take it upon themselves who to relay or comment upon the news of the day, like say, Donkeylicious (Hi, Neil!). I mean those who, somewhat like me, although with more of a sense of discipline and order, are engaged in maintaining a journal. For the "-ist" implies one who engages in a particular activity or in the pursuit of a specific object. Thus, a "journalist" is one who keeps a journal, or one who journals. And "journalism" is the act, or art, of journal-keeping, or of journal-writing. I was thinking of people like Lance Mannion or Aylssa Rosenberg. People who use blogs as a method of relating or recording their thoughts, and through the wonders of the internet, presenting those thoughts with a public.

Of course, I still never bother to edit these bloody dispatches, so it's still possible that these things are full of error and nonsense, and don't come across the the workings of some clear and rarified mind. In fact, most of the stuff here is just bullshit I feel like getting out of my system so I don't have to deal with it bouncing around my head anymore, with phenomenon of the public dispensation being an almost beside the point. More of a viking funeral than voyage, this place, so I don't really worry about the quality of the construction, or the finish on the wood. It's really more an attempt to shove off.

Yeah. That all held to together. Yeah.