It seems like yesterday I heard the word “blog” for the first time. I thought they were saying “blob.” The only thing I could think of was “The Blob” movie, a 1958 Sci-Fi classic starring 28 year-old Steve McQueen as teenager Steve Andrews. Perhaps you’ve seen the movie on late night TV: Steve and his girlfriend, while kissing, but-not-on-the-lips, witness a meteor strike and out comes a blobby-looking thing that dissolves and eats people, starting with the town’s Official Old Coot. The dim-witted town sheriff chalks up the old man’s disappearance, and subsequent disappearances, to teenagers pulling pranks — until he actually sees the blob eat, and swallow whole, the movie theatre. Finally, Steve discovers the blob is rendered harmless by the cold, so they freeze it with fire extinguishers and airlift it to the Arctic where it will forever be encased in ice because, as we all know, it will never get warm there.
I may be really late to the party, but I am now a blobber—I mean blogger. It’s easy. All I have to do is write down what I’m thinking, which usually isn’t much, and let people respond to it. For example, right now you might be thinking, “I saw that blob movie. I wonder if Jerry’s followers (both of them) know Steve McQueen’s blob-fighting girlfriend was the same actress who played Helen Crump, Andy’s girlfriend on The Andy Griffith Show, and that she still hadn’t kissed on the lips.”
After exhausting that topic, I might come up with a completely unrelated blog entry, such as: Guess why I’m currently standing behind my desk without my pants on. Go ahead, guess. Am I chasing Helen Crump around my desk? No, I am not. Rather, in a selfless act of selflessness, I stopped at McDonalds for coffee for the boys at the office, and like that old lady who sued McDonalds after spilling scalding coffee onto her crotch, I did the same thing. And it hurts like a mother. My pants are drying on a chair in front of a fan, and the only way I can sit down is to have an ice pack nestled into my nether regions.
Perhaps you, too, have scalded your scrotum. Before blogging, you’d have to keep that to yourself. But now you can log onto my website and click on “Contact Jerry.” We can chat, compare notes, and even start a support group.
But let’s say you hate my blog. That’s okay, just tell me. I won’t hold it against you. Actually, I might. So if you go home tonight and notice Mr. Blob peering into your kitchen window, and he looks hungry, I sent him.
